THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

REVISITING THE CLASSICAL: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF KUCHIPUDI DANCE

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO

THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

BY

RUMYA SREE PUTCHA

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

DECEMBER 2011
 UMI Number: 3487666

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 DEDICATION

To my parents, Mallik and Vasanta Putcha, neither of whom could have possibly foreseen the
journey on which we were embarking that hot, mosquito-ridden day back in October 1985.

And to my grandfather, A.V.L. Narsimham, for my first history book on Indian dance. Much of
what I write in these pages was discovered in your absence, but with the conversations we might
have had as my inspiration. It is an understatement to say that this project is dedicated to your
memory with gratitude for the brief, but life-shaping moments I shared with you.
 EPIGRAPH

“The goal is to get into that state where the dancer and the dance become one. Where, if you’re
sitting in the audience, you see through her, past her. Where she disappears, and all you can see
is the dance.”

– Rama Vaidyanathan on her philosophy as an Indian classical dancer.

New Delhi, pers. comm., November 11, 2008
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………...v
LIST OF MAPS……………………………………………………………………………….….vi
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………..….vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………....ix
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATIONS AND LANGUAGE………………………………………xiv
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………..xv

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1

CHAPTER 2
KUCHIPUDI AND THE CLASSICISM CONTROVERSY……………………………………24

CHAPTER 3
BETWEEN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY……………………………………………57

CHAPTER 4
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS: KUCHIPUDI AND THE SOUTH INDIAN FILM INDUSTRY…104

CHAPTER 5
LANGUAGE AND EMBODIED POLITICS………………………………………………….144

CHAPTER 6
KUCHIPUDI AND THE SEMANTICS OF CLASSICISM IN ANDHRA PRADESH………176

EPILOUGE
EXIT FROM THE CLASSICAL………………………………………………………………212

GLOSSARY OF TERMS………………………………………………………………………215
APPENDIX
1. TRANSCRIPT OF APPA RAO’S 1958 DANCE SEMINAR LECTURE........…...220
2. KUCHIPUDI IN TELUGU CINEMA………………..……..……..……..……..….245
UNPUBLISHED FIELD/ARCHIVAL MATERIALS..……………………..............................249
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………….………………………………………………………….......250

iv
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Papers and Demonstrations at 1958 Seminar…………………………………….35

Table 2.2 Schedule of Evening Performances at 1958 Seminar……………………………38
Table 2.3 Schedule of Papers and Demonstrations at 1959 Seminar……………………….48
Table 3.1 Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry’s Repertoire List……………………..…….90
Table 4.1 The Kuchipudi “Trinity”………………………………………………………..105
Table 6.1 Evening Programming at Siddendra Yogi Mahotsv, March 6-12, 2009...……..193

v
 LIST OF MAPS

Map 1.1 India after the States Reorganization Act, November 1, 1956…………………....7
Map 3.1 Map of Vijayawada area marking Kuchipudi (2011)..…………………………..60
Map 4.1 Map of the Madras Presidency (c. 1930).....…………………………………....109
Map 5.1 Major administrative regions in South India prior to independence (1947)..…..148
Map 5.2 Indian administrative regions after the formation of Andhra State (1953)..........152
Map 5.3 India following the States Reorganization Act (1956)..………………………..153
Map 6.1 Map of the Konaseema region of Andhra Pradesh……………………………..207

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Still from Swarnakamalam (1988)………………………………………………...1

Figure 1.2 Still from Swarnakamalam (1988)……………… ………………………………..3
Figure 1.3 Still from Swarnakamalam (1988)……..…………………………..…………….10
Figure 1.4 Artistic rendering of Telugu Talli (Mother Telugu)……………………………..12
Figure 1.5 Kuchipudi dancer, Deepika Reddy………………………………………………13
Figure 2.1 Example of Tala Technique……………………………………………………...41
Figure 2.2 Vaidehi and Induvadana performing Gollakalapam, Hyderabad (1959)...………53
Figure 2.3 Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma as Gollabhama………………………………...55
Figure 3.1 Entrance to Siddhendra Kalakshetra……………………………………………..65
Figure 3.2 Siddhendra Yogi Mahotsav Brochure Cover Page………………………………66
Figure 3.3 Bronze Statues of Kuchipudi Legends…………………………………………...68
Figure 3.4 Arch decorated with 108 karanas marking entrance to Kuchipudi village……...68
Figure 3.5 Life-size facsimile of 1763 Land Partition Deed………………………………...70
Figure 3.6 Krishna depicted through nṛṭya and nāṭya……………………………………….73
Figure 3.7 Genres in Kuchipudi Historiography…………………………………………….75
Figure 3.8 Representations of Satyabhama by Telugu……………………………………....77
Figure 3.9 Portrait of Vempati Venkatanarayana……………………………………………81
Figure 3.10 Vedantam Lakshminarayana Satry photographed in Madras (c. 1955).………....82
Figure 3.11 Balasarawati and Lakshminarayana Sastry in Madras (1948)...………………....84
Figure 3.12 Uday Shankar’s use of mudras…………………………………………………..98
Figure 3.13 Shankar’s elaborate costumes…………………………………………………....99
Figure 3.14 A 1932 program by Shankar in Germany………………………………………101
Figure 3.15 A 1941 program by Sastry in Hyderabad………………………………………102
Figure 4.1 Still from Yogi Vemana (1947)…………………………………………………104
Figure 4.2 Venkatarama Natya Mandali, Kuchipudi Village (c. 1930)…………………....107
Figure 4.3 Flow chart tracing movement of local traditions into film……………………..112
Figure 4.4 Advertisement for Raitu Bidda (1939)…………………………………………114
Figure 4.5 Still from Raitu Bidda (1939)…………………………………………………..116
Figure 4.6 Still from Raitu Bidda (1939)…………………………………………………..117
Figure 4.7 Still from Devadasu (1953)…………………………………………………….125
Figure 4.8 Comparison of Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam di-di-thai…………...………….126
Figure 4.9 Satyam as Shiva in Ksheera Sagara Madanam (1962)………………………...129
Figure 4.10 Still from Sitarama Kalyanam (1961) …………………………………………134
Figure 4.11 Still from Sree Venkatesawara Mahatyam (1960)……………………………..136
Figure 4.12 Still from Sree Venkatesawara Mahatyam (1960)……………………………..137
Figure 4.13 Still from Nartanasala (1963)………………………………………………….138
Figure 4.14 Bhamakalapam still from Eka Veera (1969)……………………………….......141
Figure 4.15 Still from Eka Veera (1969)………………………………………………….....142
Figure 5.1 Artistic Representation of Telugu Talli………...……………………………....149
Figure 5.2 Kuchipudi pāda bhedālu (basic steps)……………………………………….....162
Figure 5.3 Movement with ubuku, as described by Swapnasundari……………………….167
Figure 5.4 Kuchipudi adavu demonstrating movement by anchitam in the KAA style…...168
Figure 5.5 Raja and Radha Reddy’s students……………………………………………....172

vii
Figure 5.6 KAA at the Madras Music Academy, January 5, 2009………………………...174
Figure 5.7 Anjali Dance Company (2010)...…………………………………………….....175
Figure 6.1 Comparison of Andhra Natyam and Kuchipudi costumes……………………..176
Figure 6.2 Popular mid-century Kuchipudi dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy (c. 1960).…....181
Figure 6.3 DVD/CD jacket cover to Sankarabharanam (1979)………………………...…182
Figure 6.4 Still from Sankarabharanam (1979)…………………………………………....184
Figure 6.5 Still from Sankarabharanam (1979)………………………………………........186
Figure 6.6 Participants at the SNA’s 1995 Nrityosava in Hyderabad. …………………….189
Figure 6.7 Padma Subramanyam depicting Vinayaka at the 2009 Kuchipudi Mahotsav….196
Figure 6.8 Radhesyam seated with the orchestra playing the role of sutradhār…………...200
Figure 6.9 Pasumarti Rattayya Sarma with vocalist D. S. V. Sastry………………….........201
Figure 6.10 Radhesyam mocking the snake-charmers…………………………...…….……204
Figure 6.11 Rattayya Sarma as sutradhār mocking Venku as Satyabhama…....…………...206
Figure 6.12 Comparison of 1959 and 2009 Gollakalapam performances…………………..208

viii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I feel incredibly blessed to have been nurtured, encouraged and supported by a

remarkable group of people over the years leading up to the completion of the dissertation.

Moving between Boston, Chicago, Houston, New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and

Pune over the past five years, I have come to see these friends and family as my foundation, and

I owe all of them my gratitude.

First and foremost, this project would not have been possible without the mothering and

guidance of my two childhood gurus, Rathna Kumar and Anuradha Subramanian. For over

twenty-five years, these women have been the teachers and advisors to whom I could always

turn. I am indebted to them in so many ways for their knowledge and their generosity, but most

of all for their unconditional love and support.

Over the course of my dissertation research, I had the good fortune to train under a

number of dancers, both in the United States as well as in India, through whose art my project

emerged. In New Delhi, Swapnasundari, or Swapnakka, as she became to me, offered her

knowledge and her perspective with generosity and patience. The hours I spent with her in the

early months of my fieldwork set the bar for the kind of commitment and dedication I hope to

offer to my own students in the years to come. In Chennai I am thankful for the time I spent with

the teachers at the Kuchipudi Arts Academy, particularly, Vedantam Ramu, Vempati Srimoy and

Vempati Ravi Shankar. Through their training over the course of almost six months, my project

began to take shape, and in the process, I started to become the Kuchipudi dancer I strive to be.

In Hyderabad, as serendipity would have it, I was introduced to Vempati Ravi Shankar’s sister,

Bali, whose inborn talent has forever changed the way I think about what it means to be a dancer.

ix
Finally, I want to thank Kamala Rajupet of Pittsburg, PA who, unbeknownst to her, made a

childhood dream as well as a final chapter come to fruition one rainy week in May 2011.

Besides the teachers who shaped my study of dance, there were countless individuals and

institutions along the way who made my project logistically possible. In Houston, Raju Vanguri

and the Vanguri Foundation helped me lay the groundwork for my time in the field. In New

Delhi, the Indiresans provided me with a sense of security and home away from home, while the

staff at the A.I.I.S. in Gurgoan made it easy to look forward to dusty days of archival work.

Utpola Borah and Umashankar at the A.R.C.E. deserve special thanks for providing such quality

company and home-made filter coffee during otherwise solitary days. In Vijayawada, Jandhyala

Shankar and his wife, Kameshwari, provided comfort, as well as logistical support, which made

what would have been an impossible schedule enjoyable. During my time moving between

Hyderabad and Chennai, Anuradha Jonnalagadda, Pappu Venugopala Rao and V.A.K. Ranga

Rao became mentors and friends, providing invaluable advice and resources on Kuchipudi. I am

grateful for the staff at the Madras Music Academy, particularly for my friend Satya, who,

despite our language barriers, kept me company during long, hot afternoons in the library with

her soulful renditions of Kalyani and Mohana. Navid Ibrahim will always hold a special place in

my heart for his incredible generosity and companionship, which, in a very real sense, made it

possible to follow my instincts and the dance to wherever they might lead me.

My teachers and mentors both at the University of Chicago and those kindred spirits I

met along the way have been instrumental in preparing me for the challenges posed by my

research. Wendy Doniger, Kaley Mason, Travis Jackson, Martin Stokes, and Matthew Allen’s

influence and input are evident throughout the pages that follow. In the South Asian Languages

and Civilizations Department, I am grateful for the guidance and support of Steven Collins,

x
Muzzafar Alam, William Mazzarella, Rochona Majumdar, Jason Grunebaum and Tarini Bedi

who have treated me like their own over my years as a graduate student in the Music

Department. Larry Zbikowski, Tiffany Trent, Stephen Gabel and Nancy and Clark Gilpin

transcended the role of teachers and mentors somewhere along the way to become the finest

friends and colleagues I feel honored to call my own.

There are two mentors in particular whose influence has left an indelible mark on my

work and has defined how I move forward, both personally and professionally, from the

dissertation. I feel truly blessed to have met Davesh Soneji all those years ago in Houston. The

happy coincidence that our paths crossed again over a decade later is one for which I will always

be grateful. I am deeply indebted to him for his encouragement and friendship, not to mention all

those Saturday morning phone conversations during which this project truly came into focus for

me. Over the past seven years, Philip Bohlman has been an extraordinary teacher, advisor and

advocate. I continue to be inspired and motivated by his passionate commitment not only to the

method, but also to the essential humanity that lies at the heart of ethnomusicology. Perhaps one

day I will feel justified in speaking informally in his presence, but even after all this time, he

remains a man I respect too much to address as anything other than “Professor Bohlman.”

The friendships that I have formed along this, at times, winding path have taught me the

real meaning of gratitude. Without these people, who made me laugh, let me cry, brought me

food, and walked my dog, among countless other acts of loving support, I do not know how I

would have made it to the finish line, let alone across it. To my soul-mates in the Music

Department, Shayna Silverstein and Michael O’Toole, thank you for years of camaraderie and

reassurance. I hope I have been able to do the same for both of you. The affection I feel for the

people I met during the years I accidentally spent in Boston cannot be overstated. Gerard

xi
O’Connor, Bridget McNulty, Cecyl Hobbs, Neilesh Bose and all my family at Devlin’s Bar and

Bistro in Brighton Center read drafts, brainstormed ideas, sometimes just listening patiently as I

talked at them, and generally lived and breathed the dissertation with me during the write-up

phase.

My fieldwork was funded by generous support from the United States Department of

Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program. I am grateful for the

write-up funding I received from the University of Chicago as a Mellon Humanities Doctoral

Dissertation fellow and from the Committee on South Asian Studies. Without the sponsorship of

these institutions, my research would not have been possible.

Finally, I have to thank my family for their love and support over the course of this

project and all the years leading up to it. My parents, Mallik and Vasanta Putcha, along with my

maternal grandparents, Narsimham and Sreehari Ambatipudi, raised me to believe in the power

of my own concerted effort. Together, they taught me discipline and focus, and from a young

age, nurtured my musical and artistic interests. My mother, in particular, has given me countless

hours of her time and energy, screening films, correcting translations, and debating ideas with

me into the wee hours of the night. This research truly would not have been possible without her.

My big brother, Girish, with his unassailable character and intellect, has always been my rock. I

can’t thank him enough for so many years of staying by my side, through good times and bad.

My father, with his innate ability to endear himself to people, wherever he goes, made sure his

friends were my friends, and that I always had the resources and support I needed to do my work,

wherever I might be.

xii
 Over the past thirty years, these five people have shown me time and again that there is

nothing they wouldn’t do for me, and it is that knowledge, more than any other, that has

empowered and sustained me throughout this process.

And finally, a paragraph just for Abigail. Though she can’t quite understand what her

companionship has meant to me over the years, these acknowledgements wouldn’t be complete

without a thank you to my best friend, co-dependant partner and side-kick, Miss Abigail the

Snail. Let’s see where the next seven years take us, Snailmobile.

xiii
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND LANGUAGE

For Indian language words (Telugu, Tamil and Sanskrit), I have followed the Library of

Congress system of transliteration and diacritics. For the sake of ease and clarity I only use

diacritical markings when I introduce a term. I have included all transliterations with diacritical

markings in the glossary. Exceptions to this include proper names of individuals, places, titles of

dance, musical, literary works and films, which are transliterated according to common practice in

India.

xiv
 ABSTRACT

An abstract of the dissertation of Rumya Sree Putcha for the Doctor of Philosophy in

Music: Ethnomusicology

This dissertation examines the intertwined discourses and debates of classicism, linguistic

regionalism, caste and gender in the case of Indian dance. By focusing on the dance form,

Kuchipudi, from Andhra Pradesh, the first administrative region in India formed on the basis of

language, this study exposes the important connections between identity politics and the creation

of cultural icons, such as classical dance. In this study, I examine the paradox of Kuchipudi’s

classicization, as it became historicized as a symbol of masculine, Brahminical, Telugu culture,

on the one hand, and the projects of Indian modernity, which center on the iconicization of the

female dancer, on the other.

Through archival, discursive, film, and ethnographic analysis I examine how the

construction of classicism in Kuchipudi dance creates and supports hegemonic versions of

Telugu history. My research also explores the ways in which Kuchipudi’s classicization speaks

to the processes by which Telugu and Tamil identities are negotiated in modern South India. I

argue that Kuchipudi's movement vocabulary relies on constructed definitions of classicism,

which are cultivated in cities like Chennai, and reveal caste-based taste habits. In doing so, I

examine how and why Kuchipudi and the image of a female Kuchipudi dancer are constructed as

nostalgic symbols of Telugu culture.

Throughout the dissertation, I analyze the representation, discourse and practice of

Kuchipudi over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and focus on the ways in

which the dance practice has come to represent Telugu identity within the larger context of a

xv
globalizing Indian modernity. This focus extends previous studies of Indian classical dance by

sustaining questions about the reification of the Kuchipudi dancing body, the implications that

this has regarding the fate of hereditary courtesan dancers, and the discursive strategies that

allow Brahmin male history and female dance practice to coalesce.

xvi
 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image, which flashes up at
the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again
– Walter Benjamin1

In 1988, film director Kasinathuni Viswanath released a film in the South Indian

language of Telugu entitled Swarnakamalam (Golden Lotus). Viswanath cast the beautiful and

talented actress Banupriya as Meenakshi, the daughter of a hereditary Indian classical dancer in

the Kuchipudi style living in the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.

Figure 1.1 – South Indian actress Banupriya as Kuchipudi dancer Meenakshi in

Swarnakamalam (1988)
Directed by: K. Viswanath
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

1
Benjamin 1968, 255.

1
 A product of her father’s training, Meenakshi is a gifted Kuchipudi dancer, but has no

interest in leading the life of an Indian classical dancer, which she sees as a dying, anachronistic

profession. A modern Indian woman, she would rather capitalize on the opportunities available

to her as India entered the global economy. Her love interest in the film, Chandrasekhar, played

by the Telugu actor Venkatesh, however, holds Meenakshi’s father in great esteem as a symbol

of the golden era of Telugu culture. Throughout the film, Chandrasekhar encourages Meenakshi

to realize that, as her father’s daughter, she embodies an invaluable artistic legacy and that

society needs her to keep Telugu culture alive.

At a turning point in the film, Chandrasekhar arranges a dance performance for

Meenakshi, against her wishes, at an event to honor her father. As the curtains rise to the strains

of a tambura2 we see a full Karnatic orchestra seated stage right (violin, vocalist, veena3,

mridangam4, flute). Meenakshi enters to the now-standard invocatory ślokam (verse) to Shiva-

Nataraja5 in a South Indian classical dance performance (see text and translation below).6

Nataraja, represented by a bronze statue, is placed, as is now the standard performance practice,

to stage left. Accompanied only by the high, piercing voice of the female vocalist and the

2
A South Asian lute, commonly used to establish śruti or pitch.
3
A South Asian lute, found most commonly in South Indian classical or Karnatic music
performance.
4
A double-sided South Asian percussion instrument found most commonly in Karnatic music
performance.
5
Nataraja, often characterized as “the Lord of Dance,” refers to a representation of the Hindu
deity Shiva as he dances his “cosmic dance.” See Allen 1997 for history within South Indian
classical dance performance practice, particularly the usage of a Nataraja statue to mark a
performance space for classical dance.
6
The slokam is from Nandikeswara’s first century A.D. text Abhinaya Darpana (The Mirror of
Expression). Originally translated into English by A.K. Coomaraswamy in 1917 from the extant
Telugu interpretation by Madabhushi Tiruvenkatachari of Nidamangalam in 1874 as The Mirror
of Gesture. Coomaraswamy’s version was retranslated by Manomohan Ghosh in 1957.
2
tambura, Meenakshi interprets each word of the slokam through a series of graceful mudras

(hand-gestures) and poses.

Figure 1.2 – South Indian actress Banupriya as Kuchipudi dancer Meenakshi performs a
slokam (below) in Swarnakamalam (1988)
Directed by: K. Viswanath
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

Āngika bhuvanam yaśya Whose bodily movement is the entire universe

Vācchikam Śarva vānmayam Whose speech is the language of the universe
Āhāryam chandra thārādhi Whose ornaments are the moon and the stars
Tham vande sātvikam śivam Him, we worship, the serene Shiva

In a retaliatory move, however, Meenakshi has cut the threads on her gajjulu (ankle bells)

in order to sabotage her own performance. As the rest of the orchestra joins in and the tempo of

the dance quickens, her bells come undone and fly off into the audience. Her father, though in

poor health, steps in to save the performance. In his dance, he demonstrates a completely
3
 different aesthetic from Meenakshi’s. While Meenakshi’s body was sinewy and delicate in her

movements, her father’s is rigid and aggressive. The audience, originally angered when

Meenakshi’s performance is cut short, is thrilled to see her father dancing instead. The event,

after all, was organized specifically to fete his legacy as a knowledgeable Brahmin man and

Kuchipudi guru (teacher). Tragically, Meenakshi’s father suffers a heart attack during his

performance and dies.

By the end of the film, Meenakshi accepts an invitation to move abroad. As she prepares

to board a plane and leave India for the United States, she realizes how much her dance means to

her. Meenakshi decides, instead, to stay in Andhra, marry Chandrasekhar, and thus dedicate her

life to continuing her father’s legacy: upholding her Telugu heritage by teaching and performing

Kuchipudi dance.

I was seven years old when Swarnakamalam was released and two years into my own

training in Indian classical dance. Like Meenakshi and her family, my family was Telugu and

considered the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh home. Swarnakamalam’s dramatization of

Telugu cultural transmission and survival into modernity, symbolized by Kuchipudi dance,

resonated deeply with my parents, who, like many Indians in the wake of the 1965 Hart-Cellar

Act,7 had immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s-early 1970s. As a young Telugu

7
The Hart-Cellar Act or Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 phased out the national origins
quota system that had been in place since 1921. Whereas previous to the Act, immigration to the
United States from anywhere besides the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany was severely
limited, this legislation instituted a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and
family relationships with citizens or residents. Numerical restrictions on visas from any country
across the globe were set at 170,000 per year, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens,
nor "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western
hemisphere; former citizens; ministers; employees of the U.S. government abroad). The Act, in
many ways, paved the way for globalization and has thus had lasting influences both in America
and across the world in the post-World War II era.
4
woman and Kuchipudi dancer growing up in the diaspora, I recognized in Swarnakamalam an

iconic imagery to better envision the cultural identity I now represented. Just as Meenakshi had

trained under her father, a wise and devout Brahmin man, and thus had become a guru herself, my

own guru, a Telugu woman, had trained under a Brahmin man from Kuchipudi village.

Memorialized in films like Swarnakamalam, this was the version of Kuchipudi history, Telugu

history, my history that I embodied as a dancer: Though originally taught and danced by ascetic

Telugu Brahmin men in a small village from which the dance form derived its name, Kuchipudi,

had, in the past fifty years become a dance tradition performed almost exclusively by women.

I first embarked on my study of Kuchipudi dance with questions about the connections

between Kuchipudi’s past and present, specifically, why women now performed a dance tradition

historically practiced by men. In doing so, I joined a growing community of scholars who were

asking similar questions about the reinvention of performing art forms in modern South Asia. In

the wake of Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” (1983) and Terence Ranger and Eric

Hobsbawm’s “invented traditions” (1983), the majority of these studies have borne the mark of

influential postcolonial scholarship that views the processes of modernity through the prism of

nationalism and nation-building (e.g., Chakrabarty 2001; Chatterjee 1993a, 1993b). Indeed, from

dance studies (e.g., Banerji 2010; Chakrovorty 2008; Meduri 1996; O’Shea 2007; Sikand 2010;

Walker 2004), to South Asian studies (e.g.; Bakhle 2005; Blackburn 1998; De Bruin 1998; Frasca

1990; Keresenboom 1995; Peterson and Soneji 2008; Soneji 2010; Srinivasan 1985; Zarilli 2000)

to ethnomusicology (e.g.; Allen 1997; Qureshi 1990, 2001; Schultz 2002, 2008; Subramanian

2006; Wade 1979; Weidman 2006), it is by now a well-documented truism that “the reconstitution

of particular forms of indigenous music and dance as ‘classical’ traditions formed a salient part of

5
South Asian negotiations with modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century”

(Peterson and Soneji 2008, 2).

While I acknowledge the importance of nationalist sentiments in the reformulation of

indigenous dance practices as classical, canonized styles, I situate Kuchipudi within a nexus of

identity politics that operates independent from, and, at times, in contradistinction to the national.

In the pages that follow, I connect Kuchipudi to a discursive history more significant than

national or postcolonial politics in South India: the politics of language. Drawing on research by

Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs (2003), studies on language and political movements in

South India (e.g., Mitchell 2009; Ramaswamy 1997), examine the ways in which linguistic

identities, particularly in South India, were constructed in the wake of anti-colonialism and

nationalism. I position myself alongside these studies in the dissertation as I examine the

discursive and imaged strategies that cultivated Kuchipudi as a modern symbol of a specifically

Telugu identity.

This project is founded in the belief that it is the rhetoric of and affective attachment to

Telugu as a literary, superior language that fuels identity politics in Andhra Pradesh—an

attachment Telugu scholar David Shulman has characterized in his own work on Andhra

Pradesh.

Andhra is very much a part of South India, its language a sister to Tamil,
Kannada, and Malayalam, its customs, kinship system, caste structure,
culinary ethos, and traditional institutions all recognizably part of the
South Indian cultural complex. At the same time, there is a distinctiveness
about Andhra history and a highly specific flavor to Telugu, in all its
expressive modes…one stable feature evident throughout the last thousand
years of Andhra history is the astonishing organization of an entire
civilization around poetry and the highly charged poetic word as the
primary vehicle for shared meaning and praxis. (Shulman 2009, xii)

6
I approach representation of and by Kuchipudi as an example of what Shulman characterizes as

an expressive mode and as an essential aspect of the Telugu language movement, which

ultimately culminated in the division of India along linguistic lines under the States

Reorganization Act of 1956 (see Map 1.1 below).

Map 1.1 – India after the States Reorganization Act, November 1, 19568

In focusing on Andhra Pradesh and Telugu representational strategies, I also place the

dissertation within a shift towards “theorizing the local” in studies of the South Asian performing

arts (Wolf 2009). I define “local” in the dissertation, not as the physical space of Andhra Pradesh

8
Mitchell 2009, 9.

7
 or the village of Kuchipudi, but as a metaphysical site of Teluguness—the spaces and media

where Kuchipudi appears and therefore, where the Telugu identity is imaged and circulated.

Taken together, these ideological positions on language and identity allow me to examine

Kuchipudi dance and the construction of its history as a reflection of cultural identities and

representational strategies in South India.

In the dissertation, I approach the semantics of the term “Kuchipudi” as well as

“classical” in each of these spaces as processes of self-identification among Telugus that speak to

hierarchies of caste and gender. In doing so, I examine issues of reception and taste, particularly in

terms of how audience members recognize and identify with a Kuchipudi performance, as an

indication of his or her subjectivity in a system of social stratification. Here, I am indebted to

Kristen Rudisill’s recent work on modern Tamil theater (2007), which traces the sociological

construction of “the classical” in Madras (now Chennai) to taste hierarchies that are constructed

along caste lines. By demonstrating how “Brahmin taste,” is cultivated in Chennai sabhas

(performance houses), Rudisill’s work trenchantly examines the construction of “high-brow” and

“low-brow” entertainment in South India. Her study posits that “cultural organizations such as

sabhas are key players along with the press and academics in creating a notion of ‘good’ taste in

Chennai, and all three are dominated by the Brahmin community, which thus both constructs and

embodies the idea of good taste dominant in the city” (Rudisill 2007, 54). Just as important,

Rudisill’s research suggests that while these cultivated aesthetics reflect Brahmin practices of self-

identification—how a Brahmin audience member sees himself or herself and wants to be seen—

these tastes are reified and even valorized by non-Brahmin viewership as a sign of complicit

participation in a caste-segregated society.

8
 For my purposes, Rudisill’s study establishes Brahmin sabha audiences in Chennai as the

arbiters of “good” or “classical” dance. This understanding of the Chennai sabha frames my

discussion of Kuchipudi’s movement from village to city as well as the aesthetic and discursive

processes of classicization that began as early as the 1930s, but came to fruition in the 1970s and

1980s as Kuchipudi became a circulating, global icon of Telugu culture. Moreover, Rudisill’s

work on taste, particularly her discussion of theatrical performances that cater to specifically

Tamil notions of comedy and humor, point to poignantly personal and socially coded modes of

self-presentation within South Indian linguistic identification, a phenomenon described by

anthropologist Michel Herzfeld (1997) as an example of “cultural intimacy.”

I rely on Herzfeld’s concept of cultural intimacy as a way to understand the construction

of “good” and “classical” Kuchipudi. In the dissertation I examine how the Kuchipudi dance

tradition I was taught; classical Kuchipudi, though constructed in many ways by the taste habits of

a Tamilian sabha audience in Chennai, is now reified by Telugus in India and across the world as a

sign of Telugu difference from Tamil. The Telugu identity that Kuchipudi represents speaks to

what Herzfeld identifies as the “formal or coded tension between official self-presentation and

what goes on in the privacy of collective introspection. While the official aspect is a legitimate

(and indeed necessary) object of ethnographic analysis, the intimacy it masks is the subject of a

deep sense of cultural and political vulnerability” (ibid., 14).

Captured in scenes like the one below, films like Swarnakamalam offer the standard

narrative of Kuchipudi’s cultural intimacy, as Telugu identity: A Brahmin male dance tradition

originating in an idyllic rural settlement along the banks of the Krishna river, surviving into

modernity through the daughters of Telugu Brahmin families. Indeed, it is this version of

9
Kuchipudi, iconicized in films like Swarnakamalam that now functions as a symbol of Telugu

cultural identity.

Figure 1.3 – Kuchipudi dance training scene from Swarnakamalam (1988).

Banupriya (left) as Meenakshi dances to her father’s (seated, right) direction.
Directed by K. Viswanath
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

But the standard narrative captured in this scene masks a complex set of associations

between female dancers, Brahmin men, dance and religion in Andhra. While her father conducts

the practice session, seated next to a bronze statue of Nataraja as well as a bust of Venkateswara (a

deity worshipped in South India primarily among Telugu and Tamil speakers), Meenakshi dances

in praise of Venkateswara and her sister accompanies her on vocals. Throughout the film,

Meenakshi’s sister, a Karnatic singer, is characterized as the “good” daughter, devout, compliant
10
and utterly committed to her art. In contrast, Meenakshi is a headstrong, cheeky young woman, the

same characteristics that her father identifies in the film as necessary for a passionate dancer.

Meenakshi’s internal struggle in Swarnakamalam is expressed as a desire for autonomy,

both as a woman and as an artist. Throughout the film, Meenakshi’s dance never belongs to her;

that is to say, she does not dance outside of her father or Chandashekar’s gaze. In the scenes in the

studio, her dance is steeped in religious expression, as an extension of her father’s devotional

practices. In scenes where she dances outside of her father’s studio, she is cast as an ideal image of

Telugu womanhood, dancing for and through Chandrashekar’s eyes.

In the dissertation I examine the iconicization and idealization of the female Kuchipudi

dancer captured in films like Swarnakamalam as an index for a variety of discourses on gender

and caste in Hindu South India. I argue that for Kuchipudi practitioners to achieve their desired

recognition as classical dancers, Kuchipudi had to become a feminized style. This is because in

South India, “classical” dance, symbolizing “the new Indian woman whom the new Indian middle-

class male desired, modeled on British standards of ideal womanly conduct, was the good

housewife” as well as a chaste, yet sensual Hindu woman (Seizer 2005, 75). Therefore, in the

pages that follow, I trace the construction of Kuchipudi’s classicism as it became a female dance

style associated with a Telugu bourgeois (i.e. Hindu) identity.

