Music
Domain 7 tests the musical scaffolding under dance: svara, raga, the musical side of tala, the items each style sets to music, and the ensemble on stage.
Core rules
- Sapta svara: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni, with komal (flat) and tivra (sharp) variants; Sa and Pa are fixed. Saptak: mandra (lower), madhya and tar (upper) registers.
- Raga is a melodic framework - aroha (ascent), avaroha (descent), vadi (king note), pakad (catch-phrase) - not a fixed tune. Rasa is shaped by raga: Bhairavi for pathos and farewell, Khamaj and Pilu for the shringara of a thumri.
- Sahitya (lyric) drives abhinaya; the dancer must know the meaning line by line.
- Repertoire: Bharatanatyam - varnam (the central, most elaborate item, with swara and sahitya sections), kriti, padam, javali, tillana (nritta syllables). Kathak - thumri, dadra, ghazal, tarana, plus padhant. Odissi - ashtapadi from Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, champu, pallavi. Sattriya - padavali kirtan.
- Ensemble: lead singer, mridangam, nattuvangam cymbals and violin (Bharatanatyam); tabla with harmonium or sarangi (Kathak); mardala and flute (Odissi); tanpura drone throughout.
Worked example
A dancer performs a short, light, fast item in Khamaj about a lover's teasing, and the examiner asks the item type. Reasoning: light, fast, shringara-centred, with a simple lyric and no elaborate swara section = javali in Bharatanatyam (or thumri if the style is Kathak). A varnam would be long, structured as pallavi–anupallavi–charanam with swara passages, and would be the weightiest item of the programme.
Traps
Treating raga as tala. Calling tillana an abhinaya item - it is nritta. Forgetting that padhant is the Kathak dancer's own recitation. Assuming the same ragas serve every style.