Survey on Hand Gesture Recognition in Bharathanatyam Mudras

Resumen

Bharathanatyam is one of the oldest and best known classical dance styles of the India.
Bharathanatyam stands for: Bhava (emotion), Raga (melody), Thala
(rhythm), Natyam (dancing and acting) and the dance style is a synthesis of rhythmic dancing
technique and acting. Typical Bharathanatyam performance includes the graceful and
dynamic body movements, the stylized hand gestures (Mudras) and the strong facial
mimic.Through every act, a dancer(s) expresses cultural aspects, historical events, South
Indian religious themes and spiritual ideas. Recognizing the Bharathanatyam mudras depicted
by the dancer and comprehending the meaning behind the mudras will provide a better
understanding of the context presented by the dancer in an act. Mudras are forms of hand
gestures often used to communicate emotions and depict living things. The study presents a
survey of automated approaches to hand gesture recognition in a general context and in
Bharathanatyam dance mudras in particular. The feature extraction methods adopted,
machine learning and deep learning models employed in hand gesture recognition that are
reported in literature are presented.