In inscribing classical Kuchipudi dance onto the female body, however, hereditary gurus

contradicted a primary tenet of the tradition’s legacy: Brahmin male-only involvement. I approach

the historicization of a male Brahmin tradition on a female body as both an example of the oft-

cited description of “the struggle to represent ideal female behavior [which] accompanied the

struggle of an emergent middle class,” and of the ways in which this newly constructed

womanhood functions as a nostalgic representation of a historical Telugu woman (Armstrong

11
Tennenhouse 1987, 20). I argue that the standard image of the female Kuchipudi dancer, always

clad in red with her long hair in a braid (see figures 1.1 above and 1.4, 1.5 below), mirrors the

image of the ideal Telugu woman and that this double entendre is essential to the role Kuchipudi

dance plays in the Telugu cultural narrative.

Figure 1.4 – Artistic rendering of Telugu Talli (Mother Telugu) by Bapu

Reproduced with artist’s permission

Over the course of the dissertation, I scrutinize the mythopoeic narratives about

Kuchipudi village and its Brahmin men, which now function as metonyms for Telugu cultural

history. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the origins of current Kuchipudi repertoire, which

can be traced to female courtesan practices in South India rather than to the male Brahmin

12
practices from Kuchipudi village.9 In light of this information, I suggest that we view the

construction of cultural history in South India as a nostalgic mirror, in the Lacanian sense, for both

reflection and refraction (Lacan 2006). I argue that the received histories about Kuchipudi are

accepted unquestioningly because they reflect what Telugus want to see, and refract only what

they want to see, of themselves and their cultural heritage.

Figure 1.5 – Kuchipudi dancer, Deepika Reddy, enacting a nayika (heroine) looking in
the mirror
Photo courtesy of Avinash Pasricha

In examining the processes by which Kuchipudi became a female dance style, I place my

study alongside recent research that draws our attention to the male-gaze that drives the

9
Throughout the dissertation, I use the general term “courtesan” instead of “devadāsī” (temple
dancer or servant of god) when speaking of hereditary female dancers as way to foreground the
artistic and social identity of these women outside of the religious and patriarchal structure of the
temple in South India. See Soneji 2011. The language of courtesanship also provides a useful
bridge between South and North Indian studies on female dance. See Babiracki 2000;
Maciszewski 2006; Post 1989; Qureshi 2001.
13
construction of female icons and iconography in South Asian visual art (e.g., Pinney 2005;

Ramaswamy 2010; McLaine 2009) theater (e.g., Seizer 2005; Hansen 1998; 1999) and film (e.g.,

Dwyer 2002; Lutgendorf 2011; Pandian 1996). I interpret the icon of the female Kuchipudi

dancer vis-à-vis the multitude of visual mediums through which she circulates, with an emphasis

on how her imaging through and by the mid-century Telugu film industry facilitated the

acceptability of female dance, particularly in the wake of reforms that banned traditional female

dance in spaces like temples in mid-century South India (see Srinivasan 1984, 1985). I argue that

these films recuperated a social space for women to dance, divorced from the legacy of

hereditary female dance in Andhra, while simultaneously constructing an ideal Telugu woman as

an accomplished singer and dancer.

By approaching the female Kuchipudi dancer as an icon of Telugu cultural intimacy, my

work contributes to an expanding body of scholarship that seeks to deconstruct collective

memory as well as nostalgia against alternative and otherwise silenced histories (e.g., Bissell

2005; Boym 2002; Connerton 1989; Hancock 2008; Stokes 2010; Soneji 2010; Trouillot 1995;

Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). I argue that though the transition from male to female bodies

occurred in response to mid-century Chennai taste habits, the female Kuchipudi dancer has

become an enduring symbol of Telugu culture because she represents what Philip Lutgendorf has

characterized in his study of Hindi films as an “utopian modernity” (Lutgendorf 2011). This

utopian modernity idealizes the female dancing body as a conduit for an ancient male Brahmin

spiritual practice. In other words, the cultural nostalgia at work in Kuchipudi is that of an ancient

Hindu past made manifestly present in the image of a woman.

As I discuss women and women’s bodies in Kuchipudi history, my work bears the

imprint of South Asian feminist scholarship that recognizes that, particularly in South India, we
14
cannot discuss gender without discussing caste (e.g., Seizer 2005; Sunder Rajan 2001; Sinha

1995; Chakravarti 2003; Rao 2005; Sarkar 2010). In the dissertation, I argue that the female

Kuchipudi dancing body functions as a curated version of the past, framed by a fundamentally

patriarchal perspective. This patriarchy is not simply a product of social stratification among men

and women, but that of high-caste men and lower or mixed-caste women. Indeed, a major

component of the critical history I write in the following pages is concerned with recovering

historical figures that have been left out in this nostalgic portrayal of Telugu cultural history—

most notably, the hereditary female dancers whose repertoire is now part of the Kuchipudi

tradition, but whose contribution is never acknowledged.

In this regard, my work bears the indelible mark of Nataraja Ramakrishna’s (1923-

2011) advocacy for and critical histories on the female dance and music traditions of Andhra

Pradesh (Ramakrishna 1987a, 1987b, 2000). Over the course of his prolific career, Ramakrishna

lobbied for the recognition of Telugu courtesan contributions in state-sponsored forms of cultural

representation in Andhra Pradesh. I share his optimism as well as his conviction, that there is

room for a broader, richer understanding of a shared history in Andhra, which informs the

cultural representation of Telugus across the globe. As a dancer and as a Telugu woman, the

research I present in these pages has shaped my own relationship with my art profoundly. It is

my sincere hope that in light of this reconsideration of Kuchipudi history, the men and women

whose artistic lives have contributed to the dance tradition I now carry within me can begin to be

acknowledged within both the history and practice of Kuchipudi dance.

15
 CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Like most Indian classical dance styles, Kuchipudi’s revival narrative begins with a

subaltern moment. This moment occurred in 1958, at the first All-India Dance Seminar in New

Delhi. Hosted by the Ministry of Culture under the newly formed Sangeet Natak Akademi10

(SNA), this seminar was the last of four similar meetings held by the SNA in the heady 1950s era

of nation-building. Prior to the Dance Seminar, the SNA had hosted the All-India Film Seminar in

1955, the All-India Drama Seminar in 1956 and the All-India Music Seminar in 1957. These

Seminars were intended, in the words of P. V. Rajamannar, Chairman of the SNA in 1958, “to

present the diversity of systems and traditions pertaining to different regions of this great country

at one place and at one time” (Seminar Bulletin 1958, 2). In standard historical accounts of

Kuchipudi that are circulated in tourism brochures, narrated in Kuchipudi dance studios, and

memorialized in glossy coffee-table pictorials like Abhinav Publication’s Kuchipudi, the events at

the 1958 Seminar marked a turning point in Kuchipudi dance history. These accounts all testify to

the fact that, at this event, Kuchipudi was not considered a classical dance form, and that it was

not until a subsequent Seminar in 1959 that this oversight was rectified.

In Chapter 2, I return to the transcripts and recordings from both Seminars in order to

understand where this version of Kuchipudi history came from and what it tells us about the

classicism project in India. I examine the semantics of classicism at play at the Seminar,

specifically the issues surrounding the naming or renaming of indigenous dance traditions as

Bharatanatyam, Odissi, or Kuchipudi. I pay particular attention to the pedagogical and

10
“Academy” is generally transliterated into Indian languages using the “k” consonant since the
“c” in Indian languages is a soft “c” like in “chase.”
16
institutionalized constructions of modernity on display in 1958 as classical dance across India

became increasingly synonymous with the female dancing body.

Chapter 3 deconstructs popular and accepted histories on Kuchipudi dance as a practice

that stems from a place called Kuchipudi. This chapter examines the fact and fiction surrounding

the village and its dancers, whose biographies function as a history of the dance form. I focus on

the genealogy of Kuchipudi repertoire, specifically, the piece Bhamakalapam and the character

of Satyabhama, which together, function as symbols of Kuchipudi and Telugu culture. I draw

connections between Kuchipudi and the production of culture and place-making that is currently

underway in the village under tourism initiatives. In the second half of the chapter, I

contextualize the gurus who introduced female dance and dancers into Kuchipudi practice within

the broader trends of Indian dance in the early twentieth century. I focus on the contribution of

Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry (c. 1886 -1956), who is described in Kuchipudi lore as the

guru who revolutionized Kuchipudi practice by shaping it into a solo form. By examining his

repertoire alongside information about his life and influences found in memoirs and periodical

sources, I argue that Sastry’s body of work speaks to the interaction between and movement of

dancers from all over India. More important, my research reveals that current Kuchipudi

repertoire, though credited to Sastry’s innovations can actually be traced to hereditary female

dancers in Andhra who, for a variety of complicated social and political reasons, remain

unacknowledged and anonymous.

Chapter 4 turns to an unexplored domain of Kuchipudi dance: Telugu films. In this

chapter, I connect the development of Kuchipudi into a regional and recognized dance tradition

in the early twentieth century to the influence of North Indian Parsi drama companies. I argue

that the men of Kuchipudi village emulated Parsi drama companies as they shaped their tradition
17
into a theatrical form. Furthermore, just as Parsi theatrical genres and practices formed the

foundation for early Hindi films, I demonstrate how the newly theatrical style of Kuchipudi was

then adopted into films in the early years of Telugu cinema, beginning in the 1930s.

In this chapter, I follow the choreography of three Kuchipudi gurus who left the village

and relocated to Madras to work in films: Vedantam Raghavayya, Vempati Pedda Satyam, and

Vempati Chinna Satyam. Focusing on the dance sequences choreographed by these three gurus, I

examine the use of both the term “Kuchipudi” and the depiction of Kuchipudi dance/dancers

over the course of thirty years, 1939–1969. During this period, Kuchipudi gurus drew explicit

connections between female dance, almost always framed as courtesan dance, and the

Bharatanatyam movement vocabulary, which was by this point in time, firmly associated with

Tamil culture. I argue that these gurus fostered what is now the commonly accepted narrative of

Kuchipudi history as a rural, religious, male theatrical form in their films while simultaneously

distancing Kuchipudi from female dance.

In the latter half of the chapter, I argue that it was through mid-century films that the

female Kuchipudi dancer was imaged and iconicized as representative of Telugu culture. By the

time Telugu film production shifted to Hyderabad in the mid-1960s, Kuchipudi movements

began appearing on the female dancing body. The 1963 film Nartanasala, for example, which

depicts a female dancer in a carefully framed pedagogical setting, dancing with her guru, was

among the first to draw upon the Kuchipudi movement vocabulary for a female dancer. In doing

so, choreographers framed the female dancer as an extension of her male Brahmin guru.

Chapter 5 examines the movement to create an independent Telugu state against the

development of Kuchipudi dance and Kuchipudi history. After an overview of linguistic

regionalism in post-Independence India, I pay particular attention to the cultural and political
18
conflict between two language groups in South India: Telugu and Tamil. I examine how Telugu

identity became politicized in contradistinction to the Tamil identity. In doing so, I implicate

Kuchipudi’s iconicization and classicization in the processes of linguistic identity formation in

South India.

I situate my discussion in the context of the Chennai dance scene, specifically the sabha,

and argue that it is in Chennai that the aesthetics of classical dance are negotiated and

established. Over the course of the chapter, I examine the ways in which Kuchipudi movements

have been adapted by gurus at the Kuchipudi Arts Academy (KAA) in Chennai in order to

appear classical in many of the same ways as Bharatanatyam. By deconstructing the

modifications that have been made to the Kuchipudi movement vocabulary in Chennai, I argue

that institutionalized Bharatanatyam functions as the aesthetic other against which Kuchipudi

defines itself. I compare the construction of classicism in Chennai to that in New Delhi as I argue

that it is the affect of group coordination, rather than solo communication that is valued as

classical dance in India.

Having trained under different gurus who position themselves relative to the Chennai

version of Kuchipudi, in the second half of the chapter I also examine the gendered constructions

of classicism. I provide an in-depth, kinesthetic analysis of different Kuchipudi movement

vocabularies in order to pinpoint the modifications between the village and Chennai styles. I

argue that classical Kuchipudi, that is, Chennai-based Kuchipudi, utilizes a feminized movement

vocabulary in comparison with the masculine versions practiced in Kuchipudi village.

In my final chapter, I discuss the semantics of Kuchipudi’s classicism vis-à-vis the

construction of female dance in Andhra Pradesh. I argue that Kuchipudi actually functions as an

umbrella term since modern practice combines the historical construction of Kuchipudi as a male
19
Brahmin tradition with female courtesan repertoire. Over the course of the chapter I examine

how the naming of “Kuchipudi” dissociated female dance from hereditary female dancers who

are rarely acknowledged in Telugu cultural histories. I argue that the amalgamation of Kuchipudi

village history with courtesan dance practices speaks to a larger sociology of taste in Andhra

Pradesh, which romanticizes courtesan culture, but prefers to see courtesan repertoire called

Kuchipudi and performed by women who are trained in institutionalized settings, such as the

KAA. In doing so, I uncover discourses of caste, class, and gender that lie beneath the surface of

Kuchipudi’s representation of Telugu culture.

In the second half of the chapter, I test this theory through a detailed ethnographic study

of the annual heritage tourism festival, Siddhendra Yogi Mahotsav, held in March in Kuchipudi

village since 2006. While attending this festival in 2009 I encountered a hierarchy between

various Telugu dance traditions that placed Chennai-based KAA Kuchipudi above the dance

traditions taught in the village at the local dance schools. At the festival, these two versions of

Kuchipudi were differentiated on account of the KAA dancers use of solo, feminine dance

technique in contrast to the village male, theatrical mode of presentation. A primary contrast

between these two versions of Kuchipudi is the use of comedy and irony in the theatrical

presentations. The audience members’ identification with the ironic commentaries on and

caricatured representations of different social groups revealed to me the ways in which

Kuchipudi both mirrors and upholds caste and gender hierarchies in Andhra Pradesh.

20
CONTRIBUTION OF THE DISSERTATION

At its core, in the dissertation I approach Kuchipudi—the history, the dance, the dancer—

as a practice of Telugu self-representation that indexes the nature of cultural production and

nostalgia in Andhra Pradesh, across India and into the diaspora. The research I present is based

on many years of involvement with Kuchipudi dance in India, the United States and the United

Kingdom as well as nine months of fieldwork in New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada,

and Kuchipudi from September 2008 to May 2009. In the pages that follow, I analyze materials

that are often cited as proof of Kuchipudi’s historicity, but have rarely been examined in any

sustained, critical fashion. This includes archival material collected in New Delhi at the SNA,

personal papers, journalistic accounts and memoirs of early twentieth century Kuchipudi gurus

as well as films in which Kuchipudi dance has been featured.

The portrayals of Kuchipudi, both by name and by movement vocabulary that I draw

upon in my study, occur across a wide variety of spaces and media such as concert halls,

archives, visual art, commercial Telugu films, dance studios, and institutions, as well as diasporic

Telugu conferences11 and Andhra Pradesh tourism festivals. The identities that represent and are

represented by Kuchipudi spread across a number of subjectivities in this dissertation: spanning a

discursive field that stretches from film choreographer to actress, performer to audience member,

festival organizer to journalist.

11
Telugu heritage events organized by diaspora groups such as SiliconAndhra, Telugu
Association of North America, American Telugu Association, United Kingdom Telugu
Association, European Telugu Association and many more at the city/local level like the Telugu
Association of Metro Atlanta and the Telugu Association of London. These events feature dance
and music performances, as well as Telugu literature to “preserve” Telugu art and identity and
“promote” an understanding among immigrant children and non-Telugus.
21
 In rethinking the history of Kuchipudi across a variety of media as well as disciplines, I

attempt to balance the particulars of a dance practice with the generics of its history and cultural

symbolism. To accomplish this, through the course of the dissertation I oscillate between insider

and outsider subject positions: ethnographer, historian, Kuchipudi dancer, and Telugu woman.

Taken together, these perspectives allow me to place pressure on the fissures in Kuchipudi

history; fault-lines in the historical narrative that reveal the ongoing negotiations between dance

and dancer, cultural expression and identity. By bringing a number of varied perspectives

together, I not only aim to provide a rich and layered study of Kuchipudi, but also to

acknowledge the presence of my own ethnographic voice and personal experience.

In the dissertation I seek to understand how and why Kuchipudi has come to mean what it

does to Telugus both in India and abroad. By examining how certain narratives have, over time,

stood in for history, I uncover layers of meaning and meaning-making that happen in Andhra and

across the Telugu diaspora. I recognize that as a Telugu woman and as a Kuchipudi dancer, my

attempts to recover the historical women of Kuchipudi, that is, the hereditary artists whose

repertoire survives as Kuchipudi, lead me into dangerous territory. I mean no disrespect to the

dance and dancers whose histories I examine, at times critically, in these pages.

In its constructivist approach, the dissertation contributes to dance as well as cultural

studies by drawing our attention to the curated and imaged histories that both sustain and enable

identity politics. Throughout the dissertation, I analyze the representation, discourse and practice

of Kuchipudi over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century and focus on the ways in

which this dance practice has come to denote as well as cultivate Telugu identity within the

larger context of a globalizing Indian modernity. This focus extends previous studies of Indian

classical dance by sustaining questions about the reification of the dancing body, the implications
22
that this has regarding the fate of hereditary courtesan dancers, and the discursive strategies that

allow Brahmin male history and female dance practice to coalesce, from India to the diaspora

and back again.

23
 CHAPTER TWO

KUCHIPUDI AND THE CLASSICISM CONTROVERSY

I am glad to learn that the Andhra Pradesh Sangeeta Nataka Akademi has
decided to hold a seminar on Kuchipudi Dance on the 28th of February and
1st March, 1959 and that eminent scholars in the field would read papers at
the Seminar and that there would be demonstrations. I do not however
understand the purpose, namely, “to establish that this style of dance is
classical.” The word ‘classical’ is used in contra distinction to popular folk
dance. There has never been a doubt that it is classical. I find recently
much unnecessary controversy has been raised about this and the Central
Sangeet Natak Akademi has come in for unnecessary criticism.
—Excerpt from a letter sent by the
Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi (Delhi),
P.V. Rajamannar,
to the Andhra Pradesh Sangeeta Nataka Akademi,
January 1, 1959

“Names set up a field of power.”

—Michel-Rolph Trouillot1

WHAT WAS SAID, WHAT IS REMEMBERED

On March 31, 1958 a young woman named Maranganti Kanchanamala was scheduled to

perform a Kuchipudi dance recital during the evening program at the first All-India Dance

Seminar in New Delhi. Upon arriving at the Seminar, however, she was informed by the

organizers that her evening slot had been cancelled and instead, she and her co-delegate from

1
Trouillot 1995, 115.

24
Andhra Pradesh, Kuchipudi scholar, Vissa Appa Rao (1884-1966), were requested to present a

lecture-demonstration as part of the scholarly daytime program.

This seemingly minor adjustment in scheduling initiated a series of events whose effects

are still being felt today. According to popular accounts among Telugus both inside and outside

of Andhra Pradesh, Kanchanamala and Appa Rao felt insulted and condescended to by the

organizers at the 1958 Seminar by organizers/fellow participants from Tamil Nadu, Rukmini

Devi Arundale (1904–1986) and V. Raghavan (1908–1979), first by being demoted to the

daytime program and then by being treated with disrespect during their presentation. Over the

years, the Kuchipudi delegation’s experiences have been paraphrased, glossed and thus

memorialized: The Kuchipudi dance style was dismissed as unclassical or folk at the Seminar by

Raghavan and Arundale in New Delhi. By extension, Telugus and Telugu culture were also

insulted at the Seminar.

Over the course of my fieldwork, the insult dealt to the Kuchipudi delegation and thus to

the Telugu cultural identity at the 1958 Seminar was a constant topic of conversation. To my

informants, particularly high-caste Telugus living in Chennai and Vijayawada who came of age

in the post-independence era, it was impossible to relate a history of Kuchipudi without

recounting what happened in New Delhi in 1958. In their personal histories of classical dance

and Telugu identity (see Chapter 5 for further discussion), these informants recounted what has

now become the standard historical narrative on dance in Andhra Pradesh—that Telugu dance,

that is, Kuchipudi, was not considered “on par with other dance forms” at the 1958 New Delhi

Seminar (Kothari 2001, 40).

The Seminar thus emerged for me as a kind of ethnographic flashpoint in Kuchipudi

history and the historiography of classicism. Leaving aside for now the larger debates of political
25
and cultural hegemony that were at play in 1958 (see Chapter 5), it certainly would not be an

overstatement to say that modern Kuchipudi history was born in reaction to Kanchanamala and

Appa Rao’s experiences at the Seminar, both in terms of how the Kuchpudi performance was

rescheduled and the commentary that followed the lecture-demonstration—a discourse I examine

in detail below.

As a Kuchipudi dancer myself, I have encountered both written and oral histories that

highlight the presentation at the New Delhi Seminar as the moment when two important things

that now define modern Telugu history happened in tandem: Telugu culture, personified as

Telugu Talli, was marginalized and Kuchipudi became a means to defend her honor. According

to the same history, the blow dealt to the collective Telugu ego was delivered by “the

establishment” or the Tamil Brahmin elites at the Seminar. These men and women, in particular,

chairpersons Rukmini Devi Arundale and V. Raghavan, were responsible for casting aspersions

against Kuchipudi’s classicism. Furthermore, according to the same popular narratives in Andhra

Pradesh, it was not until a subsequent Seminar in 1959, held in Hyderabad and hosted by the

newly instituted Andhra Pradesh Sangeeta Nataka Akademi (to which I refer in the opening

quote) that “Kuchipudi received its due recognition as a major2 classical dance form” (ibid).

The apparent insult in 1958 has fueled decades of debate among practitioners of

Kuchipudi dance, and more broadly, across the shifting aesthetic landscape of Indian dance. The

questions I address in this chapter are: What exactly happened in 1958 and what, if anything,

changed at the Seminar in 1959? After comparing written reports to the audio recordings, it

would appear that the controversy in 1958 stemmed from the discussion after Kanchnamala’s

2
The term “major” in SNA policy is regularly interpreted as “classical” both in terms of
recognition and financial support provided to artists. See Chapter 6 for further discussion.
26
presentation and Appa Rao’s paper. Despite the vehement and often indignant claims I heard

from my informants that Kuchipudi was called “unclassical” by Rukmini Arundale, her actual

comments at the Seminar, which I unearthed from the Sangeet Natak Akademi archives during

my fieldwork, read rather differently.

But would you not say that Kuchipudi is really the same as Bharatanatyam
only it is in the drama form instead of solo. So Bhagavata Mela and
Kuchipudi come under the category of Bharatanatyam.3

According to the audio record, Arundale attempted to categorize Kuchipudi as a sub-style of

Bharatanatyam. She did not, however, say anything about its classicism. So where did this

version of history come from?

TWO SEMINARS, ONE CLASSICISM

This chapter examines why Arundale’s statements have gone down in history as a slight

against Kuchipudi’s classicism. I place these comments in context to understand the atmosphere

at the 1958 Seminar. Furthermore, I explore how these issues were addressed or otherwise

“resolved” in the 1959 Seminar in Hyderabad. In the discussion below, I analyze the perceived

rejection, in 1958, and subsequent acceptance, in 1959, of Kuchipudi’s classicism. In doing so, I

ask what it meant for Kuchipudi to have received classical recognition at the 1959 Seminar and

what this reveals about the semantics of classicism in Indian dance. I study the ideological

underpinnings to each Seminar in order to understand better how either possessed the authority

to canonize one dance form or another. As the moments that have come to define Kuchipudi
3
Maranganti Kanchanamala, Vissa Appa Rao, Rukmini Arundale and V. Raghavan, “Kuchipudi
Demonstration and Discussion on Kuchipudi” March 31, 1958, ACD 470-II, Audio-visual
archives, Sangeet Natak Akademi. See Appendix 1 for a transcript of Appa Rao’s lecture.
27
history, a close study of these two seminars provides a critical lens for viewing the history and

the discourse on classicism that has been written since.

Besides the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), which supported music and drama, the

Indian government formed two other academies, the Sahitya Akademi (Literature) and the Lalit

Kala Akademi (Fine Arts including Visual Arts) to “promote the cultural unity of the country”

(Bulletin 1958, 1-2). Hosted by the newly formed SNA, the first All-India Dance Seminar was

the last of four seminars arranged by the Ministry of Culture under its new tripartite “Akademi”

scheme. The four Seminars hosted by the SNA were organized to bring together the

knowledgeable and the elite in each field as an attempt at “stock-taking” (Seminar Bulletin 1958,

2).

To be fair, the Seminar organizers were well aware of the impossibility of avoiding

controversy considering the kind of unprecedented national history they were attempting to

write. The Dance Seminar Chairman, Dr. P. V. Rajamannar acknowledged the gargantuan nature

of the task in the opening moments of his inaugural address.

As you can imagine, the Sangeet Natak Akademi was, therefore, faced
with a stupendous task, having regard to the vastness of the country and
the bewildering cultural wealth, which we have inherited. It will not be
inapt if I compare the Akademi to a young man, who suddenly inherits
untold wealth of many kinds, lands, houses, gold, jewelry, precious stones,
etc. Even to take stock of the different items of wealth, to analyse and sort
them would require time, patience, laborious work and expert advice and
guidance. (ibid.)

Rajamannar was also well aware of the fallout that could (and would) ensue from an event that

claimed to present a comprehensive overview of Indian dance.

I have been noticing with considerable regret an attitude of intolerance on

the part of devotees of one school or system of dance towards the other
schools or systems. This is accompanied by expression of contempt and
derision. I think that this attitude has its origins in the false belief that the
28
 system or school in which one has been trained is the only correct system
or proper school and that all the others are wrong and improper. Some of
you are familiar with the differences, I can almost say hostilities, among
the different gharanas in Hindustani music in North India. My earnest
appeal to all true lovers of Indian culture is to develop a sense of regard
and respect for any authentic tradition, irrespective of personal, linguistic
or regional attachments. In matters of religions, India has had a reputation
for its tolerance and no true Indian, professing one faith, will ever hate or
deride other faiths. I only pray that a similar spirit should pervade in the
field of Art of Music and of Dance. (Seminar Bulletin 1958, 3)

Rajamannar’s comments offer some valuable insight into the environment both at the

Seminar and more generally across the landscape of the dance scene. We can safely deduce from

his remarks that there was already a history of malcontent among practitioners of different styles

of dance, and by the time this Seminar was organized, there already existed a sense among some

dancers that their tradition was not receiving its due credit. An excerpt from the Sangeet Natak

Akademi’s 1958 Bulletin on the Seminar offers the following entry about the Kuchipudi

presentation, which speaks to this point.

In the afternoon, Shri4 V. Appa Rao read a long and interesting paper on
“Kuchipudi School of Dance,” tracing the origin and history of this special
form of Bharatanatyam as practiced in Andhra Desa. He pointed out the
similarities between this particular type of dancing and that of the Melattur
type as practiced in the Tamil district of Tanjore. He felt that for some
unaccountable reason, this art was being ignored and not encouraged in
South India and was not even considered a classical type of art. Smt.5
Rukmini Devi corrected him by saying that Kuchipudi dance had always
been considered as a classical dance art and another form of
Bharatanatyam. Kumari6 Kanchanamala later gave a short demonstration
of Kuchipudi style of dancing. (ibid., 29)

Here, again, the written record paraphrases what was said in ways that reiterate that Rukmini

Arundale’s did not speak against Kuchipudi’s classicism. If anything, it was Appa Rao who

4
Equivalent to Mr.
5
Equivalent to Mrs.
6
Equivalent to Ms.
29
raised the issue in the first place. In fact, when I consulted the audio record from the Seminar

during my time at the SNA in New Delhi, I discovered that Appa Rao’s paper, particularly the

last section leading up the discussion that elicited a response from Arundale, placed a significant

emphasis on Kuchipudi’s classicism. It was Appa Rao, not Arundale, who belabored the issue of

Kuchipudi’s classicism, defining it in terms of the style’s inherent religiosity, its connection to

recognized Karnatic composers and compositions as well as its long, unbroken tradition.

Furthermore, it was Appa Rao who initially suggested that Kuchipudi, as a dance-drama

tradition, was related to the Bhagavata Mela Natakam in Melattur (Tamil Nadu) and that both of

these forms were

the best form(s) for demonstrating the essential principles of Natya Sastra.
Bharata Muni demonstrated Natya for the first time in the form of dance-
drama, in Indra Sabha. Dance-drama is a source of education as well as
recreation. It has a high cultural value, giving scope for the display of
various emotions that touch the heart. This original and ancient form of
Natya was widely practiced for a long time as the form of national art. It is
classical in style. In spite of all this, it is strange that it is considered only
as a tradition whereas, the secular solo-dances—Bharata Natya and
Kathak—are mentioned as important classical styles. I do not know why
dance-dramas played by the Brahmana Melas of Kuchipudi and Melattur
are not recognised as classical. I am glad that at least Kathakali, the dance-
drama of Kerala, is mentioned as a classical type. (Appa Rao 1958, 23)

Considering the history of Kuchipudi and its classicism that Appa Rao passionately

provides—male, dance-drama style in contradiction to the female solo traditions—I was initially

quite puzzled as to why the Kuchipudi demonstration was presented by Kanchanamala, a

woman. This contradiction is all the more striking since in his lecture, Appa Rao states that the

Kuchipudi style is defined by its Brahminical religiosity in contradistinction to secular female

dance traditions. In fact, in his concluding remarks, he makes a plea for institutional support on

this very basis:

30
 During the last one hundred years or more, the religious background of
Natya has been ignored by the potentates of the country, who patronized
Raja Nartakis (female court dance). As a consequence, the classical dance-
drama was neglected by the elite of the society also and nearly forgotten.
Scholarship and learning declined and the quality of the art deteriorated.
The economic condition of the few artists, that are still hanging on to this
art at Kuchipudi, is distressing. They have to be encouraged and helped to
improve their art. A liberal subsidy may be granted. Steps have to be taken
to spend the amount, according to plan, under the auspices of the Andhra
Pradesh Sangeeta Natak Akademi. . . .Talented young men and women
with the required qualifications have to be trained at Kuchipudi in the
dance-drama technique. Correct texts of the dance-dramas have to be
prepared by collating all the available copies. As suggested already, the
technique and art of the surviving old Brahmin veterans has to be
preserved by filming and tape-recording. . . .I fervently hope that
immediate and active steps will be initiated for the revival and
development of the dance-drama at Kuchipudi by the Sangeet Natak
Akademi. (ibid., 24)

Following this concluding section in Appa Rao’s paper, the discussion opened with a

commentary by V. Raghavan in regards to whether or not there were enough hereditary

performers or audiences to justify financial support for Kuchipudi:

It all depends upon the number of persons and the frequency with which it
is done. After all you can’t deny that both Kuchipudi and Bhagavata Mela
Natakam are very attenuated now. There are very few people and the
performances take place only one a year. And you can’t make much out of
the little that survives there.7

It was in response to these comments that Rukmini Arundale uttered her famous, if

somewhat misrepresented opinion on Kuchipudi, asking Raghavan8 whether or not he agreed

that Kuchipudi could be categorized as the drama form of Bharatanatyam. After listening to the

audio record, I believe Arundale was actually making a case for supporting Kuchipudi

7
Maranganti Kanchanamala, Vissa Appa Rao, Rukmini Arundale and V. Raghavan, “Kuchipudi
Demonstration and Discussion on Kuchipudi” March 31, 1958, ACD 470-II, Audio-visual
archives, Sangeet Natak Akademi. See Appendix 1 for a transcript of Appa Rao’s lecture.
8
Raghavan held a firm opinion, which he would subsequently voice in print in 1969, on the
classification of Kuchipudi as a dance-drama tradition. See Raghavan 2004, 128-132.
31
financially by connecting the dance form to the Natya Sastra and including it in the dance

tradition called Bharatanatyam. It is this statement, however, by Arundale, that has been

interpreted and repeated in Kuchipudi history as a disavowal of Kuchipudi’s classicism.

