--- title: "Should I mirror a Bharatanatyam video?" description: "Should I mirror a Bharatanatyam video? Check the feet, then check the hand, before you drill the adavu." canonical_url: "https://dancermirror.com/guides/when-to-mirror-indian-classical-dance" md_url: "https://dancermirror.com/guides/when-to-mirror-indian-classical-dance.md" last_updated: "2026-10-24" status: published --- # Should I mirror a Bharatanatyam video? Should I mirror a Bharatanatyam video? Only after you know whether you are matching the guru's feet or the guru's hand. A flip that puts the right foot first can also put a one-handed gesture on the wrong side. **Short answer.** Should I mirror a Bharatanatyam video when the guru faces the camera and your feet will not match. Tatta adavu is taught by striking the right foot first. Flip once, check that foot, then look at the hands. A single-hand gesture has a side, and the same flip can put it on the other hand. Dancer Mirror does not download videos. Ask your guru which side they meant. - Tatta adavu is taught starting on the right foot, then the left. - A flip that fixes the feet can move a single-hand mudra to the other hand. - This page is not a syllabus, a costume guide, or a tutor. **Takeaway.** Use the toggle. Check the foot the adavu starts on, then look at the hand before you repeat it thirty times. The screen is not the guru. ## Should the feet match the guru or the screen? Match the guru. The screen is a picture of them, and a picture of a person facing you swaps left and right. Tatta adavu, the flat strike in araimandi, is taught by lifting the right leg first and then the left. A Kennedy Center lesson for classrooms says the same thing in different syllables: strike the right foot, then the left. If your recording faces you and you copy the side you see, you will start on the left and call it the right. Do one strike. Stop. Name the foot out loud. If the guru said right and your right did not move, flip the picture and strike once more. Do not run the whole jathi to 'see if it settles'. It will settle on the wrong side, and unlearning that is slower than the check. The general version of this check is [why tutorials feel backwards](https://dancermirror.com/guides/why-dance-tutorials-feel-backwards). Classical dance adds the hand, which that page does not have to settle. | What you are matching | Leave the picture | Flip the picture | | --- | --- | --- | | Right foot on the first strike of an adavu | You are already on the right. Do not flip. | You were on the left. Flip, then strike once more. | | A single-hand mudra with a named side | The hand matches the guru's meaning. | The feet may be right and the hand wrong. Look again. | | A phrase that is meant to be symmetrical | Either side can be checked against the other. | Flip only to learn the second side, then go back. | ## What happens to the hand if you flip? The feet wanted the flip. The hand may not. Holding a damaru, a flute, a flower, or a flag on a named side is part of the meaning. Flip the screen to fix an adavu and that object jumps to the other hand. In a symmetrical phrase you will not mind. In an abhinaya line you have changed the sentence. So the order is foot, then hand, then repeat. If the foot is right and the hand is wrong, you are in the awkward case: the feet wanted a mirror and the gesture did not. Some students learn the footwork mirrored and the hands from the original picture, toggling between the two. That is clumsy for a minute and cheaper than a month of the flute on the wrong side. Write on the note which view the hands use. ## Kathak and the first syllable Tatkar is not an adavu, and this page will not pretend the gharanas share one printed foot. What they do share is a bol you can test. A description of Lucknow Kathak gives the familiar sixteen-count line beginning ta tai tai tat. Ask which foot strikes ta in the recording you have. Do not borrow that foot from a different school's page. The recording, facing you, can show the other foot from the one your guru named. Chakkars are a separate argument. Turning the wrong way is not fixed by the same toggle as a stamp, because a spin has a direction in the room, not only a left and a right in the picture. If the video says the turn travels to the left, stand up and turn that way once, slowly, before you look at which foot the picture seems to pivot on. Odissi and Kuchipudi are not given a rule here. If your guru is from those forms, ask them. A borrowed Bharatanatyam rule is how a tribhangi ends up reversed and confident. ## A toggle is a check, not a style Flip, look, flip back. The useful thing is that the file itself is not re-exported into a second movie you then lose. You are looking at one clip two ways. When you decide, stop toggling inside the phrase. The second flip feels like progress and it is the first side again. Dancer Mirror does not download videos, and it is not a syllabus, a costume list, or a tutor who comes to the house. Those are different searches. If you want the adavu explained from the beginning, you want a class. If you want tonight's class recording to match your right foot, you want the recording and one careful look. ## What this page will not teach No items, no alarippu in full, no shopping list for jewellery. The mirror guide already explains when a follow-along picture should stay unflipped because you need the audience's view of a formation. Classical class is usually the follow-along case, until the hand has a meaning. Stage choreography can be the other case. Know which one you were sent. Formations and the audience view are [mirrored versus original](https://dancermirror.com/guides/mirrored-vs-non-mirrored-choreography). Read that when the video is a group on a stage. Stay here when the video is a guru's feet and hands. The control that flips the picture is the [mirror guide](https://dancermirror.com/guides/how-to-mirror-a-dance-video). ## Sources - [What the app does today](https://dancermirror.com/features) - [How it works](https://dancermirror.com/how-it-works) - [Online Bharatanatyam, tatta adavu](https://onlinebharatanatyam.com/2007/07/31/first-adavu-in-bharatanatyam-tatta-adavu/) - [Kennedy Center, Bharatanatyam lesson (right foot first)](https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/lessons-and-activities/activities/tap/bharatanatyam-introduction-to-indian-classical-dance-with-teaching-artist-deepa-mani/) - [Lalli, Lucknow Kathak (the bol ta tai tai tat)](https://jashm.press.uillinois.edu/12.3/12-3ANorth_Lalli100-113.pdf) Practise the side you see. Download from the stores linked on the download page.