Music, dance & performance

Kalā explores music, dance, theatre and film through the people who practise, teach and reshape them. How does a poem become a song, a gesture carry a story, or a rhythm bring people together?

Enter through melody and rhythm, a performance tradition, or a work finding a new form. Hindustani and Carnatic music, folk and popular performance, festivals, theatre and screen arts belong in this conversation.

Literary works begin in Bhāṣā & Vāṅmaya; Kalā follows them into recitation, song, theatre and film. Follow instruments and their making through Śilpa, and questions about sound through Vijñāna.

How we approach the arts

We attend to practitioners’ vocabulary and to differences between schools, regions and periods. Modern recognition does not establish a form’s antiquity, and traditions change as well as continue. Historical claims need sources; claims about acoustics or health need the relevant scientific evidence. See our approach to evidence and attribution.