The fundamental issue inherent in this interaction regarding the categorization of

Kuchipudi as part of Bharatanatyam revolved around the controversial issue of naming or

renaming local dance forms. For Arundale to suggest that Kuchipudi was a form of

Bharatanatyam might simply have been a reference to the Natya Sastra, the quintessential text on

Indian dance and dramaturgy, which is attributed to an ascetic, Sage Bharata and said to have

been written somewhere between 200 BC and 200 AD. The name “Bharatanatyam” itself is a

reference to Bharata’s Natya Sastra. The controversy over the name had already been simmering

for years between members of the dance community in Madras as the name Bharatanatyam

became a reference to a variety of courtesan traditions in South India (Allen 1997; O’Shea 2007;

Soneji 2010). The renaming of female courtesan traditions as Bharatanatyam led to heated

debates among practitioners of the style, not only because of the disenfranchisement of

hereditary dancers, but also in regards to what aspects would be incorporated into the

generalized, codified and institutionalized form. Chairman Rajamannar attempted to settle the

issue himself in his inaugural speech.

I also hope that certain misconceptions will be cleared up at this Seminar.

To give one example: A type of Dance, which had been perfected during
the time of the Tanjore Rajahs in South India and under their patronage
and which had come down to us, thanks to an unbroken hereditary
succession of great Masters of the Art, has in recent times become known
generally as Bharatanatyam. The name has come to stay and so no one
need attempt to change it. But it is desirable to make certain things clear.
In the first place, the term “Natya,” as used in the Natya Sasta, ascribed to
Bharata Muni, refers to drama and not to Dance, least of all to the solo
dance, which today goes by the name of Bharata Natya. The origin of
Natya, graphically described in the opening Chapter of the Natya Sastra,
32
 and its chief characteristics mentioned therein, leave no room for doubt
that Natya refers to Drama. I have said all this because, these and other
facts have convinced me that Bharatanatyam as it is now called is a
misnomer, chiefly for two reasons:

1. “Natyam” is not a very appropriate term for the solo dance which goes
by the name of Bharatanatyam, and
2. Even if Natyam can be used loosely for mere dance, one cannot say that
this is the only dance form , which is according to Bharata.
(Bulletin 1958, 5)

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME...

Taken together, Rajamannar and Arundale’s comments and the reaction of Telugus since

are symptomatic of the complex and often fraught negotiation of identifying, codifying, and

subsequently naming local traditions in a global age.9 The naming process was absolutely

essential to the classicism project and was thus both engineered by and representative of elitist

figures, like Arundale. Her inclusion of Kuchipudi as a part of Bharatanatyam suggests to me

that she wanted to create a general umbrella term, Bharatanatyam, which encompassed both

Tamil and Telugu (and perhaps even other South Indian) dance traditions. After all, at the 1958

Seminar, her institution presented solo dance, not dissimilar from what Kanchanamala

demonstrated as well as theatrical models, along the lines of Appa Rao’s description of the male,

Kuchipudi village legacy (see Meduri 2005).

As Arundale’s commentary reveals her own agenda for representing a variety of South

Indian dance traditions under the name Bharatanatyam, the naming of a Telugu dance style as

Kuchipudi speaks to related discourses in Andhra Pradesh along the lines of what Michel-Rolph

Trouillot has described as the power of “terminologies [to] demarcate a field, politically and
9
See Bruin 2000 for a discussion of naming controversies in Tamil theater genres.

33
epistemologically (Trouillot 1995, 115). Despite the underdog status that historians of Kuchipudi

often claim for the delegation from Andhra Pradesh in 1958, I see the decision to send a

respected, elderly Brahmin man and a young college-educated woman to represent Telugu dance

culture as a calculated, savvy move. Taken as a whole, Appa Rao and Kanchanamala’s

presentations were meant to establish a codified and standardized style of dance called

Kuchipudi from a place in Andhra Pradesh known as Kuchipudi. In fact, just as Arundale

suggested that the term Bharatanatyam could function as a collective name for both solo dance

and dance-drama in South India, Kanchanamala and Appa Rao’s contradictory presentations

sought to establish Kuchipudi as an equally all-encompassing representation of Telugu dance

culture.

The fact that Arundale’s opinion on the categorization of dance forms was interpreted

and recorded for posterity as equivalent to saying Kuchipudi was not classical points to the

various ways in which identity politics were imbricated in the classicism project. To be sure,

Arundale’s comments after Appa Rao’s paper are only half the story. The controversy, after all,

originally stemmed from the scheduling of the Kuchipudi performance by Kumari

Kanchanamala. The following section turns to this issue and provides a detailed analysis of the

Dance Seminar and its programs.

THE FIRST ALL-INDIA DANCE SEMINAR, NEW DELHI, 1958

The first All-India Dance Seminar was held from March 30 to April 7, 1958 at Vigyan

Bhavan in New Delhi. The affair was organized and attended by men and women who were

already considered among the cultural elite in India and who are today generally regarded as
34
primary figures in shaping modern Indian dance and representations of national culture. Over the

course of the nine-day conference, attendees listened to lectures by U. S. Krishna Rao (1912–

2005), Rukmini Devi Arundale, E. Krishna Iyer (1897–1968), and V. Raghavan, and observed

demonstrations by Balasaraswati (1918–1984) and Birju Maharaj (b. 1938).

This is not to say that younger (not as famous) dancers were not involved. In fact, the

Seminar was organized in such a way to include a variety of dance forms presented by the

leading gurus in any particular style and give young dancers a chance to participate, under the

guidance of their gurus. For example, papers given by Bharatanatyam experts/gurus such as

Rukmini Devi Arundale, Balasaraswati and K. P. Krishnamoorthy Pillai (1913–1999, better

known as Kittappa Pillai) included demonstrations by their respective young pupils, Kumaris

Sarada, Priyamvada10, and Padmalochani.

Title of Presentation Presenter

Dr. Justice P.V.
Inauguration
Rajamannar
Bharat Natyam Dr. V. Raghavan
Modern Trends in Bharat
Shri U.S. Krishna Rao
Natyam
Bharata Natya Shastra in
Practice (with Smt. Rukmini Arundale
demonstration)
Nayikas as a Theme for
Bharatanatyam Classical Kumari Roshan Vajifdar
Dance Style
Adavus in Bharatanatyam Shri V.B. Ramaiah Pillai
Shri K.P. Krishnamoorthy
Jathis in Bharatanatyam
Pillai

Table 2.1 – Papers and Demonstrations at 1958 Seminar 11

10
V. Raghavan’s daughter
11
Compiled from information collected at the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives, New Delhi.
35
 Shri Vissa Appa Rao
Kuchipudi School of Dance Demonstration by Kumari
Kanchanamala
Melaprapti Shri T.K. Swaminath Pillai
Demonstration on Some
Shri Ellappa
Aspects of Bharat Natyam
Shri M.S. Kallianpurkar
An Analytical Study of Kathak
Demonstration by Shri Shambu
Dance
Maharaj, Shri Lacchu Maharaj,
Shri Birju Maharaj and Kumari
Maya Rao
Kathak Dance and Classical
Dance Tradition of Northern Dr. D.G. Vyas
India
Bharat Nritya (Natwari) Shri A.C. Pandeya
Uparupakas Dr. V. Raghavan
Folk Dances of Uttar Pradesh Shri Projesh Banerji
Folk Dances of Rajasthan Shri Devilal Samar
Kathakali Guru Kunchu Kurup
Kathakali Guru Gopinath
Dances and Dance Dramas of
Dr. S.K. Nayar
Kerala Other Than Kathakali
Folk Dances of South India Shri E. Krishna Iyer
Ritual Dances of South India Shri Mohan Khokar
Literature and Other Sources
Shri K. Vasudev Shastri
of Indian Classical Dance
Guru Amubi Singh and Shri
Manipuri Dance
Atombapu Sharma
Manipuri Dancing Smt. Nayana Jhaveri
Dance Tradition in Assam Dr. Maheswar Neog
Dance Dramas of Tagore Smt. Tagore
Music in Dance-Dramas of
Shri Santidev Ghose
Tagore
Shaivism and Vaishavism in
Shri Mohan Khokar
Indian Dance
Bhagvata Mela Shri E. Krishna Iyer

Table 2.1, continued

36
 Yakshagaana
Dance Tradition in
Maharastra and Konkan
Dance Tradition in Bengal
Odissi Dance
Sculpture and Dancing
Modern Composition in
Traditional Form
Modern Ballet Production
Indian Ballet
Dances in Films
Dance Tradition in Bihar
Folk Dances of Gujurat and
Saurashtra
Ras and Other Folk Dance-
Dramas of Uttar Pradesh
Dances of Kashmir
Dance Tradition in Nepal
Folk Dances of Kumaon
and Garhwal
Dances of Ghandharva
Pradesh
Dance Art of South-East
Asia
Kandyan Dances
Shri K. Shivaram Karanth
Shri S.S. Paranjape
Shri Santidev Ghose
Shri Kali Charan Patnaik
Smt. Kapila Vatsyayan
Smt. Mrinalini Sarabhai
Shri Sachin Shankar
Smt. Gul Bardhan
Shri Vinod Chopra
Shri Hari Uppal
Smt. Sudha Desai
Shri Suresh Awasthi
Shri P.N.K. Bamzai
Chandra Kumar Upadyay
Shri Mohan Chandra
Upreti
n/a
Shri G. Venkatachalam
Guru Guneya

Table 2.1, continued

Judging by the schedule, the daytime program was designed to feature a paper

presentation about a particular style by a respected guru, which would be followed by a

demonstration by a student of that guru. While Bharatanatyam was somewhat over-represented

(eight presentations out of forty-six total) other dance styles were only featured no more than

twice, thereby casting the featured guru as an icon of that particular style. This certainly seems

the case with the Kathakali representatives: Guru Kunchu Kurup (1881–1970), who made a

career as a teacher at the famed Kerala Kalamandalam, and Guru Gopinath (1908–1987), who

37
made a name for himself touring with the prima donna of “modern” Indian dance, Ragini Devi.

The Kathak demonstration featured none other than the founders of Kathak’s primary gharānās:

Shambu, Lachhu, and Birju Maharaj.

These examples are noteworthy because they establish a pattern within the scheduling of

the Seminar. The three forms, which already possessed a certain cultural currency by 1958, were

Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Kathakali. Each of these dance traditions was well-represented in

terms of the popularity of the gurus invited as well as the amount of time given to each during

the daytime sessions. Only one other relatively unknown dance style from eastern India,

Manipuri, promoted by Bengali icon and Indian nationalist Rabrindanath Tagore, was also

featured twice during the daytime schedule (see Massey 2004, 186).

The evening programming underscores the relative importance given to the

Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Kathakali delegates at the Seminar. Out of the seven nights with

three slots per night, Bharatanatyam schools/gurus Rukmini Arundale (Kalakshetra Academy),

Balasaraswati, and K.P. Krishnamoorthy Pillai were scheduled for two nights while Kathak and

Kathakali for one each. The other three nights featured a variety of regional styles with Manipuri

scheduled for one thirty-minute performance.

Date Dance Style Artist/Troupe

Kathakali Kerala Kalamandalam
March 31, 1958 Kathakali Guru Kunchu Kurup & Party
9 p.m.
Kathakali Kerala Kalamandalam
April 1, 1958 Bharatanatyam Kumari Padmalochani (student of K.P.
9 p.m. “Nava Sandhi Nritya” Krishnamoorthy Pillai)

Table 2.2 – Schedule of Evening Performances

38
 Bharatanatyam
Kalakshetra Academy
“Kautrala Kuravanji”
April 2, 1958
Bharatanatyam Smt. Balasaraswati
9 p.m.
Sattra, Ojapali & Deodhani Shri Maniram Datta
April 3, 1958 Dances of Assam Muktiyar & Party
9 p.m. Indian National Theatre,
“Dekh Teri Bambai” (Ballet)
Bombay
Ghandarva Dancers
Ghandarva Nritya
from Kinnar Pradesh
April 4, 1958 Central College of
Manipuri Dance
9 p.m. Dance, Manipur
Little Ballet Troupe,
“Ramayana” (Ballet)
Bombay
“Geet Govind” (Dance-Drama based mainly on Bharat Darpana Academy,
Natyam style) Ahmedabad
April 5, 1958 National Music
“Geet Govind” (Dance-Drama in Odissi style)
9 p.m. Association, Cuttack
“Geet Govind (Dance-Drama based mainly on Bharatiya Vidya
Manipuri style) Bhavan, Bombay
March 31, Kathak Solo Smt. Menaka, Bombay
1958 Bharatiya Kala Kendra,
Malati-Madhav (Dance-Drama in Kathak style)
9 p.m. New Delhi

Table 2.2, continued

The only style that might offer a useful comparison to the scheduling of Kuchipudi is

Odissi. Like Kuchipudi, Odissi history also describes a delayed acceptance into the classical

canon.12 In other words, Odissi was also not considered a “major” independent tradition by the

SNA or its funding initiatives at the time of the Seminar in 1958. The Odissi style, like

Kuchipudi, was scheduled only once during the daytime sessions, on April 4, 1958, but was also

included in the programming that explored the themes of the Geet Govind in three different

12
See Pathy 2007, for example.
39
regional dance styles.13 Unlike Kuchipudi, Odissi was represented by a lecture only, not a

demonstration. The only demonstration of the style, then, happened during the evening

programming and was not meant to highlight a particular guru and his/her students, but instead,

portray the Geet Govind as a shared, Pan-Indian musical/religious tradition.

I make this point primarily to draw attention to the choices the program committee made

in the demonstrations/performances offered as well as the to the terminology used to describe

different genres at the Seminar. For one, Bharatanatyam was listed in the program to describe a

variety of styles, again underscoring the fluidity of the term. The gurus featured at the Seminar

have since come to define their respective traditions. Balasaraswati, Rukmini Arundale

(Kalakshetra Academy), and the Maharaj gharanas are, today, all synonymous with their

respective dance traditions. Considering the apparent philosophy in the programming, it would

not be a stretch to say that by 1958, Kanchanamala’s guru, Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry,

was also considered a well-known and respected guru in the Kuchipudi style. Her performance,

whether it took place during the nighttime or daytime program, represented Kuchipudi dance to

the attendees at the Seminar in 1958.

KANCHANAMALA’S DEMONSTRATION

According to the audio archives, Kanchanamala found out the day of her evening

performance that she was to present a demonstration instead. She offered a preemptive apology

because, in her words, “I’m not a scholar or authority in the Kuchipudi style . . . and I am
13
The Geet Govind is a musical-poetic work composed by the twelfth-century poet, Jayadeva,
who was born in Orissa. The work is known for its śṛṅgāra or sensual devotion and describes the
relationship between Krishna and the gōpikas (female cow herders).
40
thoroughly unprepared for this demonstration here.”14 After stating that she would “demonstrate

Kuchipudi, but not perform it,” Kanchanamala went on to explain what she had planned to

present, a piece known as “Vinayaka Tala,” during which the dancer moves across a canvas

suspended over colored powder. At the end of the dance, the canvas is lifted, and the dancer

presents a drawing of Vinayaka (Ganesh) that she created with her feet.15 Kanchanamala

explained that she would not be able to perform this piece now since the stage was not conducive

to laying out the powder and canvas. In the end, she presented two slokams (verses) from the

“Vinayaka Tala” which featured nṛṭṭa (virtuosic footwork) sections.

Figure 2.1 – Example of Tala Technique

Photo courtesy of Avinash Pasricha
14
Maranganti Kanchanamala, Vissa Appa Rao, Rukmini Arundale and V. Raghavan,
“Kuchipudi Demonstration and Discussion on Kuchipudi” March 31, 1958, ACD 470-II, Audio-
visual archives, Sangeet Natak Akademi. See Appendix 1 for a transcript of Appa Rao’s lecture.
15
Also known as Ganesha, the elephant-headed God.
41
 The second item in Kanchanamala’s demonstration was also a nritta piece known

generally in South Indian dance practices as a jathiswaram or, alternatively, a swarajathi.16 As

the audio record reveals, while the musicians were warming up, one of the committee members,

V. Raghavan, interrupted, and the following exchange ensued.

V. Raghavan: See, this is taking too much time. How much more is there
because there is one more demonstration to be done. This is the only other
item? Are there more items such as these? You see it is enough if you do
Kuchipudi items. It is not necessary for . . .

Kanchanamala: I am doing only Kuchipudi items.

V. Raghavan: These three verses, which you did, do not belong to

Kuchipudi.

Kanchanamala: They are doing this in Kuchipudi.

V. Raghavan: Oh, I don’t suppose the lifting of all these legs, the Nataraja
pose and all, that does not belong to Kuchipudi. This is all improvised by
her. The difficultly is all these people will mistake that this is taught by
Vedantam Lakshmi Narayana and others.

Kanchanamala: It is only he that taught. Nataraja is done in

Bharatanatyam or . . .

V. Raghavan: I have not seen this taught in Bharatanatyam. It is only now

that they are doing.

Kanchanamala: But Nataraja is done in dance, right?

V. Raghavan: Nataraja is worshipped everywhere for centuries. That is

not your point.17
16
A jathiswaram sets jathis, (bols, solkattu, and other vocalized percussion syllables) to a tune,
while a swarajathi sets the letters of sargam notation (Indian solfège) to a tune.
17
Based on this recoding, it is clear that only a few people had access to microphones during the
demonstration: Raghavan, Arundale, and Kanchanamala. Though I could hear other voices, such
as Appa Rao’s, through most of the recording Raghavan can be heard grumbling in general
displeasure at her performance. Maranganti Kanchanamala, Vissa Appa Rao, Rukmini Arundale
and V. Raghavan, “Kuchipudi Demonstration and Discussion on Kuchipudi” March 31, 1958,
42
 When I played this recording for my Telugu informants, most maintained their

indignation towards the Tamil delegates, such as Raghavan. Many pointed to this recording as

incontrovertible evidence that Kuchipudi dance and the Telugu delagates were treated like

second-class citizens at the Seminar. However, based on what Raghavan actually said, I believe

that his grievances were mostly in regard to what Kanchanamala presented and how it differed

from what he and perhaps other attendees knew and recognized as Kuchipudi. Raghavan’s

comments reveal that he knew Sastry’s style and felt Kanchanamala was not representing it

accurately, but as I discuss in the following chapter, the Kuchipudi repertoire was changing

drastically under Sastry’s direction in the early twentieth century to include items like those she

presented.

A newspaper article published a few months after the Seminar in a popular Telugu

weekly, Jagriti, offers a useful perspective on the controversial events at the Seminar. The title

of article “Kuchipudi Bharatanatyam Śāstrīyame!” literally translates to “Kuchipudi dance is

obviously classical!” This title suggests that the practice of referring to the Kuchipudi style as

Kuchipudi-Bharatanatyam was fairly common at that point in time. The following excerpt from

the article outlines the sequence of events that, in the author’s estimation, led to what he

described as the “fuss” over someone calling Kuchipudi folk or unclassical.

In the Delhi seminar who said Kuchipudi isn’t classical? Sri

Tummallapalli was the first one to write in the Andhra Weekly Patrika
June 11, 1958 that the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi did not recognize
Kuchipudi (Bharatam) as classical. Without giving the details he started

ACD 470-II, Audio-visual archives, Sangeet Natak Akademi. See Appendix 1 for a transcript of
Appa Rao’s lecture.

43
 explaining why Kuchipudi is classical. Based on this essay, a couple of
writers who formed their own opinions wrote essays on the subject. The
only ones who can tell the truth are the ones who participated in the
conference in Delhi. Of the delegates, Ahmedabad Archarya wrote in the
Weekly Patrika June 18, 1958 “neither I nor anyone else said that
Kuchipudi dance is folk art. It is complete classical dance.” This was
agreed in the conference where Smt. Rukmini Arundale was present. .
.The second of the three delegates, Sri. Vissa Appa Rao, on July 14, 1958
while talking in Guntur, said that the reports published in the weeklies
about the discussions at the conference were baseless accusations. The
third delegate Kum. Maraṇganṭi Kanchanamala wrote that after Vissa
Appa Rao, Raghavan spoke and said that anyone who knows Kuchipudi
did not express the opinion that it is folk art. On July 21, 1958 in Krishna
Patrika, Smt. Rukmini Devi also agreed. It is evident from these three
reports that at the Delhi conference that no one decided that Kuchipudi is
not classical.

If that’s the case, what is the cause of this commotion? Having found out
that the committee for the 1958 dance seminar was Smt. Rukmini Devi,
Sreehari Upal, Sri Ragavan, Kanchanamala B.A., holder of Indian Govt.
Cultural Scholarship and Kuchipudi Natyakalanidhi and student of
Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry applied to perform Kuchipudi and
went to see Raghavan preemptively. This made Raghavan angry and in
anger he said that in a conference two years previously the Kuchipudi
group wore unprofessional costumes and put on a bad show and because
of that they were not going to invite anyone else to participate in these
discussions. In that anger he is rumored to have said that Kuchipudi is folk
art. We should remember that Kuchipudi being considered folk is only the
result of Kanchanamala barging in to see Raghavan because she thought
Kuchipudi was not being given its due credit because of the previous
performance two years prior. (It’s only a one-man statement in an angry
moment so we shouldn’t take it too seriously.) In addition the government
publication on folk dances of India did not mention Kuchipudi as a folk
dance. 18

Though most of the account is based on hearsay and conjecture, the article establishes a few

important points. First of all, Kuchipudi’s classical status clearly mattered to the general

population and this article was attempting to quiet the uproar over the events that took place in

New Delhi. The author argues that there was never just cause to allege that Kuchipudi was not
18
My translation from the original Telugu. Pendipati Subbaramasastry, “Kuchipudi
Bharatanatyam is obviously classical! Why the fuss?” Jagriti, August 8, 1958, 7, 15-16.
44
considered classical. He also suggests that the “fuss” at the 1958 Seminar may have been the

result of a personal conflict between Raghavan and Kanchanamala. Despite the author’s sound

reasoning, the fact remains that the issue over Kuchipudi’s folk or classical status was

newsworthy and was perceived as a slight against Telugu culture, a reaction I examine in detail

in Chapter 5.

I often asked my informants why Kanchanamala was sent to the Seminar in 1958.

Usually, I was trying to learn more about her since her name disappears from Kuchipudi history

after 1959. During my time in the field, however, no one in Kuchipudi or in Madras knew

anything about her, except the part she had played in the 1958 Seminar. Based on the materials I

gathered, it is clear that she was sent because she was a student of Lakshminarayana Sastry, but

considering Raghavan’s comments, I have often wondered if the “classicism crisis” could have

been avoided if a hereditary male guru had been sent to New Delhi to perform or at least

accompany her.

I asked this very question in an interview with Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma, a

hereditary dancer from the village and, unquestionably, the most popular Kuchipudi performer of

the mid-century. I wanted to know why he didn’t go. After all, his name was synonymous with

Kuchipudi in the 1950s, both in South India and in New Delhi. Why send Kanchanamala and

Appa Rao, neither of whom had any connection with the village or legacy of Kuchipudi? His

response to my query was simple and direct. He told me that “Vissa Appa Rao and

Kanchanamala were sent to New Delhi because they were both college-educated and spoke

English” (V.S. Sarma, pers. comm.). Apparao was a professor with an established reputation in

Telugu literature. Kanchanamala had a bachelor’s degree in English. In Sarma’s understanding

45
of the Seminar, as examples of the newly emerging middle-class in Coastal Andhra, this pair was

their best representative.

While his explanation rings true in terms of the privileging of English at the Seminar, the

decision to send a young woman like Kanchanamala points to other issues as well. In looking

closely at the scheduling, particularly in light of the choices made in representing Kuchipudi, it is

clear that the Seminar was designed primarily to demonstrate pedagogy and establish the

contours of a dance style as well as a guru’s legacy through a female student’s demonstration.

While many of the gurus were hereditary, Brahmin and/or male, all of the students, without a

single exception, who performed either with the guru or alone during the demonstrations were

non-hereditary, young and female. In fact, I believe that Kanchanamala was sent to New Delhi

specifically because she represented a history of Kuchipudi and of classical dance that was yet to

be written: the institutionalization of the Kuchipudi tradition in order to impart it to middle-to-

upper-class/caste Telugu girls. Bharatanatyam and Kathak were among the first genres to

formulate this marker of “classicism,” and Kuchipudi, represented by women like

Kanchanamala, followed suit in short order. As I discuss in the following section, the process of

institutionalizing Kuchipudi reoriented dance in Andhra along fault-lines of history, gender,

caste, and power.

THE KUCHIPUDI SEMINAR, HYDERABAD, 1959

The “Seminar on Kuchipudi Dance,” hosted by the APSNA, was held almost a year after

the New Delhi Seminar of 1958. The event took place at what was known as the Tilak Memorial

46
Hall in Hyderabad from February 28 to March 1, 1959. The preface to the 1959 Souvenir

booklet states the purpose for the Seminar in no uncertain terms.

There was a feeling in Andhra that Kuchipudi dance style was not
considered to be classical during the discussion in the Dance Seminar held
in Delhi in March 1958 and so it was omitted from the list of classical
dances. This caused great dissatisfaction in Andhra Pradesh. Eminent
scholars who can speak with authority on the subject expressed strong
sentiments of disapproval. There was almost an uproar from the Andhra
public that steps should be taken by the Andhra Pradesh Sangeeta Nataka
Akademi to establish that the Kuchipudi Dance also belongs to the
classical school. . . .
The Andhra Pradesh Sangeeta Nataka Akademi held a Seminar on
Kuchipudi Dance on the 28th Feb. and 1st March 1959 in the Tilak
Memorial Hall, Hyderabad. Kumari Nirmala Joshi, Secretary of the
Central Akademi, Delhi, was present by special invitation.
Eminent scholars and artists and art lovers from all over Andhra
participated in the Seminar by reading papers, giving demonstrations and
holding discussions. . . .
As a result of the discussions at the Seminar, it was authoritatively
demonstrated that the Kuchipudi style of dance is an ancient and classical
one and that it follows Bharata’s Natya Sastra and commentaries thereon.
(Kuchipudi Natya Seminar Souvenir 1959, 9)

Though the stated purpose for the 1959 Seminar was to establish Kuchipudi’s classicism,

at its core, this event was primarily an exercise in establishing the authority of Andhra Pradesh

and its regional, state-level government organizations. Considering the uproar over Raghavan

and Arundale’s comments, the authority to canonize a dance style resided with representatives of

the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi, and if Kuchipudi was not recognized in New Delhi then that

was the end of the story. By hosting a counter-Seminar, conducted in English, but including

speeches in Telugu, at which Kuchipudi was posited as classical, the APSNA forced the Central

SNA to endorse the authority of a state-level organization like the APSNA. At this Seminar the

organizers were not only establishing the legitimacy of the Andhra Pradesh government, but also

the validity of Kuchipudi and the Telugu culture it represented.

47
KUCHIPUDI AS A STYLE/KUCHIPUDI AS A PLACE

Despite the apparent de facto measures at attaining classical status for Kuchipudi, the

programming of the 1959 Seminar attempted to clarify the contours of the tradition’s classicism.

Interestingly, while the Kuchipudi presentation in 1958 emphasized the dance-drama aspects of

the tradition in the lecture, but not in the demonstration, in 1959, the situation was reversed. The

Seminar in 1959 focused on establishing Kuchipudi as a style that encompassed female and male

traditions while insisting on its unique Telugu identity in contrast with Bharatanatyam and Tamil

culture. In other words, the Seminar in 1959 shifted the argument for Kuchipudi’s classicism

away from defining Kuchipudi as an exclusively Brahmin and male dance-drama tradition from

a small village, and began to promote the idea that Kuchipudi was a movement style visible in

both female and male performance genres in Andhra Pradesh.

Date Presentation Presenter

Paper: History of Kuchipudi Vissa Appa Rao
Demonstration: Kuchipudi training Chinta Krishnamurthy and
February 28, 1959
exercises Party
5 p.m.
Paper: Abhinaya of the Natya Shastra in Putcha Venkata
Kuchipudi Subrahmanya Sastry
February 28, 1959 Excerpts from Bhamakalapam, Bhaktha Chinta Krishnamurthy and
9 p.m. Prahalada and Gollakalapam Party
Paper: Nritta Ratnavali and Kuchipudi Dr. M. Rama Rao
Paper: Kuchipudi’s influence on other
Ayyanki Tandava Krishna
March 1, 1959 dance forms
9 a.m. C.V.V.R. Prasad, A. Venkata
Paper: Ways and means to preserve
Ramayya and Banda
Kuchipudi
Kanakalingeswara Rao

Table 2.3 – Schedule of Papers and Demonstrations at 1959 Seminar19

19
List based on information collected from the personal papers of Dr. Anuradha Jonnalagadda.
48
 Paper: Female impersonation and the need Lanka Suryanarayana
for female dancers in Kuchipudi Sastry
Paper: Temple dancing in Andhra Pradesh Nataraja Ramakrishna
Demonstration: Gollakalapam of
Vaidehi and Induvadana
Marampally
Paper: Kuchipudi Natya Meeting Bhagavatula Ramakotiah
Demonstration: Comparison of Kuchipudi
Kumari Kanchanamala
and Tanjore Natya Traditions
March 1,
1959 Passing of resolutions All Seminar attendees
3 p.m.
March 1,
Chinta Krishnamurthy
1959 Usha Parinayam
and Party
9 p.m

Table 2.3, continued

The resolutions passed on the final day of the conference were as follows:

1. The Seminar is of the opinion that it has been authoritatively proven

that Kuchipudi Natya Kala follows Bharata’s Natya Sastra and the
commentaries thereon, and this dance style of Andhra’s is ancient and
classical.
2. A Sub-Committee is hereby appointed to prepare a report on this
ancient and classical dance with a view to its publication. Its history,
nature and distinctiveness should be delineated, supported by documentary
and other evidences. This committee is requested to prepare the report
with all possible expedition and send it to the Akademi.
3. It is resolved that in order to develop this art, a college should be
established. To enable the preparation of a comprehensive scheme after
collecting all the relevant data necessary and preparing a syllabus, etc., a
Sub-Committee should be appointed. The Sub-Committee is requested to
prepare the report and send to the Akademi with all possible expedition.
(Kuchipudi Natya Seminar Souvenir 1959, 10)

Taken together, the featured events and the resolutions at the 1959 Seminar paint a clear

picture of the organizers’ philosophy: Kuchipudi’s classicism, like Bharatanatyam’s, was tied to

its connection to the Natya Sastra, but also to its “distinctiveness” when compared to

Bharatanatyam. Out of thirteen papers and demonstrations, eleven focused unequivocally on

49
Kuchipudi’s roots in textual śāstra, like the thirteenth-century treatise Nrtta Ratnavali and the

Natya Sastra, and the legacy of religious, hereditary, male dancing in Kuchipudi village. The

remaining presentations were given by and were about women. The question of Kuchipudi’s

“distinctiveness,” from Bharatanatyam discussed in these two papers, hinged on whether or not

Kuchipudi, as a tradition or style, included female dance as well as male dance-drama. In other

words, the definition of classicism in 1959 centered on whether or not a style of dance called

Kuchipudi was practiced and performed not only by the men of Kuchipudi village, but also by

women.

