Shankarashis Mukherjee^1,, Neepa Banerjee¹, Surjani Chatterjee¹, Sandipan Chatterjee¹, Ayan Chatterjee¹, Tanaya Santra¹, Bijan Saha¹

Obesity, defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health, is on the rise including in the pediatric population in developed as well as less developed countries. As children are now fast adopting computer based activity both habitual and recreational with minimal level of physical effort, the prevalence of childhood obesity is a major concern. Indian dancing has been practised as a popular recreational activity for a long period of time. Bharatnatyam dancing is a traditional form of Indian classical dance which involves different body postures with continuous rhythmic body movements and therefore it may have some impact on body composition. A study has been undertaken in this backdrop, to assess the effect of Indian classical. Bharatanatyam dancing on body composition variables of girl children. Female individuals (12-18 year), receiving Bharatanatyam dancing training for at least a period of five years and practicing daily for an hour for 6 days in a week, constituted the Bharatanatyam dancing group (DG). Children of similar age and socioeconomic background with no regular physical activity including any form of dancing were randomly selected for constituting control group. It has been observed that training in Bharatnatyam dancing has significant (P < 0.05) favourable impact on the body composition parameters measured anthropometrically compared to the age and sex matched counterparts. It could therefore be concluded that Bharatnatyam dancing has specific beneficial impact on maintaining favourable body composition variables in children and thereby reducing the chance of obesity in adulthood.

childhood obesity, anthropometry, physical exercise, recreational activity, rhythmic movement