KUCHIPUDI’S WOMEN

Studies on women and public culture in India have highlighted the ways in which social

reforms beginning in the late nineteenth century sought to incorporate women into a new model

of Indian citizenship, defined in many ways by the nationalist language of patriarchy and female

chastity (e.g., Sarkar 1999, Sinha 1999, Sinha 2006). In South India, these reforms centered on

courtesans (more commonly referred to in Tamil and Telugu-speaking areas as devadasis), most

of whom hailed from traditionally matrilineal communities and engaged in non-conjugal sexual

behavior. While a handful of women from courtesan backgrounds, like Karnatic vocalist M. S.

Subbalakshmi (1916–2004) and Hindustani vocalist Begum Akhtar (1914–1974) were able to

assimilate through marriage into this newly imagined and idealized middle-class womanhood,

the overwhelming majority were disenfranchised (Forbes 1999; Qureshi 2001). As I discuss in

more detail in the following chapter, in the wake of such reforms in Andhra Pradesh, these

women receded from public performance life while Brahmin men like Vedantam
50
Laksminarayana Sastry and, later, Vempati Chinna Satyam, adopted the increasingly valued

repertoire of these women and in turn imparted it to middle-class women, like Kumari

Kanchanamala, under the name Kuchipudi.

According to the schedule at the 1959 Seminar, Kanchanamala was the only female

representative of Kuchipudi present. By the time of the 1959 Seminar, female roles in Kuchipudi

performances were still predominantly enacted by men. The practice of female impersonation, or

strī veṣam, was a well-known aspect of the Kuchipudi tradition and the men of Kuchipudi, such

as Vedantam Satyanaryana Sarma, achieved fame outside of Andhra in the mid-twentieth

century for their talent at representing female characters. Both of the evening performances at the

1959 Seminar featured dance-dramas that highlighted stri vesam.

According to standard Kuchipudi histories, due to the popularity of stri vesam, there was

little to no female involvement in the dance tradition practiced at Kuchipudi village.20 At the

1959 Seminar, however, participants were noticeably preoccupied with accounting for the

anonymity or lack of female practitioners in Kuchipudi. One presenter, Lanka Suryanarayana

Sastry, spent the better part of his lecture trying to explain away the lack of female involvement

in Kuchipudi due to the practice of stri vesam (Kuchipudi Natya Seminar Souvenir 1959, 88-89).

Sastry’s presentation reveals a set of religious and social ideologies that I discuss in more

detail in Chapter 3, but for our present discussion, it is important to note that he alludes to the

fact that Kuchipudi practice as of 1959 did not include enough female dancers, in his estimation.

His comments, in this regard, are particularly curious in comparison with Kanchanamala’s

presentation at the 1959 Seminar, which drew explicit and implicit comparisons between

20
See Hansen 1998 and 1999 for a discussion of gender and practices of female impersonation in
Indian theatrical traditions.
51
Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam by highlighting the solo female repertoire of Kuchipudi. While I

was not able to locate footage of her 1959 demonstration, in her contribution to the published

1959 Seminar Souvenir, Kanchanamala reveals her perspective on the name “Kuchipudi” as a

general term, which she uses to refer to a number of dance traditions in Andhra:

Kuchipudi Bharatanatyam or the Andhra style of Bharatanatyam is

prevalent in Andhra Desa from time immemorial (see Bharata Muni’s
Natya Sastra, Chapter 6, 26th Sloka where ‘Andhri’ is mentioned as one of
the six prevalent arts in India at that time, see also twenty-first chapter,
102 sloka and fifth chapter) and because the Kuchipudi artistes happened
to be the best exponents of the art, it has gone after their name. In recent
years some have propped up the theory that there is no Kuchipudi
Bharatanatyam except Bhagavata Mela (that is the Dance Drama form).
You may well say that when a man’s head only is seen talking, singing
and doing all sorts of human actions that probably there is no body
beneath the head supporting and nourishing it. . . .Kuchipudi art is a well
developed art. It is having many branches like the solo dance, pagati
veshalu, yaksaganas. Now, it is our duty to revive these forms of our
Andhra style. (Kuchipudi Natya Seminar Souvenir 1959, 67)

There was one other presentation in 1959 that focused on women in Telugu dance

cultures. The performers, a pair of women, were not from Kuchipudi or associated with a

Kuchipudi guru. Rather they were from a town famous for its courtesan traditions; a rural area

about 150 kilometers northwest of Kuchipudi called Maramally. Listed in the program as

devadasis and only by their first names21, Vaidehi and Induvadana, these women were the most

photographed and feted performers at the Seminar as the following excerpt from the 1959

Souvenir attests:

The highlight of the Seminar, however, was an illuminating demonstration

of Gollakalapam as performed by the devadasis. Smt. Vaidehi and Smt.
21
A family name or last name provides a significant index in Telugu society, particularly at an
event like the one in 1959 that featured high-caste men from Kuchipudi village, many of whom
shared the same last name. By omitting or failing to note the last name of these courtesans, the
coverage of their performance in the Souvenir not only points to their relative anonymity at the
1959 Seminar, but also to their ambivalent and marginalized position within Telugu society.
52
 Induvadana of Marampally, able exponents of this style, rendered the
Pinotpathi Krama in delightful Sanskrit. Starting with a benedictory verse
Amba Prarthana, the main singer⎯Gollabhama offered Pushpanjali and
Ganapathi Vandana (invocations) and then came to the story of creation.
Reciting a Vedic mantra (chant), she elaborated its meaning in Sanskrit
and then an explanation in Telugu. The whole cycle of life⎯from birth to
death, several duties prescribed for men in the texts⎯Karma Kanda were
detailed. This description was interspersed with songs and dances.
(Kuchipudi Natya Seminar Souvenir 1959, 43)

Figure 2.2 – Vaidehi and Induvadana performing Gollakalapam, Hyderabad, 1959

Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives

The performance of Gollakalapam by Vaidehi and Induvadana stands out in the

programming of the 1959 Seminar for a number of reasons, not least because of the glowing

53
review I cite above. By presenting Gollakalapam, these women illustrated an overlapping and

shared performance practice between the courtesan and Kuchipudi Brahmin repertoire in Andhra

Pradesh. As I discuss in further detail in Chapter 3, the kalāpam genre has a long history which

has been overwritten by Kuchipudi historiography and is now interpreted as a dance-drama form

exclusive to the village. Strictly speaking, however, a kalapam involves a small cast of two-to-

three individuals and remains a common performance genre across Andhra Pradesh (see Soneji

2004). Vissa Appa Rao’s presentations, however, at both the 1958 and 1959 Seminars listed the

essential pieces in the Kuchipudi dance-drama repertoire, and Gollakalapam was included in this

list. Furthermore, none other than the most famous female impersonator in the Kuchipudi

tradition, Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma, performed the very same piece the first evening of

the 1959 Seminar. By including Vaidehi and Induvadana’s performance of Gollakalapam

alongside Sarma’s in the programming of the 1959 Kuchipudi Seminar, I believe gurus and

organizers were making the bold claim that a courtesan dance culture from half-way across

Andhra Pradesh could be called Kuchipudi.

54
 Figure 2.3 – Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma as Gollabhama
Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives

While in Hyderabad, I became acquainted with a number of dance scholars who attended

the 1959 Seminar. Many are dance gurus, such as Nataraja Ramakrishna, and were champions of

the movement to popularize Kuchipudi in the early years after Andhra Pradesh became a state,

but have since become disenchanted with the ways in which Kuchipudi has co-opted and

elbowed out other traditions. In discussing Vaidehi and Induvadana’s presentation, one

informant, Professor Nagabhusan Sarma, a scholar of dance and theater who was in attendance at

the 1959 Seminar offered this explanation:

In fact, Nirmal Joshi (Secretary of the Central SNA) couldn’t make a

distinction. You have to understand, this isn’t written down anywhere.
They (the Delhi delegation) couldn’t make out what is Kuchipudi and
what is not. Obviously the meeting was held to discuss about the classical
stature of Kuchipudi. And so the other types of dance didn’t figure into it.
Like devadasi dance. All of those. The convener of the Seminar, Nataraja
Ramakrishna, wasn’t happy with just presenting Kuchipudi so he invited
55
 these two women (Vaidehi and Induvadana). The people were bowled
over by this performance. They were great performers. In fact, I suspect
that it was due to their performance that the Delhi people mistook the
devadasi dance to be part of the Kuchipudi tradition. And so they
immediately recognized it [as classical]. (M.N. Sarma, pers. comm.)

If the goal of the 1959 Seminar was to demonstrate that Kuchipudi, as a style, included

courtesan traditions of Andhra, then the demonstration by Vaidehi and Induvadana certainly

achieved that. The 1959 Seminar provided proof that Kuchipudi, like Bharatanatyam, also

possessed a rich tradition of female dance culture. Yet, this version of Kuchipudi history wherein

female dance cultures from all over Andhra Pradesh are connected to the Brahmin male dance

tradition that is attributed to the village of Kuchipudi exposes a number of troubling paradoxes

which have only become clearer as the Kuchipudi tradition developed into what I have been

taught since the early 1980s. As we will see in the following chapters, the “feminizing” of

Kuchipudi in the past fifty years indexes broader processes by which a Telugu cultural identity

was inscribed on the female dancing body.

56
 CHAPTER THREE

BETWEEN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

During today’s class Ramu Master gets a bit worked up at my constant

questioning. I think he’s tired of all my “whys.” To make his point he
gestures to the stick he’s holding; the one he uses to conduct class, and
puts it behind his back. He says that in India he could keep the stick
behind his back and tell me that the stick is there and as my guru, as a
person of greater knowledge and stature, I would immediately and
unquestioningly believe him. In America, he chastises me, he would need
to show me the stick to prove it was really there.
—Fieldnotes, 30 December 2008

In the twenty-first century, the term Kuchipudi refers to style of dance: an aesthetic and a

movement vocabulary that shares basic fundamentals with other South Indian genres like

Bharatanatyam. As late as the 1960s, the Kuchipudi style was called “Kuchipudi Bharatanatyam”

as in, the Bharatanatyam from Kuchipudi. This is because strictly speaking, Kuchipudi is a

physical place: a village located along the Krishna River in South India, about fifty kilometers

southeast of Vijayawada in central Andhra Pradesh.

In the twentieth century, when regional and linguistically defined dance traditions began

circulating across India, Kuchipudi became widely visible as a Telugu dance style synonymous

with the state of Andhra Pradesh (see Chapter 5). Since the time of the National Akademi

Seminars in the late 1950s, the standard historical narrative about Kuchipudi circulated in Indian

publications on dance and more recently, in Incredible !ndia1 tourism booklets, has been as

follows:

1
Incredible India is a tourism program initiated in 2002 under the Ministry of Tourism. The
marketing and advertising campaign for this program features exoticized and romanticized
photos of Indian cultural icons as well as Indian landscapes. As stated by its founders on the
57
 Kuchelapuram is a small village in Andhra Pradesh. The descendants of
300 Brahmin families live here to continue a tradition that dictates that
only men may dance. The village and the land are gifts from the Nawab of
Golconda, Abdul Hasan Tana Shah, in 1675, after witnessing a
performance of a Kuchipudi dance-drama by migrant Brahmins. The
tradition of natya using poetry, drama, dance and music have a long
history in the regions now known as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka, the thematic content always being based on a glorified
devotion to god-bhakti, therefore the participants came to be known as
bhaktas while the form is called Bhagavat Mela Natakam.

A great devotee of Vishnu, Siddendhra yogi had a dream in which he

witnessed the enchanting vision of Lord Krishna with his two favourite
consorts, Rukmini and Satyabhama. The dream unfolded the story of the
parijata, the heavenly tree, which was coveted by both the wise and
stately Rukmini and the beautiful haughty Satyabhama, following an
altercation inspired by the ever-present and mischievous sage, Narada.
Krishna sought to placate his queens by setting off heavenwards to obtain
the tree for his palace.

Overcome with joy and devotion, Siddendra yogi began a search for
dancers and actors who would enact this play of his dream. He found
suitable young men among the Brahmin families of Kuchelapuram. It was
the enactment of this dream-vision on stage that pleased the Nawab of
Golconda. Since then, every Brahmin family of the village ritually offers
at least one male member to be trained as an actor-dancer. The name of
the village changed to Kuchipudi as time passed and its dance-drama also
acquired this name. Today it has retained the name and form with its
earthy flavor and seductive body language. (Mansingh 2007, 82)

As I discussed in Chapter 2, however, despite its supposed long and exclusive tradition of

training Brahmin men in the Kuchipudi style, the Kuchipudi demonstration at the first All-India

Dance Seminar in 1958 was not presented by a Brahmin male dancer from the village in the

dance-drama tradition, but rather, featured a lecture by a Kuchipudi advocate-cum-scholar, Vissa

Appa Rao, and a demonstration by young woman named Maranganti Kanchanamala from

Machilipatam, a town about ninety kilometers west of Kuchipudi village. Neither of these

Incredible !ndia campaign website, “The primary objective of this branding exercise was to
create a distinct identity for the country…and establish India as a high-end tourist destination.”
Accessed June 2, 2011. http://www.incredibleindiacampaign.com/
58
representatives was from the village of Kuchipudi or related to the hereditary dancing families

living there. Kanchanamala did not perform a traditional number, like an excerpt from a dance-

drama, but rather a potpourri of pieces, which, as already discussed, were openly criticized by

the experts in the room as bearing no relation to the known Kuchipudi repertoire.

This chapter examines the social and political forces that brought this particular

delegation to New Delhi through the lens of Kuchipudi’s history and historiography. In the

course of this chapter, I pay particular attention to the kinds of changes were being affected

within the Kuchipudi tradition that would have permitted a middle-class woman like

Kanchanamala to learn Kuchipudi from a hereditary guru. I also trace the history of the

Kuchipudi repertoire in order to understand the current paradox between the history of

Kuchipudi and the practice.

The Kuchipudi dance form that I have studied, as a woman, a dancer, and an

ethnographer, is an amalgam, which includes repertoire from solo female traditions that are

historically and socially distinct from the practices associated with the men of Kuchipudi village.

The pieces that Kanchanamala presented in 1958 were decidedly not based in the traditions of

Kuchipudi village, but had been incorporated into the repertoire in the early twentieth century. In

actuality, the items Kanchanamala presented in 1958 belong to the female dance traditions of

Andhra, not Kuchipudi.2 Considering this, over the course of the chapter I examine why Vissa

Appa Rao historicized Kuchipudi, at the very same Seminar where Kanchanamala presented

these items, as an exclusively male, high-caste, tradition. This chapter analyzes the paradox of

2
See discussion of C.R. Acharya’s revival of temple dance traditions, like the Vinayaka Tala
presented by Kanchanamala at the 1958 Seminar in Kothari 2001.
59
such historiography and connects these rhetorical strategies to the discourses on dance and

classicism in South India.

ORIGIN AND MYTH

Map 3.1 – Map of Vijayawada area, Krishna district, marking Kuchipudi (directly north of
Movva), 2011.

The earliest reference that links a place called Kuchipudi to a dance tradition is a

document known as the Machupalli Kaifiyat (Jonnalagadda 1996, 37; Kothari 2001, 31; Soneji

2004, 164). In most accounts, the Kaifiyat is said to describe an episode in 1502, wherein a group

of Kuchipudi bhāgavatulu (literally, men from a place called Kuchipudi who perform stories

60
from the Bhagavatam3) performed at the Vijayanagara court for King Veera Narasimharaya (r.

1503-1505). During their performance, these bhagavatulu reenacted a scene they had witnessed,

in order to bring the misdeeds of a local chieftain, Sammeta Gurava Raju, to the King’s attention.

After viewing the performance, Narasimharaya is said to have ordered the beheading of Gurava

Raju.

The Kaifiyat is often used by Kuchipudi historians to prove the existence of a group of

well-known and noble bhagavatulu connected to a place called Kuchipudi. For example, in a

lecture on Kuchipudi aired on All-India Radio on May 19, 1954, Vissa Appa Rao opens with a

reference to the Kaifiyat and suggests that “the king who had already heard of their fame ordered

a performance which he attended along with the queen and other members of the royal family”

(Appa Rao 1955, 16). In the popular historiography of Kuchipudi, the Machupalli Kaifiyat is

generally used to illustrate the antiquity of the dance-drama tradition from the village as well as

to establish a connection to well-known court cultures like those of the Vijayanagara rulers.

The earliest authenticated evidence of a dance tradition associated with the village of

Kuchipudi in the Krishna district is dated almost two hundred years later, during the rule of

Nizam Ali Khan, better known as Asaf Jah II (r. 1762-1803). According to Prof. Anuradha

Jonnalagadda, a Kuchipudi researcher based in Hyderabad at the University of Hyderabad and an

invaluable resource during my time in the field, it was possible for her to obtain a set of

documents dated August 24, 1763, which detail a property rights dispute among several families

living in Kuchipudi village. The families appealed to the Nizam, who, in turn, appointed two

advisors, Mosalikanti Kamoji and Kandregula Jogipantulu, to oversee the case. The property in

3
Telugu for Bhagavat Gita

61
question, described as an agrahāram or Brahmin quarter, was divided between fifteen families

having the following surnames: Bhagavatulu, Pasumarṭi, Vedantam, Yellesvarapu, Hari,

Mahankāli, Josyula, Vallabha Josyula, Bokka, Darbha, Peddibhatla, Polepeddi, Vemu,

Venukunti and Vempati. Many of these surnames match those of the Kuchipudi dancers from the

early-mid twentieth century, as well as many we know today.

In 1795, the Brahmins of Kuchipudi filed a petition to the Revenue Consultation Board to

challenge a tax being assessed on their property. The response to their petition, dated April 17,

1795, which I obtained in photocopy form from Prof. Jonnalagadda, is written in cursive, English

script and reads as follows:

The Bramins of Koochepoody represent that their ancestors enjoyed the

village as aghraharam. That the former sanuds are in their possession.
Requests that the collector will be pleased to renew them. The Brahmins
ordered to produce the sanuds.4

During my time in the field, I was often told to refer to these sanuds, or title deeds, whenever I

asked about the history of the village. From what I could tell, however, no one had these

documents in their possession or had ever actually seen them. According to Prof. Jonnalagadda,

the sanuds were not included in the documents filed with the 1795 appeal.

Prof. Jonnalagadda directed me to another document, an appeal to the Board of Revenue

dated March 3, 1897. This appeal, which Prof. Jonnalagadda acquired as a handwritten copy of

the original, is in Telugu script and is, unfortunately, difficult to authenticate. The document is

ostensibly an appeal in response to Revenue Order No. 496 issued to the residents of Kuchipudi

on September 28, 1896.5 It refers to ten exhibits, which provide evidence that the village was

4
Jonnalagadda 1996, Appendix 2.
5
The copy I obtained from Prof. Jonnalagadda can be found as an appendix to her dissertation
and is dated 1903. Jonnalagadda 1996, Appendix 3.
62
gifted in 1744 as a stotriya dharmaśāsana (religious endowment) by the Zamindar of Bezawada,

to four men: Bhagavatula Lingayya, Vedantam Ramesam, Gopal and Peddibhotla Gurulingam.

The document lists dance and agriculture as the primary profession for most of the village

residents. It also refers to a letter dated May 14, 1795 by the Revenue Collector of the Krishna

District, D.W. Ragan, which granted a continuation of the Brahmins’ rights on the village.

Prof. Jonnalagadda posits that this letter (from Ragan) would only have been sent once

the residents of Kuchipudi had produced the sanuds per the Order of April 17, 1795.

Furthermore, she argues that this document provides proof that the Brahmins of Kuchipudi “have

been enjoying rights over Kuchipudi village since 1744 and probably this dharmasasana would

have been a continuation of their rights, given to them during the period of Tana Shah”

(Jonnalgadda 1996, 41).

Though the “official” origin myth surrounding the Kuchipudi village refers to this land

grant by the Nawab of Golconda, Tana Shah, in 1675, proof of this grant, rumored to have been

inscribed on a copper plate, has been reported as missing for generations. In other words, there

has never been any verifiable evidence that the Nawab of Golconda was responsible for this land

grant or that this settlement of Brahmins who practice a dance-drama tradition existed at that

point in time. Poet-turned-film director-turned-art critic Bhagavathula Sankara Sastry (1925-

1998), better known by his pen name, Arudra, brought these very issues to light in the 1980s and

1990s in a series of articles. Though best known for his work as a writer and lyricist, toward the

end of his life Arudra became a vociferous critic of the Siddhendra/Tana-Shah version of

Kuchipudi history. In an article written only a few years before his passing, Arudra points out the

fallacies in the current history of Siddendhra Yogi. He also takes particular exception to the

legend that the Nawab of Golconda, Tana Shah, presented the village as a gift in 1675, not only
63
in light of the missing physical evidence, but also because of the lack of references to this

supposed event in the documents discussed above.

If at all Abdul Hassan Tanashah (1672-1685), the Nawab of Golconda,

gifted the village as an agraharam in 1675, would the memorable event
have been forgotten by the descendants of the recipients when they wrote
the agreement of mutual trust in 1763? Would the people of Kuchipudi not
have proudly recorded that their immediate forefathers received a
conferential sanad from the Nawab of Golconda and that the copper plate
was lost? Why did they merely declare that the sanads given by previous
kings were lost? Was there more than one gift of land to necessitate the
use of the plural—sanads—instead of the singular? (Arudra 1994, 30)

Despite the fallacies in Kuchipudi historiography that Aruda points out, the issue of the

land grant, steeped as it is in reverential tones and mythological religiosity, is intrinsic to

Kuchipudi’s claims to classicism. The tacit acceptance of such undeniably specious narratives is

representative of what Edward Said has called the “citationary” nature of Orientalism, a selective

and often fabricated body of knowledge that reveals the epistemological underpinnings to

Kuchipudi’s hagiographical construction of history (Said 1978, 176). Indeed, the Siddendra-

centric, Tana Shah-gifted sanud history of Kuchipudi village is readily accepted for the same

reasons Incredible !ndia recently reported that a surprising majority of its 2010 revenue came

from middle-class Indian consumers, not foreigners—because these images and histories fit

snugly within the broader narrative of India’s mythical past made manifestly modern (Bryant

2010).

This point was underscored when I arrived in Kuchipudi village and was greeted by the

following inscription on the gates to the dance school:

64
 Figure 3.1 – “Golconda Nawab Abul Hasan Tanishah (A.D. 1682-1697)6
presented to the Kuchipudi bhagavatulu”
Photo by author

This gate leads to the building that houses the state-run dance school in Kuchipudi village,

Siddhendra Kalakshetra, which was originally instituted in 1957 under the APSNA. In the early

1980s, the APSNA was dissolved and in its place a university, dubbed Potti Sreeramulu Telugu

University (PSTU), was formed with the following mission statement:

This University was founded with the broad objectives of serving the
cause of the Telugu people, both within the State and outside. For this
purpose, the state government merged the Sahitya, Sangeetha, Nataka,
Nritya and Lalitha Kala Academies, International Telugu Institute and
Telugu Bhasha Samithi into the University. Thus, the University was
established to function as a central organization for teaching and research
in Language and Literature, History and Culture, Fine Arts and
Performing Arts, religion and philosophy of the Telugu speaking people. It
strives to inculcate a sense of identity in them as citizens of India and as
responsible representatives of Andhra Pradesh.7

6
Tanishah and Tanashah are two variants of spelling and transliteration. The dates listed on the
gates, however, are inaccurate. The correct dates of Tanashah’s rule are 1672-1687.
7
PSTU Mission Statement, Accessed June 2, 2011.
http://www.teluguuniversity.ac.in/home%20page%20top%20links/pages/aboutus/about.html
65
 I interpret the inscription on the gates to the school as part of a broader practice of

“inculcating” Telugu culture, revealed in the PSTU mission statement. Constructed histories on

Telugu culture, like those I experienced in Kuchipudi village, as statements of Telugu power, are

further reified under government sponsorship.8 In Kuchipudi’s case, governmental organizations

like the APSNA and now the PSTU underwrite and validate such narratives about Telugu culture

and the geographical region now known as Andhra Pradesh (see Chapter 5). For the past several

years, this process has become further ensconced in the public consciousness through an annual

heritage tourism festival sponsored by the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation

(APTDC) aptly named “Siddhendra Yogi Mahotsav: Kuchipudi Natyakshetram” (Translation:

Great festival of Siddendra Yogi: Abode of Kuchipudi Dance).

Figure 3.2 – Siddhendra Yogi Mahotsav Brochure Cover Page9

Artistic Rendering of Siddhendra Yogi
Reproduced with permission from festival organizers

8
Here, I am referring in part to Michel Herzfeld’s conception of iconicity as state-supported
cultural expression. Herzfeld 1997, 57.
9
These images circulated in the Mahotsav programs, Keshav Prasad told me, were recently
commissioned, and the portraits of Siddhendra were modeled after those of poet-composers
Narayana Tirtha and Kshetreyya.
66
 Though the involvement of the APTDC in the festival is relatively recent (see Chapter 6

for further discussion), during my time in Kuchipudi it became clear to me that the

historiographical trends that buttress the popular version of Kuchipudi history are only further

supported by recent attempts to make the village a tourist destination. In the past few years, the

organizers of the festival have erected landmarks to physically represent the mythopoeic histories

about the village and the dance. The primary figure in charge of these efforts in Kuchipudi

village, Pasumarthi Keshav Prasad, an otherwise quiet, but intense man and a dance teacher

himself, was proud to show me around and point out these new additions to the landscape of the

village (see below).

During our tour of the village and its landmarks, Prasad drew my attention to the opening

page of the brochure circulated at the 2009 Mahotsav, where the most recent additions were

listed in a section soliciting funding for the festival. The brochure noted recent initiatives that

funded construction of “a memorial park with bronze statues of Kuchipudi legends” as well as

an “arch at the entrance of the Kuchipudi village which depicts the 108 karanas (dance postures)

on both sides” (Kuchipudi Mahotsav Brochure 2009).

67
 Figure 3.3 – Left to Right: Bronze Statues of Vedantam Raghavayya,
Vempati Pedda Satyam, and Chinta Krishnamurthy
Photo by author

Figure 3.4 – Arch decorated with 108 karanas marking entrance to Kuchipudi village
Photo by author

68
According to Prasad, these landmarks were built through private business sponsorship. Thanks to

the continuing support of these donors, festival organizers have been able to install one landmark

a year since 2006.

The 2010 addition had already been completed while I was visiting, and Prasad wanted

me to see it before I left. Housed in an otherwise deserted, concrete, three-story building, the

most modern home in the village which belongs to the Satyam family who reside in Chennai, the

2010 installment (see below) is a life-size facsimile of the 1763 partition deed. It is erroneously

titled “Dharmashasana Pattika” (Endowment List) in reference to the land grant mentioned in the

1897 appeal. The decision to inscribe the deed on bronze-like sheet metal is a clear reference to,

if not blatant misrepresentation of, the missing bronze tablets supposedly inscribed by Tana Shah

in 1675.

69
 Figure 3.5 – Life-size facsimile of 1763 Land Partition Deed
Photo by author

At the time, my attempts to point out that the newest installment conflated three different

property documents were not well-received. I had been in the field long enough at that point to

70
know when not to push the issue, and this was definitely one of those instances. While on the one

hand I was perplexed by the ways in which history and the narration of history could become one

and the same, on the other, the motives for such an elision remained my fundamental question.

After all, by the time I had arrived in Kuchipudi, almost four months into my fieldwork, I already

understood quite clearly that the standard historical narratives were somewhat engineered to

support claims to classicism. My goal during my time in the village, therefore, shifted to sorting

out how and why Kuchipudi “became” classical in deed as well as discourse. Accordingly, my

working definition of classicism expanded to include Kuchipudi’s physical connection to a

historic place. Whether or not Kuchipudi village had truly existed as a sacred, Brahmin enclave

for dance in 1675, this aspect of the narrative was clearly an essential element in Kuchipudi’s

claims to classicism.

For me, that still left the issue of how this particular narrative about Kuchipudi village

had become the history of Telugu dance. Were there no other narratives about dance in Andhra

that would have worked as well? As Trouillot asks in his study on the production of history:

“What makes some narratives rather than others powerful enough to pass as accepted history if

not historicity itself? If history is merely the story told by those who won, how did they win in

the first place” (Trouillot 1995, 6)?

As I stood in front of that life-sized representation of Kuchipudi village history, that

listed the names of Brahmin men, I asked myself these very questions. Here, again, I was

confronted with the contradiction between Kuchipudi dance and historiography. I was reminded

of Kanchanamala and of the items she performed in 1958; repertoire that dance scholars now

believe belonged to female performance traditions in Andhra rather than those from the village

(e.g., Soneji 2004). It was courtesan repertoire that Kanchanmala performed, and that 30 years
71
later, I had studied as Kuchipudi. Where were these women in Kuchipudi history? The common

tropes of Kuchipudi historiography that speak of “tradition”, “innovation” or “modernity” do

little to explain how this history of the Brahmin men in Kuchipudi village bears any connection

to the dance practice I have studied over the course of my life. Nor did these ideas adequately

account for the agents involved in molding Kuchipudi into a solo, female genre. The rest of this

chapter addresses this paradox of history and practice by examining the repertoire and genres

that have come to be known as Kuchipudi today.

KUCHIPUDI AND TELUGU PERFORMANCE TRADITIONS

Indian dance is often described in terms of three primary aspects: Nrtta, defined as

technical or pure dance, nāṭya, defined as drama or theater, and nṛtya, which exists somewhere

between the two. The fundamental difference between nrtya and natya lies in the nature of

character portrayal. Natya, as drama, relies on first-person narration. Nrtya utilizes description

and abstraction, and narrates from the third-person point of view. For example, in the pictures

below, the dancer on the left references Krishna by using a mudra to portray Krishna’s flute. In

the picture to the right, the dancer is literally embodying the role of Krishna. Dance traditions

across India utilize various combinations of these three fundamental units of nrtta, natya, and

nrtya. While using nrtya a dancer can depict many characters, but while relying on natya a

dancer plays only one role and is, generally, as shown below, costumed accordingly.

72
 Figure 3.6 – Krishna depicted through nrtya (left) and natya (right)
in Kuchipudi dance performances
Photos by author

As we saw in Chapter 2, by emphasizing its identity as a dance-drama tradition,

historians like Appa Rao sought to differentiate Kuchipudi from solo, female traditions. The

differentiation between group, male, dramatic genres, also known as nāṭya meḷam (drama

troupe), and solo, female genres, also known as naṭṭuva meḷam (dance troupe), is a hallmark of

genre categorization and aesthetic theory in the Indian performing arts. Attributed to Jaya

Senapati’s thirteenth-century treatise, Nrtta Ratnavali, this dichotomy between male and female

dance styles and their respective techniques solidified in the early twentieth century in the wake

of anti-nautch (literally, anti-dance) and anti-dedication reforms that abolished the devadasi and

her way of living. Though the movement to ban devadasi dance and the dedication of girls to

73
temples began as early as the 1880s, legislative measures in South India were only passed in

1947 after Indian independence.10

The controversy over these reforms and the revival movements that followed has

generally framed the study of dance in South India and obscured our understanding of how

repertoire moved across caste and gender lines. The following section of this chapter examines

how a variety of performance traditions and genres, which were shared across Brahmin and

devadasi communities in Andhra Pradesh, were molded into what is now modern Kuchipudi

practice.

KUCHIPUDI AS DRAMA; KUCHIPUDI AS DANCE

Genre classification in South India has proved a perplexing task for generations of

scholars, not least because of the permeability of discrete performance spaces. With space and

place firmly in view in his dissertation, Davesh Soneji proposes a tripartite model (below) that

illustrates the fluidity of performance genres in Andhra. For my purposes, this figure not only

highlights the overlap between performance practices, but also identifies the three primary

genres that exist in current Kuchipudi practice.

10
Srinivasan 1984 and 1985, for further information on the history of devadasi reforms and
legislation; Peterson and Soneji 2008, Soneji 2010 and 2011 for discussion of devadasi
historiography in the context of dance studies.
74
 (+8+(#3'#$-;#'8#34+#7+(8'(6$-1+#3($.232'-%#*+#4$:+#(+8+((+.#3'#2-#34+#7(+:2'9%#%+132'-=#
(+<$(.,+%%#'8#34+2(#<+-.+(#'(#1$%3+#$%%'12$32'-%/###
#
0$>,+#?@#3&))&,*0456"4&,)456)&7*,*1895*85:87")&#
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#
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##############
# #
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#
Figure 3.7 – Genres in Kuchipudi Historiography11
."#$"%&'"##
A9,,B,+-<34#.($6$%#34$3#3+,,#$#%3'(;#8('6#>+<2--2-<#3'#+-.#&9%9$,,;#,2-+$(#
-$(($32:+%)/##C$-;#$13'(%#7,$;2-<#.288+(+-3#7$(3%/#
#
Yaksagana D9>B<+-(+%@#
Full-lengthx#EF.42B-GH$I$6#&$,%'#1$,,+.#J$;$,GH$)#
dramas that tell a story from beginning to end (usually linear narratives).
Many actors x#K2-.9B>4G<$:$3$6#
playing different characters.
#
Kalapam
/")&*"+##
One or, at most, two characters, little narrative content, non-linear, sometimes episodic,
L-+=#'(#$3#6'%3#3*'#14$($13+(%=#,233,+#-$(($32:+#1'-3+-3=#-'-B,2-+$(=#%'6+326+%#
explores a particular state of being or bhāva.
+72%'.21=#+57,'(+%#$#7$(3219,$(#%3$3+#'8#>+2-<#'(#."#0&/#
# D9>B<+-(+%@#
Vesam (literally, “guises”)
x#M914279.2B>4G<$:$3$6#&7(+B6'.+(-)#
One character performs
x#0N(979B>4G<$:$3$6#a monologue or a scene from a known drama.
x#O+:$.G%FB>4G<$:$3$6#
#
Despite its composite form, I rely on this model to establish a somewhat linear trajectory for the
0-$"+10-$&)2#&,23/#³<92%+%´##
performance L-+#14$($13+(#7+(8'(6%#$#6'-','<9+#'(#$#%1+-+#8('6#$#I-'*-#.($6$/#
traditions practiced by the men at Kuchipudi village. The earliest documented
# D9>B<+-(+%@#
performance traditions x#P$<$H2#E+QG,9#
practiced by the men of Kuchipudi village fall under the categories of
$)#J$49(N79,9#&%'6+#(+,$3+.#3'#M914279.2)#
kalapam and vesham. Originally a literary tradition, the kalapam (plural, kalāpālu) did not
>)#RG3($#E+QG,9#&S$T<$66$#R$3($%=#02(97$32)#
#
emerge as an established performance genre until the late nineteenth century (Soneji 2004).

Around this time kalapam texts became visible through performances by a variety of groups,
!"#
11
Soneji 2004, 75.

75
both female and male. These texts, according to Soneji, fall into two categories: those that are

called Bhamakalapam and are based on narratives about a character known as Satyabhama, and

those that are called Gollakalapam and are based on a conversation between a Brahmin and a

Gollabhama (milkmaid). The portrayal of Satyabhama, in particular, is emphasized in both

written and oral histories on the village since the “father” of the Kuchipudi tradition, Siddhendra

Yogi, is said to have written Bhamakalapam. The following section, therefore, examines the

origin of Bhamakalapam and its connection to the tradition practiced at Kuchipudi village.

76
SATYABHAMA AS KUCHIPUDI

Figure 3.8 – Artistic Rendering of Kuchipudi as Satyabhama by Telugu artist Bapu (left)
Reproduced with artist’s permission
Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma in stri vesam as Satyabhama (right)
Photo courtesy of Avinash Pasricha

It would not be an overstatement to say that both as an image and as a character,

Satyabhama is Kuchipudi. As the solitary piece on Satyabhama in what is now a variegated,

female-centered repertoire, Bhamakalapam succinctly exhibits all the major threads of

77
Kuchipudi historiography. In fact, in the popular origin myths circulated by the APTDC,

Siddhendra Yogi’s divine creation of Bhamakalapam is described as the devotional practice that

gave birth to the dance tradition called Kuchipudi. However, as Soneji discusses in his

dissertation, the narratives about Satyabhama found in Bhamakalapam appeared in Telugu

literature and poetry long before the kalapam form or the Kuchipudi dance tradition (Soneji

2004). Through her sustained treatment dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth century,

Satyabhama emerges as a proto-heroine in a variety of Telugu performance cultures besides

Kuchipudi.

Though Satyabhama first appears as a significant character in the Telugu Purāṇa (literary

epics) era in Bammera Potana’s Mahabhagavatamu, it was not until the latter-half of the

sixteenth century, at the Tanjavur Nayaka court, that Satyabhama emerges as part of a

specifically dance- and drama-oriented culture, known today for the development of important

South Indian genres, such as yaksagana. Soneji provides a succinct definition of the yaksagana

genre vis-à-vis its dance components, like the daruvu or song.

Essentially, a yaksagana text may be defined as a text consisting of several

compositions that are linked to a particular subject or more commonly, a
particular narrative. The compositional genres that make up the yaksagana
are generally daruvu (song), vacanam (prose, dialogue) and padyam
(verse). (Soneji 2004, 54)

In tracing the development of Satyabhama’s character portrayal across centuries of literature,

Soneji ultimately connects the current Kuchipudi traditions of Bhamakalapam to two particular

yaksaganas based on a popular myth about a pārijāta (jasmine) flower from the Bhagavata

Purana. Attributed to Narayana Tirtha (c. 1675-1745) and Matrbhutayya (c. 1770-1800),

respectively, Soneji identifies present-day musical and linguistic elements in Matrbhutayya’s

78
Parijatapaharana Natakamu, while the plotline, as it exists today in Kuchipudi practice, can be

traced to Tirtha’s text by the same name.

The basic storyline of the parijata myth involves three main characters: Krishna and his

two wives, Rukmini and Satyabhama. The conflict that drives the narrative begins when Krishna

gifts the celestial parijata to Rukmini rather than Satyabhama. Satyabhama, an arrogant and vain

woman, is enraged that Krishna would show such favoritism to Rukmini. In contrast to Tirtha’s

yaksagana, however, which focuses on the parijata episode and relies on a large supporting cast

that includes Rukmini, Bhamakalapam texts, such as the one practiced at Kuchipudi, primarily

involve only two characters: Satyabhama and her handmaiden Madhavi who also doubles as the

sūtradhāra12 (narrator/director).13

Though there is scant physical evidence to make a definite statement about the exact

origin of the kalapam genre, as a form it exhibits structural similarities to yaksagana. Soneji’s

research suggests that as an outgrowth of yaksagana, the kalapam became a popular form in the

late eighteenth century throughout the Telugu-speaking coastal regions in the zamīndāri

samsthānams (principalities, “little kingdoms”). It was not until the late nineteenth century that

kalapam texts entered the realm of performance. Satyabhama, though an otherwise common

character in earlier textual traditions like the yaksagana, was not a popular character in

performance genres until the late nineteenth century. It was around this time, Soneji explains,

that various versions of Bhamakalapam by authors such as Gaddam Subbarayudu (d. 1940)
12
In Telugu, sūtradhārudu (pl. sūtradhārulu)
13
According to Soneji’s research, most of the texts that we can identify as Bhamakalapam do not
focus on the parijata episode, but rather highlight Satyabhama’s colorful personality. Indeed, the
primary conflict in Bhamakalapam arises from an episode unrelated to the parijata incident
wherein Satyabhama tells Krishna that she is more beautiful than he. Angered at her arrogance
and disrespect, Krishna leaves her palace. The majority of Bhamakalapam explores
Satyabhama’s emotional journey during their estrangement.
79
became visible through performance by a variety of groups like the Brahmins of Kuchipudi as

well as the devadasi and the goldsmith communities in central and coastal Andhra (Soneji 2004,

62).

In other words, the Kuchipudi tradition of Bhamakalapam as we know it today originates

from compositions written in the late nineteenth century and no earlier. More important, despite

the current history on the village, the performance of Bhamakalapam appears to have been a

shared tradition across caste and gender lines. Bhamakalapam and the portrayal of Satyabhama

in dance in Andhra Pradesh was never the exclusive intellectual or artistic property of the

Brahmin men of Kuchipudi.

At this point it is necessary to clarify my aim in this inquiry: I am not pointing out the

inconsistencies in Kuchipudi history and historiography to cast doubt on the validity of the

artistry in the tradition, but rather to probe why these inconsistencies were necessary in the

formulation of what is now the dominant narrative. Why were the women (i.e., courtesans)

written out of one part of the narrative only to be written back in (Kanchanamala) at another?

The question also remains as to how Satyabhama and Bhamakalapam became both synonymous

and mutually constitutive of the Kuchipudi style. What exactly happened in Kuchipudi village

and to the dance tradition practiced there during the twentieth century that made it possible to

cast these Brahmin men as the exclusive performers of Bhamakalapam? The following section

addresses these issues with a particular eye towards locating the women in Kuchipudi history and

practice.

80
CANONIZING KUCHIPUDI

Over the past decade, through the joint efforts of a variety of organizations, like the

APTDC, the Kuchipudi Arts Academy in Chennai, and the dance journal, Nartanam, published

by the Mumbai-based Kuchipudi Kala Kendra, there has been a proliferation of Kuchipudi

historiography that seeks to establish the dance form as the primary Telugu dance tradition in

India. The standard narrative about Kuchipudi’s origins, which attributes the genre’s fame to

Siddendhra Yogi and his composition, Bhamakalapam, has since merged with oral and positivist

Telugu-language historiography. These histories are primarily constructed through biography,

and these biographies are overwhelmingly written by and about Brahmin men. For example,

articles on Kuchipudi history published in Nartanam and echoed in tourism and diaspora

campaigns, describe Kuchipudi in three phases, represented by three men. During the first phase,

Kuchipudi dancers were known for the kalapam genre. This phase is personified and represented

by Vempati Venkatanarayana (c. 1871-1935). Through oral histories and genealogy charts in the

village, his biography with an artistic rendering of his bust, is circulated as follows.

Figure 3.9 – Portrait of Vempati Venkatanarayana

Artistic rendering courtesy of the Kuchipudi Arts Academy, Chennai

81
 Son of Smt. Punnamma and Sri Kodandaramayya, Vempati
Venkatanarayana was trained by his father in the Kuchipudi art form; a
popular female impersonator and guru, Venkatanarayana excelled in the
roles of Satyabhama, Dadinamma, and Balinthavesysham, which he
portrayed till the age of sixty. An unusual feature for a performing artist;
special mention should be made of Dadinamma, which he used to perform
for three hours tied to a cot with only the upper part of the body left free.
Impressed by Venkatanarayana’s prowess, on one occasion Harikatha
Pithamaha Aadibhatla Narayanadasa himself played the role of sutradhara
in which Venkatanarayana played the role of Satyabhama. Specially
known for his meticulous Thalaprasthara and facial expressions, he was
called Abhinava Satyabhama. He also performed Bhamakalapam for a
record number of more than a thousand times all over Andhra region.14

Unfortunately, beyond this basic biographical sketch provided by the Kuchipudi Arts Academy

and duplicated in tourism and other information brochures on the village, there is little other

information available about either Vempati Venkatanarayana or the performance culture that

featured kalapams in Kuchipudi village at the turn of the century.

The second phase is represented by Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry (c. 1886 -1956).15

Figure 3.10 – Vedantam Lakshminarayana Satry photographed in Madras, c. 1955.

Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives

14
“Vempati Venkata Narayana,” Accessed June 2, 2011.
http://www.kuchipudi.com/personalities/person2
15
See for example, Jonnalagadda 1996; Sarma 2002; Soneji 2004.

82
Though he was born in Kuchipudi, relatively little is known about Sastry’s life. More recent

biographical sketches report that though Vempati Venkatanarayana trained him in the traditions

of Bhamakalapam, he was always on the move, touring with his troupe or teaching, and was

rarely to be found in the village (Sarma 2002). As a dancer, Sastry is remembered for his

curiosity and his admiration for different genres of dance. He is rumored to have travelled to

Tanjavur in 1921 specifically to study Bharatanatyam. After failing to secure a guru, Sastry

returned to his village where he began interacting with devadasis who lived in the area. As a

teacher, Sastry was famous for his creativity, but also for his quirks. All of his students who were

interviewed for the Nartanam commemorative issue on Sastry recall his specific taste for a

certain kind of tobacco found in Pagolu, a town over twenty kilometers to the south of

Kuchipudi. In their remembrances of Sastry, many note the thrill of training under him as he

fashioned a solo dance repertoire. One dancer, Joysula Seetarama Sastry remembers the

hopefulness that Sastry brought to an otherwise struggling village with his revolutionary ideas on

Kuchipudi dance.

Almost everyone in Kuchipudi had the same kind of training as I had.

Learn the old traditional Kuchipudi kalapam and yaksaganam either from
one’s parent or guru, learn music from another guru and ultimately land up
with Vedantam. That was because of two reasons. One was that it was
new and was thrilling. There was an individual satisfaction that you were a
dancer. In yaksaganas you were one among many and for a long time you
had to be satisfied only with minor roles. There was a second more
important reason though: this new dance that Vedantam taught might earn
us our livelihood. More and more individuals wanted to learn that so they
could make a living. Anyway, chances in yaksagana were dwindling.
These reasons prompted all of us to go to Sastry. (Sastry 2002, 42)

At a time when Kuchipudi repertoire revolved around theatrical natya-based genres such

as the kalapam, Sastry fashioned a solo Kuchipudi repertoire, most likely from interactions with

courtesans, that incorporated far more nrtya and nrtta than had previously existed in the practice.
83
He expanded the scope for Kuchipudi performance by adding items from a variety of genres

such as pada varnam, varṇam, swara pallavi, jathi swaram, swara jathi, aṣtapadi, javaḷi, and

padam (ibid.). The variety of genres in his repertoire also reveals two further departures from the

standard narrative on Kuchipudi’s development. Sastry’s documented repertoire included pieces

in languages besides Telugu, such as Marathi. More important, based on even the narrowest

interpretations on his life and his contribution to Kuchipudi, it is clear that he was the first from

the village to teach female students.

WOMEN, SOLO DANCE, AND SASTRY’S LEGACY

An oft-cited fact about Sastry’s life is that he was so well-regarded in his specialty, the

art of abhinayam (expression), that the famous and world-renowned devadasi and Bharatanatyam

dancer, Balasaraswati, studied with him for a time. The pair were pictured in 1948 when Sastry

was in Madras to receive an honor on behalf of the Madras Government from the soon-to-be

Chairman of the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi and Chief Justice of Madras, P.V. Rajamannar.

Figure 3.11 – Balasarawati and Lakshminarayana Sastry in Madras, 1948

Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives
84
The meeting and subsequent relationship that this picture memorializes has been repeatedly cited

in Kuchipudi historiography as evidence of the high regard in which those in the

“establishment,” such as Balasaraswati, held Sastry (e.g. Jonnalagadda 1996; Sarma 2002;

Kothari 2001). Following this meeting, Balasaraswati began to study abhinayam under Sastry.

Two particular mentions of Sastry’s expertise in abhinayam in her memoirs appear regularly in

Kuchipudi histories:

Lakshminarayana Sastry opened great new vistas for me, especially in

varnam improvisation. He shared his immense knowledge, and in a very
real sense, gave me the confidence to attempt those things I do today.
(Quoted in Knight 2010, 139)

Sastry was expert in the interpretation of padams. He spoke his own

idiom. He would ask: “Can you do this varnam? How would you cast its
horoscope?” Sastri commanded me to cast the horoscope of a Todi
Varnam one day. I did it without any repetitions. He responded by asking
me to give it up and stick to padams! “They are your family heritage,” he
said, “and with someone like your mother singing padams, you can have
the whole world in your hands.” (Quoted in Raman and Ramachandran
1984, 36)

This final statement reveals a great deal about what Sastry believed were the trends in the

classical dance world. He saw the potential for great success within the hereditary courtesan

tradition of expressive solo dance set to lyrical music. The courtesan traditions, which relied on

compositional and performance genres like the padam and varnam differed from the Kuchipudi

tradition in their basic format (solo female vs. group male) but also in their aesthetic philosophy

(nrtya vs. natya) which placed a far greater emphasis on the exploration of an emotion state

(rasa) than on plot development. Furthermore, judging by his comments on Balasaraswati’s

musical accompaniment, Sastry recognized the importance of music and, in particular, the voice

85
in the success of a dancer’s career.16 Kuchipudi, as a kalapam tradition, also relied upon the

voice, but more in terms of vācchikam (speech) rather than song. Bala’s style, which Sastry

began to emulate in his reformulation of Kuchipudi, communicated through a combination of

āngikam (body language) and sātvikam (expression of emotions).

By incorporating courtesan performance genres and techniques into his performance

practice, Sastry was making a calculated move away from his own heritage and towards what he

saw as a more marketable dance style. Rather than long pieces like Bhamakalapam that explored

a character’s evolving mental state through dialogue and limited repetition or embellishment,

Sastry and his students performed shorter, verse-refrain songs that explored a single emotional

state through facial expressions or abhinayam. His performance and teaching manuals also reveal

an added emphasis on hastābhinayam (expression through hand gestures).

Sastry’s style communicated less through speech and language and more through a

conglomeration of dramatic devices like facial expressions (abhinayam), hand gestures

(hastabhinayam or mudras) and last, but not least, music. Indeed, the musical style and song

forms that Sastry incorporated into the Kuchipudi performance practice in the early twentieth

century utilized the communicative potential of another fast-evolving expressive medium:

Karnatic classical music.

16
Balasaraswati came from a family of courtesans and hereditary performers. Her mother,
Jayammal (1890-1967), an accomplished singer, often accompanied Bala in performance. See
Knight 2010 for further biographical information. Her brothers T. Viswanathan (1927-2002) and
T. Ranganathan (1925-1987) were extremely successful classical musicians in their own right,
playing flute and mridangam, respectively.
86
KARNATIC MUSIC AND KUCHIPUDI DANCE

Recent research by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists like Amanda Weidman

(2006) and Lakshmi Subramaniam (2006) has documented the classicization of music in South

India with a focus on vocal music. These studies have paid particular attention to the

codification, standardization, and institutionalization of Karnatic classical music, particularly

song genres, in Madras. Judging by Sastry’s repertoire, it is clear that he observed the parameters

that defined classical Karnatic music practice when reformulating Kuchipudi practice. To be

sure, by incorporating Karnatic varnams and kīrtanams into Kuchipudi practice, Sastry made a

case for Kuchipudi’s classicism on the basis of its musical repertoire.

Subramanian notes that in the process of constructing a repertoire, the Madras Music

Academy relegated certain song forms such as padams, javalis and other dance-related genres to

a lesser status in the classical Karnatic tradition because of their expressive and sensual content

(Subramanian 2006, 149; see also Soneji 2010). The relative classicism of song genres such as a

javali (considered “light” classical) in comparison with a varnam (considered classical “art”

music) has faded as we enter the twenty-first century, but the differentiation in the vocal styles

suitable to each remains. The discourse surrounding Kuchipudi musical accompaniment provides

an index to the classicism of Karnatic musical practice, on the one hand, and a comparison to

Bharatanatyam musical practices championed by dancers like Balasaraswati, on the other. The

considerations in fashioning Kuchipudi music, discussed below, reveal a balancing act between

adhering to the principles of Karnatic musical practice while maintaining the expressive potential

of the voice.

87
SINGING FOR KUCHIPUDI DANCE

While I was in the field, particularly in Chennai, I often came across comments about the

musical accompaniment in Kuchipudi that prescribed certain vocal styles to dance. One

conversation between the primary guru at the Kuchipudi Arts Academy (KAA) in Chennai,

Vempati Ravi, and a senior student, Prabha Ramesh, differentiated between the amount of

“classical” appropriate for a kaĉēri (music concert) and for a dance performance (Vempati Ravi

and Prabha Ramesh, pers. comm.). The distinction, in this case, was inherent in the emphasis

placed on virtuosic ornamentation (gamakas) or, alternatively, on the text. Ramesh demonstrated

to me how one should sing for dance, with a smooth vocal line and limited ornaments in contrast

with kaceri or classical Karnatic concert style, which she caricatured by pulling at the skin by her

voice-box and shaking it. Excessive ornamentation undermined the communication of the

bhāvam or emotion, she explained, so too much ornamentation might be fine in a music concert,

but was inappropriate for dance.

In an interview with Pemmaraju Surya Rao, the lead vocalist for the KAA in the 1960s,

he described the direction he received from dance gurus when accompanying a performance in

exactly the same terms. In his time, he told me, he was criticized for sounding too kaceri and

obscuring the bhavam, but he was hired because he had musical credentials as a classically

trained Karnatic singer (Pemmaraju, pers. comm.). This philosophy towards the music in

Kuchipudi, particularly in light of Sastry’s comments on Balasaraswati’s respected musical

accompanists, reveals how Karnatic music and Karnatic musicians underwrote Kuchipudi’s

classicism, particularly in Madras. As another informant and Chennai-based dance critic, V.A.K.

88
Ranga Rao once explained to me, the musical accompaniment in early-to-mid-century Kuchipudi

(pre-KAA) was, simply put, classically bankrupt.

Back then, they didn’t follow rāgam and tālam. All the music in
Kuchipudi tended towards Mohana (ragam) and relied upon stock tunes.
To be taken seriously in Madras, Kuchipudi had to evolve its music as
well as its dance. (Ranga Rao, pers. comm.)

At a time when music was becoming increasingly important to the cultural ethos of

postcolonial Madras (see Hancock 2008; Rudisill 2007; Subramanian 2006; Weidman 2006), it

would appear that Sastry recognized that dance was quickly becoming a composite art form. As

mentioned above, Kuchipudi, as it existed at the turn of the century, relied primarily on speech

with a little singing, but certainly not the kind of professionalized, concert-hall singing that was

quickly becoming the standard in both music and dance performances in Madras.

It comes as little surprise then, considering how much time Sastry spent in Madras, that

as early as 1938, a teaching manual for a young man in Kuchipudi village by the name Vempati

Satyanarayana (better known as Vempati Pedda Satyam, see Chapter 4 for further discussion)

reveals a predilection towards song-genres culled from courtesan traditions and mejuvāṇi (salon,

entertainment dance) practices. With the exception of Bhamakalapam, all of these pieces

belonged to female dance traditions, and most characterized a solo female character or nayika.

The variety of songs, ragams and talams featured in the manual speak to the influence of

Karnatic music practice, particularly in light of Ranga Rao’s comments (above) on the overuse

of Mohana ragam in mid-century Kuchipudi dance. Furthermore, the inclusion of genres and

ragams like Gopika Geetam in Behag suggests the influence of Hindustani (North Indian)

classical music.

89
 SONG GENRE RAGAM/TALAM
Gopika Geetham Behag/Adi
Adhyatma Ramayana Kirtanam Yadukula Kambhogi/Adi
Tarangam Kalyani-Kambhoji-Bhairavi-Bhopal/
Triputa-Jhumpa-Roopakam-Eka
Krishna Leela Jhanjati-Bhairavi/Adi
Ashtapadi (“Deerasameeray”) n/a
Varnam (“Samini Ramanave”) Khamas/Adi
Javali (“Tattara Padanela”) Kalyani/Adi
Swarajathi Bilahari/Adi
Genre not noted (“Vinave Yashoda”) Kambhogi
Genre not noted (“Madhava Darshanameera”) Sree
Shabdam (“Ramayana Shabdam”) n/a
Annamayya Kirtanam n/a
Bhamakalapam (excerpts) n/a

Table 3.1 – Repertoire list based on Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry’s Teaching Manual for
Vempati Satyanarayana. Kuchipudi village. Dated 24 September 193817

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND KUCHIPUDI HISTORY

Sastry’s sustained interaction with and appreciation of performance practices which were

historically associated with women first dawned on me before I came across this performance

manual, early in my fieldwork while I was in New Delhi at the SNA Archives. At the Archives I

came across a few photographs of Sastry among a larger collection from around the time the

Akademi was formed in 1953. I recognized these photos immediately—practically every

published history of Kuchipudi featured them (see figures 3.10 and 3.11 above). The rest of the

photos in the album, however, were of women, and of courtesan women at that. Some of the

faces, like Balasaraswati’s, for example, were familiar to me.

17
Also see compiled repertoire list in commemorative Nartanam issue on Sastry, vol. 2 no. 2,
2002.
90
 According to the photo archivist, Pritpal Singh, soon after Independence, it was decided

that a team of photographers should be sent to various locales across India to take pictures of

important elderly artists and teachers for posterity. This philosophy remains central to current

archiving practices at the SNA today as SNA’s video archivist, whom I came to know as

Rajeshji, explained to me. Essentially, the SNA receives a tip that an elderly guru in a major

and/or classical style is nearing the end of his/her life and must be photographed (now

videotaped) to preserve the art. 18 Alternatively, if an artist becomes popular for incorporating

something new or innovating a tradition, he/she also warrants documentation by the SNA.

In Sastry’s case, it would appear that he was included among a group of aging artists in

Madras. Judging by the available information about his life, he was photographed when he was

in Madras to receive the “Kuchipudi Natya Kalanidhi” award from the Madras government. It is

apparent from these photo records that as of the 1940s, Sastry was well known in Madras and

was therefore included in the SNA photo project that chronicled the dance heritage of Madras.

Interestingly, none of the dancers photographed with Sastry was affiliated with the soon-to-be-

dominant institutionalized settings for dance in Madras (e.g., Kalakshetra Academy). I found not

a single picture of the otherwise ubiquitous Rukmini Devi Arundale or those in Madras whose

names have since become synonymous with the “revival” of courtesan dance practices. The

album in which Sastry was featured also did not include any other men or Kuchipudi dancers.

18
A visit to the SNA website confirms the terminology I received from Rajeshiji. The term
“classical” does not appear on the page listing the SNA’s annual awardees in music, dance and
theater. Sangeet Natak Akademi Puruskar, http://sangeetnatak.org/sna/awardeeslist.htm
91
“A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK”

According to my sources in Kuchipudi village and circulated in written accounts,

Kuchipudi gurus had absolutely “taught devadasis,” but there was no exchange wherein

courtesan repertoire made its way into or was shared by Kuchipudi practice (Appa Rao 1958;

Kanakalingeswara Rao 1966; Kothari 2001). In 2002, the dance journal, Nartanam, published a

special tribute issue on Sastry, which featured a number of interviews with Sasty’s former

students. Without exception, each of these accounts describes Sastry as a trailblazer as he

fashioned a solo repertoire for Kuchipudi. Many of the accounts explicitly mention his

fascination and close interaction with courtesans and their solo dance traditions. One of Sastry’s

early male students from Kuchipudi, Joysula Seetarama Sastry, reminisces,

In Thanjavur, he insisted on our seeing Bharatanatyam performances. He

would immediately come back and say “solo” dance was the best for
Kuchipudi also…He was a keen observer. Wherever we went he never
missed an opportunity to witness other dancers performing. In
Ramachandrapuram we went to perform. There was a day of rest. There
was Annabathula Chitti who learnt from Sastry garu for two years. Her
mother wanted to do abhinayam for Sastry garu and he obliged. If there
was something new in any dance programme, he would immediately
capture and use it in his own work. He never missed a mejuvani in the
vicinity of Machilipatnam. Even the devadasi dancers wanted him as the
guest of the evening because, if he appreciated their programme, there
would be a certificate! (Sastry 2002, 44-45)

These statements reveal an important aspect of Sastry’s creative process. According to

his students, Sastry incorporated dance elements that he saw and liked into his own repertoire.

More importantly, this description reveals the personal relationships Sastry maintained with

other artists, including courtesans. Recent studies on the female traditions of Andhra have

identified two contemporaries of Sastry’s who trained with him at some point in their dance

92
careers: Duggirala Jagadamba (c. 1911-1979) and Pandiri Venkataratnam (c. 1905-1971) (Sarma

2002; Soneji 2004). In his discussion of these women and their affiliation with the men of

Kuchipudi village, Soneji posits that it was through his interaction with these women and

potentially others like them, that Sastry was able to expand “his own repertoire of padams,

javalis and padavarnams” (Soneji 2004, 87).

None other than Vempati Chinna Satyam (b. 1929), founder of the KAA and a student of

Sastry’s, summarizes his guru’s creative process in ways that support this view of Sastry’s

influences:

Everything was new and his own…All the items he did were more or less
his own. He borrowed heavily from all over. From Marathi, Tamil,
Sanskrit, traditional Telugu songs – everything that he can lay his hands
on. He was also a great experimentalist. In fact in the transition days, he
was doing “Madhuranagarilo” and other light songs. But if he were to go
only in that line he would not have been remembered now. What he did
was entirely in the classical mould. He was responsible for giving ‘solo’
its rightful place in our dance scenario. (Satyam 2002, 29-30)

How could everything be “new and his own” and “borrowed”? And more importantly, where

exactly was Sastry borrowing from? Where did Sastry learn the pieces like “’Madhuranagarilo’”

and other light songs” or the padams and varnams Satyam describes learning from him? Not a

single account of Sastry’s life or of the Kuchipudi history written since ever openly

acknowledges that he must have had to learn (or borrow) the solo repertoire from somewhere

and from someone before he himself could teach it.

Despite the hesitation on the part of historians to discuss Sastry and the history of

Kuchipudi in such terms, it is clear that the original source of Kuchipudi’s solo repertoire was

not the men of Kuchipudi village, but the courtesan women, also referred to today as

kalāvantulu, with whom they interacted. I said as much in an interview in Hyderabad with Prof.
93
Sarma, the editor of the Nartanam dance journal and, in response, he described the documented

history between courtesan women and the men of Kuchipudi as a game of “hide and seek”

(Sarma, pers. comm.). Sarma speculated that the parties involved “could not openly admit” to the

nature of the interaction (ibid.). Though he agreed with my critique of the historiography, he

provided delicate if diplomatic explanations to my questions as to why the courtesan contribution

is so thoroughly obfuscated in the standard history of Kuchipudi. Skirting the obvious issue of

sexual commerce that inevitably arises in any discussion regarding courtesans and the men who

associated with them, the artistic relationship between these two groups, according to Sarma, is

best understood as a “give and take affair” though, as he readily admitted, this has “rarely been

noted in histories on Kuchipudi” (ibid).

While it is difficult to trace Sastry’s influences, courtesan or otherwise, the silences

surrounding modern Kuchipudi’s roots can be explained by a number of factors, within

regionalist as well as nationalist histories. Most obviously, Kuchipudi claims to classicism

emphasize the form’s exclusive, male, high-caste, highly religious heritage. To acknowledge that

the dance form as we know it today descends from an entirely different performance practice

would, in many ways, undermine the legitimacy of such claims. Furthermore, as Vissa Appa

Rao’s arguments for Kuchipudi’s classicism reveal, and as I discuss in greater detail in Chapter

5, a significant portion of the debate centered on the differentiation of a Telugu tradition from a

Tamil. This also explains, to a large degree, how and why Satyabhama and Bhamakalapam

function as metonyms for Kuchipudi— because it was crucially important that Kuchipudi stem

from a non-courtesan performance practice in order to establish contradistinction to

Bharatanatyam.

94
 However, even if we put aside the regionally/linguistically specific motivations behind

these historiographical practices, Kuchipudi’s patchwork construction of authenticity is entirely

consistent with the larger processes by which classicism was articulated in dance across India in

the twentieth century. An essential aspect of the process of classicization, as Mathew Allen

(1997) describes it in his article “Rewriting the Script for Indian Dance,” involved distancing

these forms from their hereditary practitioners (in the north, the Muslim ustad; in the south, the

courtesan). This dissociation from hereditary musicians/dancers and (re)association with

members of the upper-caste/class was justified by reformers in religious and social terms. The

argument for the cooption of these traditions and subsequent disenfranchisement of hereditary

practitioners went something like this: Dance and music are devotional Hindu practices yet, due

to their current practitioners usage, the religious message has become obscured. Therefore, for

the sake of protecting/preserving/promoting India’s culture, these traditions must be revivified in

the hands of the religiously knowledgeable (read: Brahmins).

In his recently edited volume on Bharatanatyam, Davesh Soneji both elaborates on and

concisely summarizes Allen’s earlier examination of the processes of modernity with rendered

Bharatanatyam “a seamless and homogenous cultural artifact, comfortably reconciled with the

logic and structures of global capitalism” (Soneji 2010, xi). In reading these emerging critical

histories of Bharatanatyam it becomes strikingly apparent that Kuchipudi historiography relies

upon identical rhetorical devices. Soneji’s cutting analysis lays bare the misogynistic and

paternalistic epistemologies that have driven the “narratological conventions” which

disenfranchised hereditary artists, particularly courtesan women (ibid.). Indeed, as Kuchipudi’s

missing women came into clearer focus for me, so too did the extent to which Soneji’s critique of

95
Bharatanatyam historiography could easily be extended to dance historiography across South

India, if not India as a whole:

Tropes such as the ‘fall of the devadasi’ and ‘temple to theatre,’ for
example, are consistently used to index idealized, nationalized, and easy
claims to moments in Bharatanatyam’s heterogeneous and ambiguous
pasts. Embedded in these everyday statements are historical and aesthetic
presumptions about both dance’s past and present. The mythopoeic
‘histories’ of Bharatanatyam, whether they make use of Sanskrit aesthetics
and Puranic texts, or forge links between the contemporary dancer and the
ancient ‘dancing girl’ figurines of Mohenjodaro, threaten to obfuscate the
social history of the dance, largely in order to enable a continuous view of
Indian culture. (ibid.)

In Kuchipudi’s case, homogeneity relied on related, but different tropes such as the iconicization

of Satyabhama or the historicized mythology surrounding the village and the Brahmin men

residing there.

Kuchipudi’s identity as the Telugu classical dance style, however, has never been as

stable as Bharatanatyam’s (see Chapter 6), even if we take Sastry’s biographies at face value. To

be sure, despite what Kuchipudi historians have since made of his contribution to Telugu dance

culture, Sastry’s adoption of solo female repertoire in the early twentieth century was only one

facet of his creative reaction to new articulations of modernity in Indian dance. The following

section contextualizes Sastry’s experimentation with courtesan repertoire within his larger

contribution to South Indian dance in the early twentieth century.

SASTRY IN CONTEXT

From about 1916-1947 Sastry travelled across India with his troupe performing in cities

as far-flung from Kuchipudi as Pune and Bhopal. It was during these extended tours that Sastry

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interacted with and observed a variety of performers such as Uday Shankar, the erstwhile prince

of Oriental dance in India. As others (e.g., Chakravorty and Gupta 2010; Coorlawala 1992;

Erdman 1987; Khokar 1983; and O’Shea 2003) have already discussed, Shankar, along with

western dancers like Ram Gopal and Ruth St. Denis, played a pivotal role in introducing and

popularizing Indian dance in the West. By incorporating dance techniques and genres from all

over the sub-continent, Shankar’s style represented a pan-Indian identity and a consciously

modern cosmopolitan aesthetic.

As Erdman explains in her work on Shankar’s performance practice, his internationalized

technique functioned primarily on a principle of translation. In response to his experiences

dancing abroad, Shankar developed a style and a syntax whose essential aim was to

communicate across linguistic, cultural and national lines. Erdman notes that Shankar trained

“his non-Indian dancers to move like Indians” (Erdman 1987, 68). This method emphasized

communication through mudras (hand gestures) as well as abhinayam (facial expressions) to

express moods.

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 Figure 3.12 – Uday Shankar’s use of mudras
Photo courtesy of the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts

In other words, Shankar offered a working definition of “Indianness” in dance both to the

West and to India. His programs were carefully planned, intricately staged affairs with elaborate

costuming (see below), but did not involve full-length performances or dance-dramas that

functioned on Indian aesthetic principles of “cyclicality, repetition, and acceptance of ambiguity”

(Erdman 1987, 69). Instead, relying on the expressive “Indianness” imparted to his dancers,

Shankar popularized “short thematic dances…rather than long narratives because like paintings,

their titles gave most of the theme away, and the beauty of the dancers and their movements

carried the rest” (ibid., 75).

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 Figure 3.13 – Shankar’s elaborate costumes. Left as a Nautch girl (c. 1920s) Right as
Shiva in Tandava Nrittya (c. 1930)
Photos courtesy of the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts

Though they did not meet until late in his life, Sastry’s interactions with Uday Shankar

are particularly emphasized in most biographical accounts (e.g. Sarma 2002; Jonnalagadda

1996). These Kuchipudi historians often highlight Shankar’s appreciation for Sastry’s rendition

of Bhamakalapam at a performance in Hyderabad as an endorsement of Sastry’s appeal to

cosmopolitan audiences (Sarma 2002). Whether or not the pair interacted on a personal level,

Sastry’s performance records, especially from his time in Hyderabad, reveal striking similarities

to the programming Shankar and his company were popularizing. Telugu newspaper accounts

and interviews during Sastry’s tours suggest a dual agenda: to cast Kuchipudi as an

underappreciated, but pan-Indian dance form while aligning Sastry with Orientalist symbols of

modernity like Uday Shankar:

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 Excerpt from
“Vedantam Laxminarayana Sastry and His Troupe’s Dances”
Published in The Hyderabad Bulletin, Tuesday, October 14, 1941

The Oriental Dance Recital given by Thandava Krishna and Party

(Kuchipudi Dancers) under the auspices of the Hyderabad Fine Arts
Society at Boy Scouts Headquarters Secunderabad on 12-10-1941 was a
great success. The highly cosmopolitan gathering that assembled at the
Boy Scouts Headquarters, Secunderabad is itself an eloquent proof of the
universal popularity of the dancers and their excellence of their
performance as well as the promise they hold for the future. The language
of dancers is the language of humanity and it transcends all barriers of
narrow provincialism and communalism. Although the songs that formed
the background of these dancers were in Telugu yet many of those present
on the occasion who did not understand the language could easily grasp
the spirit of the dances. The school of dance which these dancers
represent, the Kuchipudi School, is a very ancient one. It is surprising that
sufficient publicity has not been given up till now to this school in the
country. The party will proceed after finishing their engagements here to
Bombay, Indore, Agra and Delhi en route Almora where they will spend
some time at the Art Centre founded by Uday Shankar.19

A side-by-side comparison of each dance master’s concert programs (below) further suggests

that Sastry sought to emulate Shankar’s programmatic strategies, organizing his performances

around Orientalist representations of Hindu mythology.

19
Sarma 2002, 83.

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 Figure 3.14 – A 1932 program by Shankar in Germany offered a typical program sequence.20

20
Erdman 1987, 79.

101
 Figure 3.15 – A 1941 program by Sastry
in Hyderabad offered a typical program sequence.21

21
Sarma 2002, 95-97.

102
THE THIRD ACT

The modifications Sastry introduced to Kuchipudi, as exhibited in his teaching manuals

and performance records, reveal a perceptive awareness of broader trends in Indian dance and

musical worlds. Sastry was simultaneously trying on many new identities for Kuchipudi dance.

Indeed, his experimentation with so-called “Oriental” themes appears to have occurred

concurrently with his incorporation of courtesan song genres like padams and varnams into

Kuchipudi repertoire. However, Sastry was not alone in experimenting and expanding the

Kuchipudi repertoire. According to Kuchipudi historiography, the dancer who is said to have

brought Kuchipudi back to its all-male, dance-drama roots ushered in the third and final stage in

Kuchipudi’s early twentieth-century evolution. Chinta Venkataramayya (c. 1860-1949), a

contemporary of Sastry’s, is credited by Kuchipudi historians for revitalizing the traditions of the

village. As I discuss in the following chapter, under Venkataramayya’s direction, the Kuchipudi

men reformulated their performance practice towards modern theatrical trends in South India.

While Sastry was developing a solo repertoire and touring across India, the changes

Venkataramayya was introducing into the village traditions ultimately ushered in a new era of

performance repertoire that led Kuchipudi straight to the silver screen.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

SIGNS AND SYMBOLS: KUCHIPUDI AND THE SOUTH INDIAN FILM INDUSTRY

"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire—it tells you how to
desire."
– Slavoj Zizek

Figure 4.1 – Still from Yogi Vemana (1947). Dance choreography by Vedantam Ragavayya
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

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PARSI THEATER AND KUCHIPUDI DANCE

By the time Lakshminarayana Sastry was touring India presenting new repertoire with his

troupe, the situation in Kuchipudi village was also changing rapidly. As Sastry branched out

from Kuchipudi’s kalapam tradition to incorporate solo repertoire, a contemporary by the name

of Chinta Venkataramayya reshaped the village kalapam tradition into an increasingly popular,

multi-character, dramatic format known as yaksaganam. The period during which both Sastry

and Venkataramayya were working, from approximately 1880-1940, is characterized by

Kuchipudi historians (e.g., Kothari 2001; Jonnalagadda 1996; Sarma 2009) as an era during

which economic conditions in the village forced the men of Kuchipudi to expand their repertoire

into a variety of new genres.1 At the turn of the twentieth century, there were three men in

particular whose individual careers garnered acclaim for the village and whose contributions

have since come to define the tradition practiced there.

Genre Kuchipudi Guru

Kalapam (solo-small group) Vempati Venkatanarayana (c. 1871–1935)
Kelika (solo) Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry
(c. 1886–1956)
Yaksaganam (large group) Chinta Venkataramayya (c. 1860–1949)

Table 4.1 – The Kuchipudi “Trinity”2

As discussed in Chapter 3, through his performances of a popular piece known as

Bhamakalapam, Vempati Venkatanarayana established a reputation among local patrons and

audiences for the dancing traditions practiced by the men of Kuchipudi village (ibid.). Working

1
Jonnalagadda 1996 and Sarma 2009, for example.
2
As described in Jonnalagadda 1996 and Sarma 2009.
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at approximately the same time as Venkatanarayana, Sastry and Chinta Venkataramayya were

also trained in the kalapam tradition, but by the turn of the century, both men were actively

branching out into otherwise popular genres. Through their efforts, by the turn of the century, the

Kuchipudi dance tradition was developing in two distinct directions: as an abstracted third-

person, representative dance style under Sastry, and as a dramatic, enacted first-person theatrical

form under Venkataramayya. While Sastry was influenced by the growing interest in female

dance traditions in cities like Madras, a number of studies have noted that Venkataramayya drew

his inspiration from theatrical models popularized by drama companies from North India, like

the Parsi theater company (also known as Company Natak), whose turn-of-the century tours

influenced regional performance traditions (ibid.).

The term “Parsi” refers to the followers of the prophet Zarathustra who immigrated from

Iran to North India over a thousand years ago. A socially and economically prominent

community of Parsis settled in Bombay in the eighteenth century where their exposure to

colonial culture, like English language theater, prompted them to organize the first modern

theater companies in South Asia. From approximately 1860–1930, Parsi theater “blended certain

European practices of stagecraft and commercial organization with Indic, Persian and English

stories, music and poetry” formulated along the lines of “regional traditions such

as…yaksagana(m) (Hansen 2003, 381). The performance practice of the Parsi theater groups

featured a syncretism that blended urban and rural forms while fostering the growth of language-

based identities in dance and theater across South, Southeast and East Asia (see Bruin 2001;

Cohen 2001; Hansen 1999; 2003; Killick 2003; Seizer 2005). As Soneji notes in his study of

Kuchipudi village,

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 In the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries professional theatre
companies from Dharwad and Bombay became extremely popular in
various parts of Andhra. The Parsi theatre in particular, seems to have had
a great effect on the transformation of dramatic performances at
Kuchipudi. . . . Many hereditary Kuchipudi artists also participated in the
Parsi theatre, and learned the rather peculiar hybrid music used in these
performances. The term pārsi meṭṭu (Parsi tunes) was used to refer to this
“new music” by the traditional Kuchipudi artists. It was at this time that
Venkataramayya…began to reach beyond the traditional kalapam
repertoire and decided to present longer, narrative-oriented yakshaganas in
response to the popularity of the Parsi theatre. (Soneji 2004, 165)

Under Venkataramayya’s direction, an elaborately costumed, theatrical form developed

in contradistinction to what Sastry was fashioning through a highly stylized movement

vocabulary. From approximately 1896–1936, the performers of Kuchipudi village combined

their talents to form one troupe, named the Venkatarama Natya Mandali, and began

incorporating existing yaksaganam texts as well as newer compositions into their performance

repertoire (Sarma 2009).

Figure 4.2 – Venkatarama Natya Mandali, Kuchipudi Village, c. 1930

Photo courtesy of Pasumarti Ramalinga Sastry

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Venkataramayya headed a troupe closely modeled after the Parsi theater companies that could be

identified as specific to the geographical area—as elision which arguably led to the synonymity

of the dance style, the dancers and the place known as Kuchipudi. As the troupe toured Andhra,

Venkataramayya drew inspiration from what historian Nagabhusan Sarma describes as

“contemporary theatre” like the Parsi genres in order to remain broadly appealing to a diverse

audience (Sarma 2009, 15).

The changes both Sastry and Venkataramayya introduced into the Kuchipudi practice are

most parsimoniously understood in retrospect, mostly in light of the significance dance history

bestows upon them today as turning points in the tradition. What is often missed, however, and

what this chapter explores is how influences like Parsi theater not only shaped the Kuchipudi

genre into a theatrical form, but also facilitated the formulation of a Telugu cultural identity vis-

à-vis the portrayal of Kuchipudi dance in films.

Recent studies on early twentieth-century film in South India have begun to examine the

ways in which new forms of mass media like film, gramophone recordings and radio, adopted

live performance genres such as theater and dance (Baskaran 1991; Hughes 2007, Soneji 2011).

In doing so, hereditary dancers and musicians, like the men of Kuchipudi as well as women from

courtesan backgrounds, were recruited into these new industries based in Madras. As South

Indian film scholars M.S.S. Pandian (1996) and Theodore Baskaran (1981; 1991; 2009) have

both noted, these hereditary performers were recruited into films at precisely the same moment

that the movement to reform courtesan practices was gaining momentum.

It was within the midst of patriarchal reform ideology in Madras, which replaced the

courtesan with the high-caste male as the standard bearer in both classical dance and music, that

a Brahmin male Kuchipudi dancer by the name of Vedantam Raghavayya (1919–1971) was
108
recruited to the burgeoning city of Madras to choreograph a dance sequence in the film Raitu

Bidda (1939). A student of both Sastry and Venkataramayya’s in Kuchipudi village, by the

1930s Raghavayya had already made a name for himself in Madras as a performer, both in

theater and in dance performances under Sastry’s direction (Thota 2009). Over the course of the

next thirty years—roughly 1939-1969—Raghavayya, along with other dancers-turned-film

choreographers from Kuchipudi such as Vempati Satyanarayana Satyam (1922-1982), Pasumarti

Krishnamurti (1927-2004), and Vempati Chinna Satyam (b.1929), forged a direct path for

Kuchipudi dance from the village to the city.

Map 4.1 – Map of the Madras Presidency, c. 1930 3

(Kuchipudi village is about 40 km due west of Masulipatnam)

3
Rudner 1994, xxi.

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 In this chapter, I examine the processes by which these Madras-based Kuchipudi dancers

and gurus fostered a popular image of Telugu dance and a normative history for Kuchipudi

through their role as film choreographers and how these images, in turn, shaped the formulation

of the dance style as it became a circulating form. These film-dance sequences played a pivotal

role is establishing Kuchipudi’s cultural cache while circumscribing the social and ritual

functions of dance in a multilingual South Indian society. Over the course of the same thirty

years during which a Telugu cultural identity became codified and politicized (1930–1960), the

Kuchipudi movement vocabulary was circulated on celluloid. It was also during this exact same

period that Kuchipudi established itself as an institutionalized, classical dance genre in Madras.

By examining both the framing of the dance as well as the movement vocabularies utilized in

South Indian film as Kuchipudi became inscribed on the female body—as example of what

Baskaran (2009) has termed “history through the lens”—this chapter examines the various ways

in which this dance tradition was constructed as a metonym for Telugu culture.

FILM COMES TO INDIA

The cinema arrived in India on July 7, 1896 when the Lumiere brothers screened six

silent short films at the Watson Hotel in Bombay. The first Indian silent film, Raja

Harischandra, produced by Dhundhiraj Govind (Dadasaheb) Phalke, was released in 1913 in

Bombay. Sound pictures arrived to Bombay by 1931, by which time production companies in

Madras and Calcutta had also begun to release Tamil and Bengali films, respectively. The first

Telugu talkie, Bhakta Prahlada, was released in Madras in the same year, only a few months

110
after the first Indian sound picture (in Hindi) was released in Bombay, a testament to how

quickly film production technology proliferated across India.

Studies on cinema in India, particularly on Hindi-language films, have demonstrated how

the Indian film industry was born as a natural extension of the Parsi theater in Bombay (e.g.,

Ganti 2004; Hansen 2003; Kapur 1993; Mishra 2002). These studies show that “early cinema

companies were formed by Parsi theatre managers who attempted to translate their stage

successes onto celluloid” (Kapur 1993, 90–91). This translation often involved the

transplantation onto film of the same performances that the Parsi companies had featured in their

stage repertoire. As Bollywood historian, Vijay Mishra, characterizes the early development of

film in Bombay,

Localized narratives drawn from the epics would be combined with music
and mise-en-scènes that reflected both the traditional (the bucolic, the
pastoral) as well as the modern (the urban street). But what is of
significance beyond the fact that when the cinema came to India, Parsi
theater provided it with a ready-made repertoire of narratives, themes and
dialogues, is the manner in which Parsi theater creatively combined its
borrowings. What it created may be seen as a unique theater genre where
Nautanki, Raslila, and Ramlila as well as various musical and speech
styles came together. (Mishra 2002, 8-9)

Conceptually, I take Mishra’s analysis of the flow and repackaging of local

Marathi/Hindi genres into a hybridized Hindi film medium as an equally valid model for

understanding how Kuchipudi practice fed into Telugu films.

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 • Hindi-­‐
• Ramlila   Touring   • Parsi  Theatre   language  
Local   Performance   ;ilms  
Performance   • Yakshaganam   Groups • Kuchipudi   Cinema  
Traditions   • Telugu-­‐
• Harikatha   Troupe  
language  
;ilms  

Figure 4.3 – Flow chart tracing movement of local traditions into film

This flow is further corroborated if one examines the development of the Kuchipudi

tradition alongside the history of early Telugu films. The first sound picture in Telugu, Bhakta

Prahlada, produced by Hanumappa Muniappa Reddy, was released in Madras in 1931. The

screenplay was a direct adaptation of a popular stage-drama by the same name, written by

Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulu for the Surabhi Drama Company. The very first

Kuchipudi yaksaganam, also entitled Bhakta Prahlada and also based on

Ramakrishnamacharyulu’s text, was adopted by Vedala Tirunarayanacaryalu and Tiruvalikkeli

Ramanujacaryulu. This yaksaganam text borrowed and blended verses from both Bammera

Potana’s fifteenth-century classic, Mahabhagavatamu, as well as Ramakrishnamacharyulu’s

contemporary drama for the Surabhi Company.

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 By the time the Kuchipudi troupe began performing Bhakta Prahlada c. 1890, this

particular hybridized text of the Prahlada narrative had been popularized in stage performances

across Andhra. In fact, historians of Kuchipudi yaksaganam are generally in agreement that

Bhakta Prahlada was adopted into the repertoire only after it had been popularized by other

troupes in Andhra and subsequently released in print (Nagabhusan 2009, 14). Considering this, it

would be fair to surmise that the version of the Prahlada myth featured in dramatic productions

like the 1931 film, the Surabhi company’s performances as well as in yaksaganams like those

under Venkataramayya’s direction was a popular, if syncretic narrative among a number

performance groups by the turn of the century.

Early South Indian films produced in Madras and dubbed into various South Indian

languages (Telugu, Tamil, Kannada) followed this trend and drew primarily from the

mythological themes that had been reinterpreted and popularized by local drama troupes

(Velayutham 2008). In short order, however, a Marxist-reformist genre, adopted from

contemporary literary themes, developed in Bombay and in Calcutta. This genre, known as social

drama, also influenced the themes featured in Telugu films. The first film that featured

Kuchipudi did so in the context of a land-reform social drama film called Raitu Bidda (1939).

Based on the Kisan Sabha Movement, which eventually fed into the Farmer’s Movement of

India, Raitu Bidda provided a critique of the feudal or zamindari system.4 The film portrays the

4
A zamindar was an aristocrat who held large tracts of land and taxed the peasants and farmers
who lived on it. The practice became part of the structural administration of the colonial
government under the British Empire. These feudal lords built lavish palaces, lush gardens,
schools, temples and other venues of philanthropy and patronized the arts in their communities.
In most cases, zamindar families were descendants of precolonial royal lineage. Zamindars held
considerable powers within their territories: magisterial, army recruitment, revenue collection
and taxation, among others. See Keiko 2008 for further discussion of the Kisan Movement in
Andhra Pradesh.
113
zamindar as the primary antagonist in the peasant revolt struggle, but also as the primary patron

of the arts, like Kuchipudi dance. For its critique of the feudal system, the film was banned upon

release by the colonial government, though it appears to have been advertised and perhaps even

circulated to theaters beyond Madras.

Figure 4.4 – Advertisement for Raitu Bidda (1939)

Notation above poster reads “First banned film in Telugu”
Courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

Written and directed by social activist/anti-colonialist Gudavalli Ramabrahmam (1902–

1946), Kuchipudi historians name Raitu Bidda as the first Telugu movie to feature both

Kuchipudi dance and a hereditary Kuchipudi dancer. Based on limited biographical data, it

would appear that Ramabrahmam recruited Raghavayya in order to choreograph dance

114
sequences that would characterize the rural feudal setting the film dramatized. As this film

demonstrates, by 1939, the identity of the Kuchipudi tradition, as an exclusively male and rural

tradition, was already codified to such a point to buttress broader narratives on agrarian life in

Andhra Pradesh.

Raitu Bidda includes two scenes that, to a large extent, encapsulate the two primary

modes in which Kuchipudi was featured in early Telugu films. The first scene illustrates the

zamindar’s patronage of the arts and depicts a group of men performing on a raised stage with

town-folk in the audience. The dancers are introduced as “Kuchipudi bhagavatulu” performing

under the zamindar’s benevolence. The dance sequence in this scene features a piece found in the

modern-day Kuchipudi repertoire. The piece, known as “Dasavatara Shabdam” or,

“Dasavataram,” as the Kuchipudi dancers with whom I have studied commonly refer it to, relates

the ten avatārā or reincarnations of Vishnu. The history of “Dasavataram” and how it entered

Kuchipudi practice has often been shrouded in the same controversy that obscures our

understanding of the interaction between the female and male traditions in the areas surrounding

Kuchipudi village (see Chapter 3). Despite the difficulty in tracing the provenance of this dance

in the Kuchipudi practice with any certainty, the scene in Raitu Bidda, performed by Vedantam

Raghavayya himself, suggests that the lyrics, and to a large extent, even the choreography to

“Dasavataram” have remained unchanged from at least 1939 to the present.

What has changed, however, is the instrumentation and musical accompaniment to the

song. In the movie, the musical accompaniment includes percussion instruments that are

otherwise foreign to current Kuchipudi music, such as cymbals. The use of such brass-band

instruments in South India belongs to another history of caste and musical traditions entirely

(see, e.g., Herbert and Sarkissian 1997), but this scene does reveal an important aspect of
115
Kuchipudi’s history. Whether the directors knowingly or unknowingly included these otherwise

common instruments, it is clear that the scene is meant to communicate an image of Kuchipudi

dance as a colonial as well as a devotional entertainment practice. Indeed, in the broader context

of the film’s critique on British influence and colonial culture, the Kuchipudi practice depicted in

this scene is reminiscent of the Orientalist aesthetic Uday Shankar was popularizing in the early

twentieth-century (See Chapter 3). In other words, the Kuchipudi dance Raghavayya performs in

Raitu Bidda is explicitly theatrical and Hindu.

Figure 4.5 – Still from Raitu Bidda (1939). Raghaviah performing “Dasavataram”
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

The “Dasavataram” scene supports the normative history of Kuchipudi discussed in

Chapters 2 and 3. This history not only characterizes the men of Kuchipudi as respected

performers for patrons, like the zamindar, but also as high-caste, Brahmin dance teachers to

lower-caste female dancers. To this effect, another scene in the movie features Raghavayya
116
again, but this time as a dance teacher to a young female dancer. In the scene, Raghavayya is

portrayed as a humble, Brahmin guru teaching the Kshetreyya padam “Innalavale Kadamma”

(He’s Not Like He Was Before) to Sundaramma, a local bhogam, or entertainment dancer.5

Figure 4.6 – Still from Raitu Bidda (1939). Raghaviah (seated) teaching a bhogam
dancer.
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

The padam featured in this scene provides a remarkable and revelatory overlap with the

development of solo repertoire under Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry. This particular padam

was among the most popular of Sastry’s repertoire and many of his students recount learning it

from him.6 Its inclusion in this scene suggests that Raghavayya himself had learned this padam

by 1939 from Sastry or that it had entered Kuchipudi repertoire to such an extent that this

depiction could be accepted as a valid representative of dance culture in rural Andhra. By

5
There are a number of names for female dancers and courtesans in Andhra Pradesh. Each has a
slightly different resonance in terms of social position and social function. The names for these
different communities of female dancers are as follows: bhogam, sāni, devadasi, kalāvantulu.
6
See memoirs in the special issue on Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry, Nartanam, no. 2,
2002.
117
depicting Raghavayya as both a popular stage performer in his performance of “Dasavataram”

and then as a Brahmin teacher, imparting his knowledge of Kshetreyya padams to a young

female dancer, Raitu Bidda provided a visual narrative to what has since become the identity of

the Kuchipudi tradition.

FILM DANCE AND CLASSICAL DANCE

Though I had heard that a few Kuchipudi gurus had choreographed dance sequences in

Telugu films by the time I arrived in the field, I was caught off-guard when my guru in Chennai

at the Kuchipudi Arts Academy (KAA) pulled me aside one day after class to show me the

“Dasavataram” scene from Raitu Bidda, which featured his father, Vedantam Raghavayya. After

all, the KAA was founded by the same man, Vempati Chinna Satyam, who is famous in classical

dance circles for disowning students who become actresses (Hema Malini and Manju Bhargavi

being notable examples). As Vedantam Raghavayya’s son, Ramu, explained to me, however,

Kuchipudi entered the dance scene in Madras through a handful of gurus who worked as dance

choreographers in films. A broader recognition of Kuchipudi in Madras and across India was

initiated through the choreographic work of gurus, including Chinna Satyam, who left the village

and moved to the city for work in the film industry.

Most biographical accounts on Chinna Satyam and on the history of Kuchipudi

consciously skirt this period and segregate the dancers who choreographed for films into a

separate category from the institutionalized, classical world of Kuchipudi. Satyam’s official

biography, released shortly after his sixtieth birthday, includes a retrospective on his arrival to

Madras and subsequent employment in the film industry in conflicted, almost shameful tones.
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 The second phase of Vempati’s life, between 1952 and 1962, is a decade
of ups and downs. He was torn between the extremes of making a living
on the one hand and on the other, keeping the fire burning towards the
realization of his ideal of giving to the Kuchipudi style a local habitation
and a name. He was young, tall, handsome personable and talented and the
film glamour was too much to resist and there was also money in it. Not
with a view to amassing wealth, but just to keep his body and soul
together under the hard conditions he was passing through, Satyam had to
succumb to it, knowing fully well all its implications and all that had
happened to those who had gone there before him. (Andavalli and
Pemmaraju 1994, 9)

During my interviews with Chinna Satyam and other at the KAA, his involvement in the film

industry was always glossed as a transition phase, generally with a tacit apology (such as the one

above), that it was a purely economical move to choreograph for films before he became popular

as a teacher. A respected Kuchipudi historian and contemporary of Satyam’s, Prof. Nagabhusan

Sarma, went so far as to describe the era during which Satyam was working in film as the “dark

period” in his life.

Satyam doesn’t like to talk about his involvement in the films, which is
very unfortunate, because Kuchipudi was originally recognized as a dance
form, not classical necessarily, but as a dance form itself through the focus
it got in the films. The Kuchipudi men who danced and choreographed for
these films are partly responsible for this because they evoked an interest
by elitist Telugu audiences in Telugu dance. (Sarma, pers. comm.)

These comments on Chinna Satyam and Kuchipudi in films underscored the discomfort I had

noted in official historiography when it came to acknowledging that the gurus who brought the

dance form to Madras did so through their work in films. The film period in Kuchipudi history is

generally deleted because film dance is seen as a lesser, stigmatized form than classical dance.

Put another way, historians avoid mention of this period because Kuchipudi’s classicism is

undermined by its relationship to film dance.

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 Studies on South Indian film have noted the construction of the classical arts, such as

music and dance, in juxtaposition to “low-brow” and subaltern forms, both through and in film

(e.g., Baskaran 1981 and 1991, Pandian 1996). In the early years, “cinema…was treated by the

Tamil elite as being on the side of the low culture…because [it] drew its performing artistes from

the despised universe of low culture i.e. company drama” (Pandian 1996, 951). Kuchipudi, a

form of “company drama” in Madras, was cast as a rural form in early films. However, as the

movement to recognize an independent Telugu state gained movement, the depiction of

Kuchipudi in film changed drastically—a defining example of what Pandian describes as the

“recuperation of the dichotomy of high and low culture within the cinematic medium itself”

(ibid., 950). To be sure, the evolution of Kuchipudi in film over the course of the twentieth

century offers an invaluable visible archive that indexes the ways in which gurus negotiated their

own identities and reinvented Kuchipudi as classical.

Today, the aesthetic polarization between film and classical as discrete genres is an

implied, if not generally accepted dichotomy in any taxonomy of Indian dance and music. This

binary is characterized by related, but different contrasts from the folk/classical divide (see

Chapter 5), which focuses to a greater degree on the movement of the body itself. As a cultural

product, film dance is cast as a debased, Westernized form, lacking in structure and sincerity,

while classical dance is based on principles of religiosity and purity. As Satyam’s biography

reveals, involvement with the film world is perceived as a dangerous vocation. A dancer took a

risk by associating him/herself with the industry. For a dancer to participate in the film world

implies a departure from a traditional route as a teacher into a treacherous, albeit glamorous,

world.

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 Moreover, the hybridized nature of film dance—its modern pastiche of elements folk,

classical, and non-Indian—is underscored by its characterization of female characters.

Discourses on the divide between folk and classical in dance often pivot on aesthetic principles

of symmetry, coordination, and control (see Chapter 5), however, the distinction between film

and classical dance is steeped in moral judgment either for or against the female character-cum-

dancer in the film—a vivid reflection of the discourses of patriarchy and the female body in

South India. The anxiety over a female dancing body as a body no longer fulfilling a social

function in a modern Indian society appears thematically as early as Raitu Bidda and continues

into films like K. Viswanath’s Sankarabharanam (1979).7

Beginning with Raitu Bidda, the representation of Kuchipudi that we witness through the

choreographic work of Vedantam Raghavayya, Vempati Pedda Satyam, Vempati Chinna Satyam

from 1939-1969, V. Seshu Parupalli from 1975-1987, and most recently Vedantam

Venkatachalapathy in Subhapradham (2010) speaks to the shifting identities for the history of

the dance form as well as the history of the female dancer in Telugu culture. The rest of this

chapter examines the depiction of the Kuchipudi movement vocabulary vis-à-vis the

characterization of the female dancer as an index for the development of Kuchipudi as a classical

and Telugu form.

TELUGU FILMS AND THE SANI (1939–1950)

Beginning with Raitu Bidda, Telugu films that featured choreography by Kuchipudi

gurus dramatized two kinds of dance: solo female dance, generally referred to as sani or

7
See Appendix 2 for a selected list of Telugu films featuring female courtesan dance.

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courtesan dance, or male genres that explicitly referenced rural, theatrical forms such as

yaksaganam, pagati vesam or vidhi natakam. Many of these films juxtaposed the beautiful,

glamorous sani and her world with that of the ascetic Brahmin male. During this period, two

films in particular, Thygayya (1946) and Yogi Vemana (1947) cast the Brahmin man and sani as

protagonist and antagonist, respectively. In both films, the sani is characterized as an overtly

seductive figure and a threat to society as well as to the purity of the Brahmin man. Both films

also provide biographical narratives on religious-cultural figures. Thygayya, for example,

dramatizes the life of the composer-saint Tyagaraja and depicts him as a religious man who

devotes his life to glorifying God through song. In the movie his character is contrasted with a

female court dancer whose art is portrayed as sexual rather than spiritual. While Tyagaraja

performs kritis or kīrtanams, song genres that form the foundation of the Karnatic repertoire, the

sani dances to a srngara (erotic) padam composed by Jayadeva (c. 1200) wherein she portrays

Radha’s lust for Krishna.8 The foil these two characters provide for each other is made

abundantly clear: while Tyagaraja composes and performs his music sincerely, with devotion

and humility, the female dancer is depicted as flamboyant and ostentatious.

Thygayya also provides one of the few early film references to Kuchipudi as a dance style

and as a place. A scene towards the end of the movie includes a reference to a group of male

dancers as “Kuchipudi bhagavatulu,” and aligns the moral character of these men and their dance

with Tyagaraja’s in order to contrast them with the court dance culture of the sani. Though the

men themselves do not perform, they act as sutradharulu (conductors) and accompany a

performance by a group of pre-teen girls. The performance takes place outside, in an open-air

8
The name of this padam, popular in contemporary Kuchipudi performances, is “Radhika
Krishna.”
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setting with a modified stage. To provide further contrast to the court dance of the sani, the

pieces the girls present are also based on Radha-Krishna myths, but depict Krishna and Radha as

children at play, insinuating the innocence of rural life. Furthermore, while the sani’s dance does

not follow any specific movement vocabulary, the dance presented by the young girls

incorporates recognizable Kuchipudi naḍakas (bols, solkattu, etc.).

After the performance, the Kuchipudi bhagavatulu approach Tyagaraja to pay their

respects. In the dialogue that follows, the bhagavatulu request Tyagaraja to refrain from

composing in the ragam Ananda Bhairavi. In the film, the Kuchipudi men explain that if he

(Tyagaraja) does not compose any songs in this ragam, people will eventually ask him why, and

when he explains that he does not want to overlap with the music of Kuchipudi then Kuchipudi

would become famous by association. The popularity that these dancers are seeking and which

Tyagaraja already has in this scene are both described as a means to glorifying Telugu culture, or

its personification, Telugu Talli (Mother Telugu). The bhagavatulu explain in this scene that they

share Tyagaraja’s self-less devotion to their Telugu Talli—that their parampara (tradition) is not

a paid profession, but rather a kalekshāpam (pastime) when they are not tending to their agrarian

livelihoods. This scene effectively connects Kuchipudi to a broader cultural and religious history

in South India, by way of Tyagaraja, no less, while simultaneously circumscribing that history as

specific to an idealized, bucolic Telugu culture.

Though choreographed by Kuchipudi gurus and explicitly referential to the dance

tradition for which the village prides itself, both Thygayya (1946) and Yogi Vemana (1947)

reveal a curious practice in choreography for the sani’s dance sequences. It would appear that

beginning in the 1940s these gurus drew upon movement vocabularies in their film choreography

that would have been identified as Bharatanatyam rather than Kuchipudi. These film dance
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sequences also suggest that while Bharatanatyam technique signified female dance and courtesan

culture, Kuchipudi technique was associated with male group dance and a nostalgic image of the

Telugu heartland.

Though his involvement in the film industry was brief, Vempati Chinna Satyam, the

founder-director of the KAA, is arguably the guru who shaped Kuchipudi into the globally

recognized genre it is today. During his brief career in film, Satyam choreographed a handful of

sequences in the 1950s and 1960s. We can draw some conclusions on the development of the

Kuchipudi repertoire vis-à-vis the choreography of courtesan dance through an analysis of one

particular film for which he is listed as the primary choreographer. The film, Devadasu, a Telugu

adaptation of the popular Bengali novel Devdas, was released in 1953 by Vinoda Pictures and

marked Vedantam Raghavayya directorial debut.9 The 1953 version brought together a number

of Kuchipudi gurus for both the dance and music departments of the film production.

The basic plot-line of Devadas(u) features a love-triangle between the well-bred Brahmin

man, Devdas Mukherjee, his childhood love, Parvati, and the courtesan, Chandramukhi. In the

Telugu version, the scene that introduces Chandramukhi takes place in her salon as she performs

a Kshetreyya padam, “Intha Thelisiundi” (Even Knowing This Much) for her patrons.

9
Written in 1901 by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and published in 1917, Devdas has been
adapted for film both in India and in Pakistan more than a dozen times in at least five South
Asian languages. Among the most famous are the 1935 and 1955 adaptations in Hindi. A recent
Bollywood adaptation in 2002, starring screen icons Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai, was, at
the time of its release, the most expensive Bollywood film ever produced.
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 Figure 4.7 – Still from Devadasu (1953). Directed by Vedantam Ragavayya
Dance choreography by Vempati Chinna Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

In the salon scene (pictured above) the musicians are arranged in a semi-circle, with

Chandramukhi dancing in the center. Accompanied by harmonium, violin, sarod, veena, and

naṭṭuvangam (dance director) by none other than Vempati Chinna Satyam himself, the

movement vocabulary demonstrated in this scene follows formal characteristics and stylistic

features readily identifiable as Bharatanatyam. Though this scene provides a number of

Bharatanatyam elements, the most obvious feature is an aḍavu (basic step) that provides a clear

reference to Bharatanatyam and contrast to Kuchipudi. This adavu, known in both styles as “di-

di-thai,” generally acts as a closing device or a cadence in a nritta sequence.

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 Figure 4.8 – Comparison of Kuchipudi (left) and Bharatanatyam (right) di-di-thai or
cadence
Photo courtesy of Swapnasundari

When compared with the scenes from Raitu Bidda, particularly the “Dasavataram” scene that

featured the male bhagavatulu style and included the Kuchipudi di-di-thai, the conscious

reference to Bharatanatyam when depicting female courtesan dance raises a number of issues. It

is clear that even in films, Kuchipudi dance movements were coded as a male and Brahmin while

the Bharatanatyam style was specific to female and courtesan traditions.

When I questioned the choreographic choices made in Devadasu in interviews with Prof.

Sarma, who was a contemporary of Satyam in the 1950s, he reminded me that Satyam referred to

his style as Bharatanatyam, not Kuchipudi, when he first arrived in Madras because this was

more marketable. Even when he began teaching Kuchipudi openly, first at his cousin Pedda

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Satyam’s school and then later at his own academy, founded in 1958,10 he continued to call it

“Kuchipudi Bharatanatyam.” It was not until he attained a degree of popularity in Madras and

Kuchipudi was established as a female form distinct from Bharatanatyam that he started referring

to his dance as “Kuchipudi” (Sarma, pers. comm.).

Biographies on Satyam note that his first real break after arriving in Madras accompanied

the recognition of Kuchipudi across South India as a Telugu dance-drama form (e.g., Kothari

2001, Jonnalagadda 1996). This recognition was not achieved through film, or even through

teaching, but through radio. In early 1962, six years after the formation of Andhra Pradesh, a

well-known actor and producer at the Vijayawada branch of All-India Radio, Banda

Kanakalingeswara Rao (1907–1968) received a grant from the APSNA to produce a new

Kuchipudi dance-drama, Ksheera Sagara Madanam (Churning the Milky Ocean) written by the

reputed Telugu poet-composer, Devulapalli Krishna Sastry (1897-1980). Kanakalingeswara Rao

was already a primary figure in the movement to popularize Kuchipudi and is described by

Telugu historians as “the inspiring force behind the revival and development of Kuchipudi

dance” (Rama Rao 1992, 70). As others have commented, he was in many ways responsible for

cultivating the image of Kuchipudi dance as a Brahmin male religious practice (e.g.,

Jonnalagadda 1996; Soneji 2004). Soneji notes, that as

Founder of Prabhat Theatre in Eluru (West Godavari district) in 1942, Rao

was clearly a fond admirer of Sanskrit textual traditions. In 1956, Rao was
working with the All-India Radio in Vijayawada, and came to meet Chinta
Krishnamurti, son of the late Kuchipudi master Chinta Venkataramayya.
A few years later, after raising funds with the aid of the Andhra Pradesh
Sangeeta Nataka Akademi, the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanam Trust, and
the State Government, Rao helped establish the Sri Siddhendra
10
The first attempt at starting a Kuchipudi Academy failed. Chinna Satyam founded the current
Academy in 1963 in central Madras, in the Thygaraja Nagar neighborhood. As his Academy
grew, Satyam relocated to a newer, larger site in Raja Annamalai Puram in 1990.
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 Kalakshetra, a training institute in Kuchipudi village…at the highpoint in
his career as evangelist for the new “Kuchipudi tradition,” Rao went to
great lengths to insist on the legitimacy of this form, using the Sanskrit
textual canon and introducing the recitation of four nāndi slokas
(invocatory verses) from chapter five of the Natya Sastra in the
presentation of Kuchipudi dance-dramas. (Soneji 2004, 168, 194)

By 1959, Rao had already presented radio broadcasts of traditional Kuchipudi

yaksaganas, such as Bhamakalapam, Usha Parinayam, Gollakalapam and Rama Natakam

featuring Chinta Krishnamurti and soon-to-be KAA vocalist P. Surya Rao (Surya Rao, pers.

comm.). In organizing the staged production of a new Kuchipudi dance-drama in 1962, Rao

recruited Satyam to choreograph as well as oversee the adaptation of the libretto to music.

Ksheera Sagara Madam opened in Vijayawada, but was staged across Andhra and eventually

India. The production featured nationally-recognized dancers such as Yamini Krishnamurthy and

Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma while Satyam himself played the role of Shiva.

The success of Ksheera Sagara Madam marked the end of Satyam’s career in film as his

choreography was lauded across Andhra as “as a whiff of fresh air to the lovers of Kuchipudi

dance” (Andavalli and Pemmaraju 1994, 14). By the following year he had founded the KAA

and began training the daughters of Telugu Brahmin middle-class families living in Madras.

These young women were learning Bharatanatyam in the absence of a Telugu classical genre.

Among his early pupils from Madrasi Telugu families was a Bharatanatyam dancer by the name

of Rathna Papa11, who, twenty years later, would train me in Satyam’s style as my guru in the

United States.

11
Married name, Rathna Kumar.

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 Figure 4.9 – Satyam as Shiva in Ksheera Sagara Madanam (1962)
Photo courtesy of the Kuchipudi Arts Academy, Chennai

BHARATANATYAM, NOT KUCHIPUDI; KUCHIPUDI NOT BHARATANATYAM

The rising tensions between Tamil and Telugu speakers in the 1950s over the division of

the Madras Presidency into linguistic states was, no doubt, a contributing factor to the processes

of differentiation that would ensue between Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam, and an aspect of the

classicism discourse that I discuss in greater detail in the following chapter. Satyam’s

terminology in Devadasu, however, reveals an evolving aesthetic and social coding for female

and male dancing bodies in mid-twentieth-century Madras that points to the same issues of

naming I discussed in Chapter 2. The names and movement vocabularies of Bharatanatyam and
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Kuchipudi were not mutually exclusive by the time Devadasu was released. Though

choreographed by Kuchipudi gurus, female dance in films such as Devadasu drew exclusively

from the Bharatanatyam idiom. This trend is particularly striking considering all of the

choreographers involved in the production of Devadasu were students of the person responsible

for fashioning a solo, female Kuchipudi repertoire, Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry.

Considering Sastry had developed and was continuing to develop a solo, female Kuchipudi

movement vocabulary, why did the choreography of courtesan dance in films like Devadasu

emphasize a connection to Bharatanatyam?

Released at about the same time as the 1959 conference in Hyderabad that effectively

declared Kuchipudi a classical dance form on behalf of the new Telugu state, Jaya Bheri

suggests an answer to the social coding of movement vocabularies in South Indian film. The film

offers a critique of caste discrimination, but with a specific reference to caste divisions in relation

to cultural forms, like dance.

Set in the 1600s, somewhere in the rural dominions of the Vijayanagara Empire, a

talented Brahmin singer, Sastry, falls in love with a lower-caste woman, Manjulavani. On top of

her caste disadvantage, she also belongs to a morally-questionable dance-entertainment troupe.

Despite all these factors, Sastry goes against his family’s wishes and marries her. Having married

her, he is ostracized from his own high-caste community and begins touring as the singer in

Manjulavani’s troupe, performing what is described in the film as bhagavatam (drama based on

religious themes) and nāṭakam (drama on either secular or religious themes)

Over the course of the film, this troupe’s performances are juxtaposed and contrasted

with courtesan traditions, both in the court culture as well as in the rural village setting where

most of the story takes place. The comparison of the female dancers with the troupe players is
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not subtle—the scenes that offer contrast follows each other in sequence. The performances by

the troupe are portrayed as professional, religious, and readily accepted by the crowds. In both

the court and village settings, the courtesan dancers are caricatured as artistically and ethically

lacking.

In a move to provide further contrast as well as distance Kuchipudi from village

entertainment forms such as pagati vesam, with which it was often identified (see Chapter 2), the

courtesan performances reference rural traditions through sound gestures, like the nadakas

employed. The courtesan dancers perform what is termed in the film as a bhagavatam and

present a modified, parodied, bawdy version of the Kuchipudi mainstay, Bhamakalapam. This

performance enrages the villagers and leads to a riot. The troupe led by Sastry, on the other hand,

presents a refined natakam based on religious themes from the Mahabharatam. At the end of the

show, Sastry discovers that the rāja (king) Sree Krishnadevaraya himself is in attendance and

has been impressed by this rural, yet professional dance-drama. In a nod to the quality of their

art, despite their village roots, the King invites them to entertain in his court.

The juxtaposition in this scene illustrates the growth and development of rural dance

traditions, particularly under Brahmin male leadership, while the courtesan group’s performance,

though referential to the rural traditions from which Kuchipudi stems, is cast as unrefined and

vulgar. The popularity of Sastry’s troupe, a product of the same village setting as the female

traditions, points to the superiority of a patriarchal order. Sastry’s troupe exemplifies the capacity

for rural dancers with Brahmin leadership to possess artistic sincerity and professionalism and

grow beyond their position as entertainers to become artists. Stated another way, this film offers

a narrative on modern Kuchipudi’s relationship to the village by connecting the dance form to

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what are now considered folk traditions while simultaneously arguing that the quality of

Kuchipudi’s artistic expression transcends its otherwise folk roots.

After the Raja invites Sastry’s troupe to the court, however, the royal courtesan,

referenced in the film as the rājanarthaki (literally, the king’s dancer), expresses her displeasure

at being replaced by such low-class, country performers. She recognizes that Sastry, as a

Brahmin, has greater vijñānam (knowledge) about the arts than she, so she sets out to seduce him

in order to convince him to sing for her dance. Her reasoning is that that if she can knock him

down to her level and demonstrate the human weakness in his spirituality, then his art will no

longer be as powerful.12 In the seduction scene, the rajanarthaki performs a padam in the

Bharatanatyam movement vocabulary. She forces him to drink alcohol and succeeds in her

attempts at seduction.

The rajanarthaki’s dance and her character are contrasted with the female dancer in

Sastry’s troupe, his wife, Manjulavani. While Manjulavani’s performances throughout the film

are set in a light-hearted and thoroughly non-sexualized tone, the rajanarthaki’s dance

emphasizes her sexual power. In the end, Sastry loses his ability to sing and perform. As a result,

the rajanarthaki retains her position as the primary dance performer in the kingdom.

Jaya Bheri’s commentary on the relative value of Kuchipudi as a product of a

Brahminical culture in comparison to Bharatanatyam, which stems from an unethical, court

culture, provides a striking example of the ways in which the film medium participated in the

discourses about dance history and gender. For their part, Kuchipudi historians rely on similar

stigmatizations of courtesans and valorizations of Brahmin men. As discussed in Chapter 2, the

12
The protagonist-antagonist relationship between a Brahmin man and a courtesan dancer was a
common theme in a number of other films in this era, another notable example being
Vipranarayana (1954). See Appendix 2.
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Kuchipudi delegate at the 1958 All-India Dance Seminar in New Delhi, Vissa Appa Rao, opened

his paper by casting female dance traditions as debased and characterizing the men of Kuchipudi

as the saviors of Telugu dance cultures.

Indian dance was mainly of two types – religious and secular. The temple
was the centre of the religious dance, which was performed by deva-dasis
as a form of worship. The order of the deva-dasis was highly religious and
each one of them was leading an austere and dedicated life. Secular dance
was practiced by professional woman artistes, outside the temple. In
course of time, the deva-dasi order deteriorated. The religious atmosphere
of the temple and the standard and quality of Bharata Natya declined.
Consequently a movement to preserve the purity and quality of the art was
started and organized by scholars and pundits well-versed in the arts of
dance and music. Kuchipudi is the seat of one such organization. (Rao
1958, 1)13

An equally famous Kuchipudi advocate, Banda Kanakalingeswara Rao contributed to the very

first national journalistic coverage of Kuchipudi in a similar vein:

Devadasis as well as Rajanarthakis were very popular. Sensuous dances

crept in gradually. The Devadasis danced to please their patrons and lost
respect for the Deity. But the Gurus of these Devadasis were still orthodox
and maintained their purity. (Kanakalingeswara Rao 1966, 32)

The paternalism inherent in both of these commentaries resonates with the essential message of

Jaya Bheri as well as the broader themes of dance revival in South India. In the film, female

dance, particularly solo courtesan dance, is represented as a threat to society’s moral order and to

the survival of dance traditions. Under Brahmin male control, however, the female dancer’s

agency—the threat she posed to society and to the purity of the dance—was neutralized as she

was incorporated into a patriarchal, pedagogical system.

13
See Appendix 1.

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MEN DANCING AS MEN; WOMEN DANCING WITH MEN

The films choreographed by Kuchipudi gurus that followed Jaya Bheri demonstrate this

enduring social and aesthetic critique embedded in the depiction of the female dancer. Beginning

in 1960, the choreography of Chinna Satyam’s cousin and predecessor in the film industry,

Vempati Satyanarayana Satyam, better known as Pedda Satyam, revolutionized the

representation of gender by characterizing dance as an overtly masculine, religious practice. In

his choreography, Pedda Satyam incorporated a virile athleticism in dance sequences.

Furthermore, for the first time, many sequences featured a solo, male dancer, usually in a

religious-mythological role such as Shiva or Venkateswara.

Figure 4.10 Still from Sitarama Kalyanam (1961). Shiva dances. Dance choreography by
Vempati Pedda Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

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 The dance sequences from two Hindu mythology-based films choreographed by Vempati

Pedda Satyam, Sree Venkateswara Mahatyam (1960) and Sitarama Kalyanam (1961), emphasize

athleticism and masculinity. By doing so, Pedda Satyam’s choreography marks a departure from

the kind of dance aesthetic popularized from roughly 1940–1960 by Kuchipudi gurus in film.

While previous films had drawn connections between female dance and immorality, Pedda

Satyam’s choreography highlighted the religiosity and exuberance of the dancing body,

particularly the male body.

Furthermore, these films featured religious-mythological couples such as Siva and

Parvati dancing together. Parvati’s dance is expunged of the femininity and sensuality found in

most female, solo dance in film. The handmaidens in Parvati’s celestial court also perform in a

similar style, that is to say, a less personal or expressive aesthetic. In other words, Pedda

Satyam’s choreography carefully avoided portraying a solo, female dancer as an autonomous

agent. When a woman danced in his choreography, she was always presented either with other

women or with her husband, and always within a strictly defined social and religious framework.

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 Figure 4.11 – Heroine dancing with her handmaidens.
Still from Sree Venkatesawara Mahatyam (1960). Dance choreography by Vempati Pedda
Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

It is in Pedda Satyam’s choreography that we begin to witness a shift away from a

marked reliance on Bharatanatyam movements and the increased usage of what are today

representative Kuchipudi movements, particularly a cadential movement known as muktaimpu,

tīrmānam or, simply by its solkottu syllables–di-di-thai (see figure 4.8, above). The contrast

between the cadential sequence used in Bharatanatyam and that used in Kuchipudi offers the

clearest differentiation between the two styles. Pedda Satyam’s choreography also utilized a

wider range of motion both in terms of space travelled and in terms of the axes of movement (see

diagonal posture in figure 4.12 below)—both hallmarks of the Kuchipudi aesthetic popularized

136
by Vempati Chinna Satyam and now his son, Vempati Ravi14, at the Kuchipudi Arts Academy in

Chennai.

Figure 4.12 – Shiva and Parvati dance. Still from Sree Venkatesawara Mahatyam (1960).
Dance choreography by Vempati Pedda Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

In the 1963 film Nartanasala, an early dance sequence, featuring a courtesan dancer,

maintained the practice of utilizing Bharatanatyam movements in scenes where the dancer is

14
Vempati Ravi credits his uncle, Vempati Pedda Satyam, for his own approach to contemporary
Kuchipudi choreography. In a recent interview with an online resource for Kuchipudi dancers, he
described his uncle’s choreography in contradistinction to his father’s, Vempati Chinna Satyam:
“As regards my choreography, I would say, my uncle (Vempati Pedda Satyam) influenced me a
lot. I liked his dances very much. Though I never learned from him directly, his movements and
his dances really influenced me. He was in the movies and didn’t move into the classical side
like my father did. Nonetheless, in his choreography, he still followed the principles of the
Natya Sastra and many of Kuchipudi’s traditional
aspects.” http://kuchipudivaibhavam.org/2010/08/13/of-charis-and-sancharis-vempati-ravi-
shankar-guru-and-choreographer/

137
entertaining and seducing a patron. However, later in the film, Pedda Satyam’s aesthetic and

what is identifiable today as the Kuchipudi style appear for the first time on a solo, female

dancer’s body. In two separate scenes, Pedda Satyam features a female dancer performing under

the direction of her guru. The physical setting of her dance and the explicit use of the Kuchipudi

style (both in sight and sound) occur in each scene in carefully framed settings. In both scenes

the female dancer is dancing with her guru, accompanied by female musicians, with a Nataraja

featuring prominently in the background.15

Figure 4.13 – Still from Nartanasala (1963) Dance choreography by Vempati Pedda
Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

15
See “Rewriting the Script for South Indian Dance,” where Matthew Allen (1997) examines the
iconicization of the Nataraja statue as it was constructed as symbol of classical dance in early
twentieth-century South India.
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 In the scene pictured above, the dancer performs to a devotional song entitled “Jaya

Gananayaka” (Praises to Vinayaka). Her outfit is conservative and a close replica of today’s

standard Bharatanatyam costume. She dances for her guru and with her guru, who frequently

interrupts her with corrections. In other words, this scene portrays a pedagogical interaction

between a dance guru and a śiṣya (student). It is in this context that Pedda Satyam explicitly

references the Kuchipudi style in his choreography. For the first time, we both hear and see

Kuchipudi fundamentals on a female body, including the element that marks the most obvious

contrast between different dance styles in South India—the cadential pattern (see figure 4.8

above).

In a scene set in the exact same space under her guru’s direction later in the film wherein

the court dancer/sisya performs for a royal guest, the style of the dance and the costume are

drastically different. The song, “Salalitha Raga Sudharasa Saram,” (The Essence of Sweet

Music) is not based in bhaktī or devotion, but is instead aimed at attracting and seducing her

audience. This sequence does not include the Kuchipudi movements featured in the previous

dance scene. Instead, her movements are once again culled from the Bharatanatyam vocabulary.

The framing of the movement vocabulary in Nartanasala followed the existing practice

of characterizing female dance as an entertainment practice, but with the explicit inclusion of

Kuchipudi technique, Pedda Satyam refines the differentiation between Bharatanatyam and

Kuchipudi. By choreographing a purely pedagogical interaction between guru and sisya in the

Kuchipudi movement vocabulary, while relying on Bharatanatyam technique for the

performances in front of patrons and guests, Pedda Satyam contrasts these dance forms based on

their function. Simply put, the choreography in Nartanasala implies that while Kuchipudi

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movements are utilized for dance training and devotional reasons, Bharatanatyam movements are

meant for consumption and entertainment.

Until Nartanasala, Kuchipudi movements rarely appeared on a woman’s body, and

certainly not on a courtesan body. The sexualization of the female body in film dance for

approximately the first thirty years of Telugu cinema was coded through the Bharatanatyam

movement vocabulary. Nartanasala marks the beginning of a shift towards feminizing

Kuchipudi movements. In terms of film dance, this shift appears to have occurred at about the

same time that Telugu and Tamil cinema bifurcated into independent industries. By the 1960s

Telugu film production had relocated to studios based in Hyderabad rather than Madras. This

move was necessitated by a number of factors, not least the formation of a Telugu linguistic state

which named Hyderabad, not Madras as its capital (see Chapter 5). It is from these new studios

in Hyderabad, which focused exclusively on producing Telugu films, that we witness the

emergence of a female Kuchipudi dancer.

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SATYABHAMA ON THE SILVER SCREEN

Figure 4.14 – Bhamakalapam still from Eka Veera (1969) Dancer: Rajasulochana
Dance choreography by Vempati Pedda Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

Up until the 1960s, films produced in Madras were essentially multilingual and drew

upon Kuchipudi or Bharatanatyam movements as signs or symbols to mark specific social

settings. If we follow Pedda Satyam’s choreography in chronological order, the first film he

produced in Hyderabad at Padma Films, Eka Veera (1969), an adaptation of a well-known

Telugu novel, and was also the first film to feature a female dancer playing the iconic Kuchipudi

character, Satyabhama (see figure 4.14, above). Eka Veera characterizes the modern Kuchipudi

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dancer: a woman, playing the character of Satyabhama, framed and accompanied by her

Brahmin male gurus.

Figure 4.15 – Still from Eka Veera (1969) Dancer: Rajasulochana

Dance choreography by Vempati Pedda Satyam
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

In Eka Veera, Pedda Satyam introduces a Telugu, female dance genre and names it

Kuchipudi. In a marked departure from the characterization of female entertainment dance as

exclusive to the social settings of Bharatanatyam’s courtesan legacy, in Eka Veera, a female

Kuchipudi dancer presents a medley of srngara dances, beginning with an excerpt from

Bhamakalapam. Her performance follows the structure of a Kuchipudi yaksagana to the letter,

including an introductory sequence by two female dancers and direction by sutradhars. The

performance is announced by a sutradhar as “vara Kuchipudi kalyānanilaya,” a phrase, which

142
literally translates as the “uniquely joyous dance of Kuchipudi.” Combining the yaksagana

staging format of an open-air theater (see figure 4.15 above) with the conventions of salon dance,

such as an area rug covering the stage, the scene blends different performance practices. Most

important, by performing Kuchipudi repertoire under the direction of Kuchipudi Brahmin men,

this scene sanctifies solo, female dance, thus reinventing it as appropriate for a public venue.

For thirty years, film choreographers from Kuchipudi village avoided associating

Kuchipudi movements with the female dancing body. Instead, working within a discursive space

in the early-to-mid-twentieth-century that viewed female dance as morally and socially

questionable, Kuchipudi gurus constructed an identity for themselves in contradistinction with

Bharatanatyam. The sudden shift in the late 1960s to film choreography that presented a

specifically Telugu, female dance tradition coincided with the Telugu film industry’s relocation

to Hyderabad-based production studios. Kuchipudi gurus’ evolving characterization of female

dance in the mid-to-late 1960s indexes the complex process of reinvention and historicization

that Kuchipudi was experiencing as a symbolic Telugu art form in the aftermath of the 1958 All-

India Dance Seminar. That Kuchipudi dancers who remained in Madras after Telugu film

production moved to Hyderabad continued to struggle with establishing their dance form’s

classicism points to the concomitant discourses of classicism, gender, and language in South

India, a discussion to which I turn in the next chapter.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

LANGUAGE AND EMBODIED POLITICS

Mā Telugu Tallīkī mallēpuḍaṇdā,

Mā kanna Tallīkī mangalārathulu,

To my Mother Telugu, garlands of jasmine flowers

To her, my own mother, auspicious camphor lamps.

– Opening verse to the Andhra Pradesh State Anthem,

Mā Telugu Tallīkī

“The geography of a country is not the whole truth.

No one can give up his life for a map.”

– Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

In the winter of 1952, a Telugu activist named Potti Sreeramulu was engaged in a fast-

until-death campaign in order to establish an independent state for Telugu speakers. His demand

for the formation of a separate Telugu administrative territory within the new Indian nation was

based on what he believed to be the arbitrariness of territorial divisions established under British

colonial rule. Sreeramulu’s campaign represented a long-standing grievance among Telugu-

speakers that their interests were marginalized and overshadowed by policies that favored the

Tamil-speaking population. The issue came to a head almost forty years after the movement to

create a Telugu province was launched, in the days following Sreeramulu’s death on December

15, 1952, after fifty-eight days of fasting. Reports of widespread rioting, violence and looting

began to circulate as news of Sreeramulu’s death spread. Though no hard numbers were ever

144
produced, conservative estimates place the death toll in the hundreds with many more injured as

police struggled to maintain order.

In response to these events, on December 19, 1952, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru

announced that the unrest among the Telugus was a clear indication of popular support for the

formation of a Telugu linguistic state. A new administrative region, known as Andhra State,

would be formed and would comprise of the uncontested Telugu speaking districts of the

erstwhile Madras State. However, despite Sreeramulu’s popular battle cry, “Madras Manaḍe”

(Madras is ours), this new Telugu state would not include the multilingual city of Madras. Four

years later, Andhra State was redrawn to include the northwest Telugu-speaking regions from the

newly annexed princely state of Hyderabad, and the name of the state was changed to Andhra

Pradesh.1

In the years since, the fact that the formation of Andhra was an outcome of the fight for

Madras has largely receded from public memory. The demand to create a Telugu state with

Madras as the capital was the reason the debate took center-stage in local and national politics,

and was also the driving motivation behind Sreeramulu’s fast-to-death—a fact that was rarely

mentioned in conversations with my informants during my time in Andhra Pradesh. Indeed, by

1952 the formation of a Telugu speaking administrative territory was imminent. The controversy

that remained revolved around whether this new Telugu state would include the strategic city of

Madras. Sreeramulu was not fighting for an Andhra state; he was fighting for Madras as the

1
The word “pradesh” loosely translates as “abode” or “homeland”. In the wake of linguistic
regionalism, India was divided into administrative territories that were named after the language
spoken in the area, i.e. Assam (Assamese), Gujarat (Guajarati), Maharashtra (Marathi), Manipur
(Manipuri), Orissa (Oriya), Punjab (Punjabi), Rajasthan (Rajasthani), Tamil Nadu (Tamil) and
West Bengal (Bengali). Like Andhra, a few others, such as Karnataka (Kannada) and Kerala
(Malayalam), followed historical names for the geographical region rather than language
145
capital of an Andhra state. Today, his actions are historicized as the catalyst for the subsequent

creation of Andhra and the division of India into linguistic regions, but considering Nehru’s

decision rested on the explicit exclusion of Madras from the new Telugu region, Sreeramulu

would most certainly have considered his fast a failure.

LANGUAGE AS IDENTITY

In her study on language and politics, Lisa Mitchell dissects the movement that Potti

Sreeramulu spearheaded and traces the rise of linguistic identity in post-independence South

India (Mitchell 2009). Her study, along with Sumathi Ramaswamy’s examination of Tamil

language politics (Ramaswamy 1997), establishes a historical trajectory that has been

fundamental to the dissertation is general and this chapter in specific—that beginning in the late

nineteenth century and coming to a head in the 1950s, language became a site for cultural and

political identity-formation in India in powerful and unprecedented ways. These studies cover

important ground by explaining how and why linguistic identity supplied a new organizational

construct in post-colonial Indian society through the emotional investments made in the idea of a

mother tongue. This perspective is part of a sustained discourse on the political linking of

language to identity in the wake of studies like Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs’s Voices of

Modernity (2003). Bauman and Briggs note that “emerging out of eighteenth-century classical

philology and coalescing in the philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was a

discursively founded framing of the advent of modernity that viewed language as a radically

hybrid formation…inherently both natural and social, but shifting in proportions over the long

course of human social evolution” (Bauman and Briggs 2003, 9).

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 In this regard, research such as Bernard Cohn’s (1996) on the lasting influence of

colonial epistemologies is particularly relevant to understanding how Herderian conceptions of

language shaped the development of linguistically grounded identities in India. While Cohn and

his cohorts provided solid evidence of how and why these ideologies of linguistic identification

were instituted within the constructs of broader colonial rule, Mitchell’s research underscores the

extent to which these policies became embedded and incorporated into local systems of

signification, particularly in Andhra Pradesh.

This chapter deconstructs the embodied linguistic politics that Kuchipudi and its

classicism represent. I explore what happened after language became synonymous with identity

in India, specifically, how a Telugu identity was expressed in situations such as dance that were

wedded to language, but did not rely exclusively on verbal communication. I examine the

various ways in which Kuchipudi dance participated in the construction of a Telugu identity. In

doing so, I discuss how and why Kuchipudi’s classicism and the discourses surrounding it are

constructed in contradistinction to the Tamil classical dance form, Bharatanatyam.

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TELUGU AND THE EMERGENCE OF ANDHRA

Map 5.1 – Major administrative regions in South India prior to independence, 19472

At the zenith of colonial rule when nationalist sentiment was on the rise, language in

multi-lingual India had become more than a means of communication—it had become a means

of identification.3 Mitchell’s findings indicate that in South India, the terms for the language and

the region, Telugu and Andhra, became interchangeable by the early twentieth century. She

2
Mitchell 2009, 3.
3
See Blom Hansen 2002 for examination of language and Hindutva politics in Maharashtra,
Oldenburg 1985 on Urdu and Bengali in West and East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Chakrabarty
2004 on West Bengal and Brass 2005 for a general overview of language politics in North India.
148
posits that, as early as “1913, evidence suggests that languages were no longer primarily

associated with places, but were increasingly imagined as inalienable attributes of people” (ibid.,

35). Indeed, in Andhra Pradesh, language is not simply reified as a mean of identification, but it

is also personified as a woman, as a mother, Telugu Talli (see figure 5.1).4

Figure 5.1 – Artistic Representation of Telugu Talli by Bapu

Reproduced with artist’s permission

The affective attachment expressed towards a mother tongue as a mother figure carries

over into the cultural politics concerning dance. Among my Telugu informants, from New Delhi

to Chennai and into the diaspora, spanning the socio-economic spectrum from rickshawallas

(autoricksha drivers) to Telugu professors, each and every one echoed the narrative of Telugu vs.

Tamil politics that ultimately divided the Madras Presidency into linguistic states. Mitchell’s

experiences speak to such sentiments and many of her informants described the inclusion of

4
Ramaswamy (1997) notes a similar construction of a “Mother Tamil” on which Telugu Talli
may have been modeled.
149
Madras city in Tamil Nadu in terms of an actual personal “loss” (Mitchell 2009, 90). This

sentimentality over the division of the Madras Presidency, which resulted in Madras city

becoming part of Tamil Nadu, hardly appears justified considering that even under colonial rule,

Telugu speakers made up only 15 percent of the population in comparison with 70 percent Tamil

speakers.

A recent retrospective on the city, Chennai not Madras, includes an essay by A. R.

Venkatachalapathy that sheds some light on the issue by parsing the socio-cultural factors that

buttressed the Telugu claim on Madras, now Chennai. Based on Venkatachalapathy’s

assessment, the problem, which had begun as early as 1920, when the newly formed APCC

demanded that Madras come under its jurisdiction, came to a head beginning in 1948. It all

began with a rather unintentional generalization by the constituent assembly formed to oversee

the formation of the new linguistic provinces of Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra.

Curiously, in their report, there was no province named specifically for the Tamil-speaking

population as it was assumed that the Madras Presidency, in its entirety, was representative of

the Tamils. Leaving aside the contradictory logic that this statement exposes—if all of the

Madras Presidency was considered Tamilian then how and where exactly were they planning on

creating an area called Andhra?—this original assessment was readily accepted by the new

Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, as it relied upon administrative divisions, rather than those

based on linguistic identity.

By the next year, it was agreed by yet another committee, dubbed the JVP after its

members, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, and Pattabhi Sitarammaya, that this arrangement

was appropriate and, furthermore, that it would be acceptable to postpone the reorganization of

the Union along linguistic lines. Though the principle of linguistic reorganization had proved a
150
useful tool in the independence struggle, it now threatened the stability of the new nation,

particularly in the wake of Partition. Nehru, in particular, was relieved to put the issue on the

back burner for the time being.5 Yet, as Venkatachalapathy’s notes in his narration of the process

by which the south of India was remapped,

Andhra was always the exception. “In some ways”, the JVP Committee
observed, “the demand for an Andhra Province has a larger measure of
consent behind it than other similar demands”, and added ominously, “yet
there is controversy about certain areas as well as about the city of
Madras.” While the JVP Committee argued that Greater Bombay should
not be part of any linguistic province, it placed Madras on a different
footing, despite its apparent analogous nature: “To a large extent what we
have said about Bombay city applies to Madras. At the same time there is
a difference in that is it a clear Tamil majority here. It seems impossible to
restrict the aspirations of the majority to the confines of the city and as far
as we can see its isolated existence would be a perpetual source of conflict
between Andhra and Tamilnad.” (Venkatachalapathy 2006, 11)

TAMIL NOT TELUGU; TELUGU NOT TAMIL

The discontent which Sreeramulu’s campaign for Madras politicized has, indeed

provided a perpetual source of bad blood between two linguistic groups: the Telugu and Tamil

communities. During my time in India, these tensions were expressed to me at various levels:

5
Prime Minister Nehru’s displeasure with the division of India along linguistic lines has been
well documented in his own memoirs and biographies. As he once expressed after the initial
meetings of the JVP: “[This inquiry] has been in some ways an eye-opener for us. The work of
60 years of the Indian National Congress was standing before us, face to face with centuries-old
India of narrow loyalties, petty jealousies and ignorant prejudices engaged in mortal conflict and
we were simply horrified to see how thin was the ice upon which we were skating. Some of the
ablest men in the country came before us and confidently and emphatically stated that language
in this country stood for and represented culture, race, history, individuality, and finally a sub-
nation” (Quoted in Geertz 1973, 256).

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from complaints about the availability of electricity in Telugu areas in comparison to Tamil

areas, to accusations of discriminatory hiring practices, which privileged Tamil-speakers. In the

aftermath of the JVP Committee’s ruling Prime Minister Nehru ultimately decided to declare the

formation of the very first linguistically defined administrative region: Andhra State (see map 5.2

below).

Map 5.2– Indian administrative regions following the formation of Andhra State
October 1, 19536

6
Mitchell 2009, 4.

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 Three years later, the linguistic movement had gained enough support across India that

the central government passed the States Reorganization Act of 1956 (see map 5.3 below), which

redistributed the majority of the Indian subcontinent along linguistic lines. In exchange for

Madras, Andhra Pradesh kept Tirupati, one of the more important Hindu pilgrimage sites in

South India, not to mention home to Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), one of the

wealthiest religious organizations in India.

Map 5.3 – India following the States Reorganization Act

November 1, 19567

7
Mitchell 2009, 5.

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LANGUAGE, IDENTITY AND CLASSICAL DANCE

Recent anthropological and ethnomusicological research on classicism in India goes as

far as to acknowledge the impact of linguistic regionalism on identity formation in India and the

“aspiration of every Indian region (for instance, Odissi dance in Orissa, Kuchipudi in Andhra,

Kathakali in Kerala) to own a ‘classical’ form of dance or music” (Peterson and Soneji 2008,

25). Kuchipudi’s aesthetic as well as discursive history, then, in the context of state formation in

South India, sheds important light on how a Telugu culture individuated. For my Telugu

informants, Bharatanatyam, the classical style from Tamil Nadu, functioned as the other against

which Kuchipudi defined itself. Revealing a strain of cultural intimacy essential to Kuchipudi’s

symbolism, according to my informants, Bharatanatyam was deemed “classical” at the 1958

Seminar simply because it was understood as a Tamil form. Kuchipudi, on the other hand was

denigrated and designated as “folk” simply because it was Telugu.

The extent to which this very conversation repeated itself in my interviews cannot be

overstated. Initially, I dismissed the repeated complaint that “Tamilians are cultural-chauvinists”

or “Tamilians look down on Telugus and Kuchipudi as backwards” as irrelevant information.

Equally, when I listened to each and every (without a single exception) Kuchipudi dancer

discredit his/her fellow Kuchipudi dancers on account of the “folkness,” or, alternatively, the

“Bharatanatyam-ness,” of his/her style, I remained neutrally silent, believing that I should not

pay too much attention to what was just bickering or artistic rivalries.

My perspective shifted, however, once I encountered another strain of cultural intimacy

in the guise of self-loathing on the part of Telugu art lovers. This narrative bemoaned the Telugu

disinterest in the arts in comparison with Tamilian patronage. My informants, particularly those

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upper-class/caste families who had made sure their daughters were trained in Kuchipudi rather

than Bharatanatyam, chastised Telugu people for not nurturing and valuing their own heritage.

As one Kuchipudi dancer, Swapnasundari, put it:

without Tamilians we would have lost everything about Karnatic music—

Tyagaraja, Annamayya, even Kuchipudi is only recognized because
Vempati Chinna Satyam went to Madras. Where could he go in Andhra
that would appreciate and nurture his talent? Look at what Balamurali
Krishna did!8 He had to settle in Chennai because Telugu people couldn’t
appreciate his genius! Even he thinks that if it wasn’t for Tamilians we
Telugu people would have lost our culture! (Swapnasundari, pers. comm.)

This very episode repeated itself, almost verbatim during my interactions with a wide

variety of people: from the New Delhi-based Kuchipudi dancer Swapnasundari to a Telugu clerk

at the Madras Music Academy Library in Chennai. For her part, Swapnasundari’s indignation

towards this supposed Telugu apathy was aimed at the systems that support the arts in Andhra.

It’s not enough to say Mellatur Veeravadraya created the first swarajathi
because who knows about it? We threw it away. We still continue to throw
away what is ours because the Telugu people don’t value what they have
and what they did and what their forefathers did and that’s the truth of the
story. (Swapnasundari, pers. comm.)

As my fieldwork progressed I could not help but notice how these perceived slights

against Telugu culture literally and figuratively drove the ways in which Telugu culture was

imagined as well as how Kuchipudi is taught, practiced, and described. As a product of the

Telugu diaspora myself I was hardly surprised by these comments—I had been privy to similar

refrains my whole life, but to hear them expressed by figures as essential to modern expressions

of Telugu culture as Swapnasundari indicated to me that these issues were still relevant to

8
Balamurali Krishna, a Telugu by birth, is one of the most celebrated composer-singers in
modern Kanatic music. His decision to reside and build his performance career in Chennai,
rather than in Andhra Pradesh, provided a popular topic for discussion among my Telugu
informants, particularly in Chennai.
155
present-day Telugu cultural politics. It was as though the oft-repeated narrative of Tamilian

cultural superiority and chauvinism provided a never-ending source of fuel for Telugu feelings of

resentment, an emotional attachment to language and identity that Mitchell characterizes as a

“discourse of victimization” (Mitchell 2009, 98).

While my observation of Telugu resentment towards Tamilians revealed a motivation for

the fight for Kuchipudi’s classicism, I encountered a series of contentious claims to historicity

and authenticity among Kuchipudi artists that added yet another dimension to my inquiry into

Kuchipudi representation of Telugu culture. Over the past forty years, practically as long as

Kuchipudi has been recognized as a classical style, there have been a number of polarizing

debates between various “definitions” of Kuchipudi, particularly in contradistinction to

Bharatanatyam, which reveal a struggle, on the one hand to differentiate Kuchipudi from

Bharatanatyam, but on the other hand, to look “classical” in all the ways that Bharatanatyam

does. During my time in India I found myself facing a variety of “classical” Kuchipudis, and

each version hinged on how that particular dancer or guru defined classicism. For some, it was a

return to Kuchipudi “as it was”: a virile dramatic dance style performed exclusively by men. For

others, it was a “modernized,” “refined” version of Kuchipudi: a lilting, graceful, sensual

tradition, which celebrated femininity in related, but markedly and consciously different ways

from Bharatanatyam. Perhaps the most crucial difference was that the proponents of authentic

(masculine) Kuchipudi did not exhibit a desire to modernize or adapt Kuchipudi to audience

tastes while those that represent and teach the version which gained classical recognition

(feminine) did so explicitly, by shaping Kuchipudi practice into a solo, female aesthetic.

As a dancer and ethnographer, I witnessed and physically experienced a constant struggle

between these aesthetic definitions of modernity. I began to wonder if Kuchipudi’s classicism, in

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the context of an Indian modernity was rooted in a nostalgia for an historical Kuchipudi specific

to the village, or if it was based on the aesthetic features it shared with other Indian dance forms,

like Bharatanatyam. At what point did its authentic uniqueness undermine its modern classicism?

It was during the hours I spent in the dance studio learning and practicing that these questions

emerged as fertile ground for an analysis of movement aesthetics that were tied to concepts of

Indian modernity, Telugu identity, and ultimately, the history of Kuchipudi itself.

KUCHIPUDI AND THE CHENNAI SCENE

After the program I catch a ride with Revati, a well-established

Bharatanatyam dancer in Chennai. As we’re driving I pull out my dance
season program and ask her to help me figure out what I should go see that
night. She tells me to go see Vyjantimala since she’s a legend. She was
among the first Kuchipudi dancers to make a big name as a concert
dancer. Vyjantimala’s real claim to fame, of course, is that she was a film
star in her youth. Revati also mentions that pretty much all the film stars
back then trained in Kuchipudi under Vempati Chinna Satyam, since he
had been a film choreographer in his early days in Madras. I ask why she
thinks he did this, since he is so against any of his students going into film
now and she replies that it was what they wanted in films back then: the
Kuchipudi style. In fact, she continues, in her thematic productions she
draws from Kuchipudi to affect folk for the same reasons. I’m shocked to
hear her say something like this since, she is, after all, one of Chinna
Satyam’s students and I’m pretty sure he would not take her comment as a
compliment.9

Over the course of my nine months of fieldwork, I encountered various explanations of

how Kuchipudi differed from Bharatanatyam, such as the commentary featured above.

Depending on who was talking, I would receive a value-laden commentary either extolling

Bharatanatyam’s clean, angular structure and criticizing Kuchipudi’s rustic qualities or,
9
Fieldnote excerpt, Chennai, December 20, 2008.

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alternatively, lamenting Bharatanatyam’s rigidity and praising Kuchipudi’s earthiness and lilt.

The differentiation between these two forms was invariably given in impassioned tones,

especially if the informant was Telugu. That Kuchipudi “advocates” felt that Bharatanatyam

overshadowed or otherwise condescended to Kuchipudi was a constant theme in my interactions.

The fieldnote excerpt above offers a window into this controversy by providing a

particularly poignant moment where the perceived or real polarities between Kuchipudi and

Bharatanatyam are striking, not least because of who is voicing the opinion. This episode took

place in Chennai, during the height of the dance season, when every day is a veritable gala, with

dance and music performances held at numerous locations all over the city, all day long. The city

is literally inundated with rasikas or art-lovers who float from performance to performance

throughout the day and well into the night. The number of performances each day is simply

staggering, and though the newspaper provides daily schedules for the major venues, many more

are held in more intimate settings advertised only by word of mouth. To catch a performance at a

smaller venue where I would stand a better chance of meeting and interviewing informants, I

would often have to pin my hopes on getting into someone’s phone contact list so I might receive

a mass SMS inviting me to an unadvertised performance.

This phenomenon of small, underadvertised concerts is rather common as far as the dance

scene is concerned, as these performances are less essential to the Music Season than the music

concerts, and only involve a closely-knit community of artists. The dance programs are not

nearly as frequented as the music events, but over the course of the season, the attendance is

consistent. It was often the case that the same group of “dance elite” could be found at every

“notable” performance. This dance elite is best described in terms of their status in the dance

scene in India. The group includes senior, respected performers (including the speaker in the
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excerpt above), such as the inimitable diva of Indian dance, Padma Subrahmanyam, as well as

influential critics and scholars like Leela Venkataraman, Sunil Kothari or writers/editors for

music/dance publications like Sruti magazine or Narthaki.com.

This group, which I affectionately dubbed the “Chennai dance Mafia” after many years of

attending the Season as a young NRI (non-resident Indian) dancer, is consistently comprised of

approximately thirty prominent or up-and-coming dancers and another ten scholars and writers.

As I shifted from dancer to ethnographer during my fieldwork in 2008-09, I was struck by the

hierarchy of this scene and the ways in which particular individuals could change the atmosphere

of a performance simply by appearing in the auditorium. My observations from the audience

underscored what I had already experienced from the stage: the performances that were notable

were those where members of this dance cognoscenti made an appearance.

The annual Natya Kala conference provides a snapshot of Chennai’s dance scene and the

kind of social dynamics described above. The conference is organized by one of the oldest

sabhas (arts organizations that host and sponsor performances), the Sree Krishna Gana Sabha in

Thyagaraja Nagar, a central neighborhood in Chennai. The sabha itself was founded in 1953,

while the Natya Kala conference became an annual event beginning in 1981 under the

convenorship of Padma Subrahmanyam. Every December, over the course of two weeks, the

crème de la crème of Indian dance descend upon this unassuming building on a narrow street off

Usman Road, one of Chennai’s busiest thoroughfares.

The daily schedule is divided into two sections: the morning sessions comprise of lecture-

demonstrations, with a strong undercurrent of dance/performance studies discourse, while the

evening sessions feature performances by different troupes from all over the world. This event

offers a condensed version of the Chennai, if not Indian, dance scene. Seniority on the scene as
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well as popularity set up a pecking order that dictates the code of conduct, as I learned the hard

way on the first day of the conference when I committed a rookie mistake and took a seat in the

front two rows of the auditorium (I was promptly asked to move).

The event features only the best-positioned (socially, politically and artistically) dancers

in the country. The sabha annually bestows one the more prestigious and coveted dance honors

in the country, the Nritya Choodamani award. The recipient of this award convenes and

organizes the conference the following year. Though there have always been rumblings that

these awards are decided based on favoritism or nepotism of some variety, in 2008, there was

significant controversy over the fact that the Secretary of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the

primary government organization that oversees cultural policy in regard to dance and music,

received the award. The front page of the Chennai edition “Friday Review” section of The Hindu

newspaper (The Hindu, December 19, 2008) covered the topic in an article entitled “Aesthetic

Akademic” and included direct questions to the awardee, Jayant Kastuar, on the matter. It

suffices to say that there were plenty of raised eyebrows and questions over the nature of the

selection process. For my purposes, this controversy provided more proof of what I already

sensed as a dancer—that the dance scene in Chennai is driven by established hierarchies wherein

those in power have the ability to wield enormous influence over the exposure given to and

perception of difference dance styles.

It was in this context that the conversation excerpted above took place. I had met and

knew this particular dancer rather well since she was a prominent Bharatanatyam artist and,

therefore, a member of the Chennai scene I describe above. Her comments, though startling to

me at that particular juncture in my fieldwork, were hardly surprising since Kuchipudi, as a

Telugu art form, is certainly described in variously judgment-laden, if not downright

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condescending tones in this quintessential Tamil city. As discussed in previous chapters,

Kuchipudi has always both been considered and considered itself an outsider in this

predominantly Bharatanatyam city. A simple survey of the dance events schedule that is

circulated by the organization Kutcheri Buzz in December speaks directly to this point. Out of

283 scheduled classical dance performances from December 12, 2008–January 14, 2009,

Kuchipudi was listed only seven times. To place this number in context, Mohiniaatam (Kerala)

was listed five times, Kathak (Uttar Pradesh) four, Odissi (Orissa) fourteen, Manipuri (Manipur)

one, and Kathakali (Kerala) two. The remaining 250 performances were all listed as

Bharatanatyam.

The limited frequency of Kuchipudi performances in the 2008-2009 Season was all the

more surprising when one considers that the largest and oldest Kuchipudi dance school, the

Kuchipudi Arts Academy (KAA), is in Chennai. Statistically, one would expect Kuchipudi to be

at least as well represented as Odissi, if not more considering the proximity of Andhra and

Telugu culture to Chennai. What might this relative anonymity of Kuchipudi reveal about the

attitude expressed by my informant? More to the point, what was it about Kuchipudi, in a way

that I never encountered in comparison to another form like Odissi, that to this day, earned it a

reputation as “folk” in Chennai?

I asked this very question the next morning when I arrived at dance class at the KAA. At

the time, I was specifically interested in an “answer” that would lead me to specifics in the

movements. Perhaps it was the sparing use of ardhamandala (half-sitting starting position, see

Figure 5.2, below) or the use of some mudras (hand gestures) over others? I probed the issue of

ardhamandala that morning with one of my gurus, whom the dancers addressed as Ramu Master,

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and unwittingly stumbled upon a movement that I would soon discover functions as a central

physical and aesthetic marker in the debates over Kuchipudi and its classicism.

Figure 5.2 – Kuchipudi pāda bhedālu (basic steps)

Courtesy of Rathna Kumar

Ardhamandala, more generally known by the Bharatanatyam term, aramanḍi, can be

loosely defined as a first or starting position in both Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. It can also be

likened to a turn-out in ballet practice considering that Bharatanatyam training, in particular,

emphasizes this position as essential to an authentic and well-formed technique. I have many a

vivid childhood memory of Bharatanatyam teachers literally pushing me down at the shoulders

and demanding that I “sit more.” My Kuchipudi training over the years, on the other hand, has

never placed nearly as high of a premium on ardhamandala. This is not to say that ardhamandala

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is not part of the technique, but that there are some movements where it is tempered for the sake

of the overall effect. In fact, Kuchipudi technique, in my experience, involves a number of

movements that explicitly curb the usage of ardhamandala. Over the years I had come to believe

that while ardhamandala was considered the mark of a well-trained Bharatanatyam dancer, it was

not nearly as fundamental to Kuchipudi technique.

I asked Ramu Master about my impressions about the importance of ardhamandala in

Kuchipudi that morning in the hopes of improving my own technique. To describe Ramu

Master’s reaction as passionate would be a severe understatement. He was absolutely appalled

that I did not think ardhamandala was absolutely essential to Kuchipudi technique, as essential as

it is in Bharatanatyam, and proceeded to conduct that day’s class by making me sit in extreme,

overstated ardhamandala for every movement. He complained to me, angrily at many points,

over the course of that morning’s class that Bharatanatyam dancers and critics of Kuchipudi like

to say that Kuchipudi does not use ardhamandala as a way of undermining Kuchipudi’s

classicism, but this is unfair because it is clearly part of the technique, as I could plainly see (and

feel at that point). Just because my previous teachers had not taught me correctly was not the

dance form’s fault. Ardhamandala was a sign of classicism and Kuchipudi was classical. Or put

another way, the more ardhamandala the more (indisputably) classical.

In all of my experiences dancing in India, this episode stands out vividly in my memory.

Spending close to five hours in extreme ardhamandala rendered my quadriceps utterly useless for

the rest of the week, but this episode did expose an important flashpoint in the discourse of

comparison and contrast that drives the formulation of classical aesthetics in Chennai. Over the

course of many months I encountered several “answers” or signposts like my experience with

the ardhamandala issue as to what marked Kuchipudi aesthetics in Chennai as “folk”, and how
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gurus and dancers adjusted their own technique to counter these claims, but it also became

apparent that it was the perception or coding of these movements in the broader universe of

Indian dance aesthetics that drives the discourse on Kuchipudi.

The controversy over the relative use of ardhamandala was an obvious instance where

Bharatanatyam “standards”, defined and upheld by what Kristen Rudisill (2007) has theorized as

“Brahmin taste” in the sabha, have shaped certain aesthetic definitions of classicism.

Kuchipudi’s transformation into a feminized form in Chennai has to be understood in the context

of specific taste habits among the elite that emerged in the wake of courtesan reform in the early

part of the twentieth century. These taste markers elevate “structure” such as ardhamandala,

while rejecting “loose limbs, footwork, and mudras, or the lack of emphasis on ‘proper’ raga and

tala” as symptoms of “bad dance” (Soneji 2011, n/a).

The fact remains, however, that Kuchipudi technique simply does not require

ardhamandala as universally as Bharatanatyam. There are movements where the knees are

straightened or when, as one guru in Hyderabad, once put it, “it just looks silly to use

ardhamandala while doing that step” (C. Bala, pers. comm.). As Swapnasundari once pointed out

to me, ardhamandala is not

something we have to do at a certain degree. In fact, there’s no such thing

as a true aramandi in the sastra (theory). It’s only sampradāya (practice)
which defines aramandi. Bharatanatyam is also based on the Natya Sastra.
Any dance form is based on sastra, but reflects the tenets on which people
insist. There’s nothing in the Natya Sastra, nor in Telugu
Lakshanagrandhas (treatises on practice). But it is in Jayappa Senapati’s
writings, which are from the era of the Kakatiya kingdom (10th-13th
centuries). The dancer must bend 6-8 inches according to the wish of the
patron. Anything was acceptable and varied from dancer to dancer.”
Remember, it’s all about a dancer’s proportions. It’s about what looks
good on each dancer’s body. There’s not some arbitrary rule.
(Swapnasundari, pers. comm.)

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Swapnasundari’s explanation underscores the extent to which taste, “the tenets on which people

insist,” drives Kuchipudi technique. Her comments also reveal a historical personalized aesthetic,

which licensed a dancer to fit technique to her own body, an aesthetic, which as I discuss below,

runs counter to taste habits in the Chennai sabha today.

While ardhamandala provides a point of comparison, the use of the anchitam, or the heel,

in lateral movements, is a subtle, but critical departure from Bharatanatyam technique, wherein

the whole foot, or samāpādam is struck (see Figure 5.2 above). Kuchipudi movements rely on a

bouncing gesture, or a lifting, folding at the knee and then extending/placing of the foot in

anchitam. This folding and placing of the foot, or bounce, also referred to by New Delhi-based

Kuchipudi dancer Swapnasundari as ubuku10, is both specific to how Kuchipudi defines its own

movement vocabulary and essential to understanding the marking of certain body positions

within the Indian dance system, like ardhamandala, as “classical”. Unlike ardhamandala, the

ubuku movement is specific to Kuchipudi and does not appear in Bharatanatyam. For this reason

and others I discuss below, in the discursive construction of Kuchipudi’s classicism in Chennai,

ubuku is perceived as a folk movement.

In my interviews with Swapnasundari, ubuku emerged as the essential characteristic of

Kuchipudi specifically because it signified a unique and authentic, that is, older, Kuchipudi

movement aesthetic. In her assessment, this version of Kuchipudi, which I compare and contrast

with others in Chapter 6, has been overwritten by figures such as Vempati Chinna Satyam, the

founder-director of the Kuchipudi Arts Academy. The descriptions I encountered of what ubuku

signified in the older version of Kuchipudi often relied on vocabulary like “rustic”, “earthy” and

10
Also called usi.

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“exuberant”. Chinna Satyam’s style, on the other hand is described in terms of its “refinement,”

“grace” and “exuberant.” This exuberance, in both styles, most certainly marked Kuchipudi as

Kuchipudi in my mind, but in Swapnasundari’s version it required a virility that felt completely

foreign to me as a female dancer. Put another way, the movements in Kuchipudi that are often

identified as folk seemed to be part of what made Kuchipudi a predominantly male-dominated

form until the mid-twentieth century.

In the studio setting, both in New Delhi with Swapnasundari and in Chennai at the KAA,

these technical differences from Bharatanatyam are reified—they are what makes Kuchipudi a

symbol of Teluguness. Though the terminology differs, all of my gurus, from Swapnasundari and

my gurus at the KAA to my gurus in the United States place a definite emphasis on the folding

of the leg and placing of the foot in anchitam. What is striking, however, is how this movement

is representative of completely polarized aesthetics in Swapnasundari’s explanations versus that

at the KAA. While Swapnasundari’s emphasis is on preserving this movement as ubuku or

bounce and retaining the historically masculine aesthetic in Kuchipudi, at the KAA, this

movement is used and described in terms of its affect of fluidity, not bounce; grace not ridigity.

Indeed, in Chennai, as a previously trained Bharatanatyam dancer, I was often chastised

for holding on to too much of my Bharatanatyam training, particularly in regard to my under-use

of anchitam (see figure 5.3 below). If I executed a step by placing my foot directly in

samapadam, or leading with my foot placed flat, I would immediately be critiqued for looking

“hard”, “not feminine enough” or “too much like Bharatanatyam”, and therefore not enough like

Kuchipudi (V. Ramu and C. Bala, pers. comm.).

Below is an example of the ubuku movement that Swapnasundari described as essential

to Kuchipudi. In the first motion of the step, beginning in an ardhamandala position, the right
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foot is hit flat in samapadam. In the second motion, the legs are straightened in a bouncing

manner while the right leg is extended and placed in anchitam or on the heel. The entire motion

is repeated accordingly on the left-side.

Figure 5.3– Movement with ubuku, as described by Swapnasundari

The same movement is expressed rather differently in the Kuchipudi technique taught at

the KAA. In figure 5.4, below, the dancer folds her leg in the second frame before placing it in

anchitam. Functionally, the ubuku becomes far less about bounce and more about the use of

anchitam. In other words, ubuku at the KAA, though never named as such, is reinterpreted to

soften the overall affect by emphasizing the initiation of motion using anchitam. The bounce is

removed for the most part and all that is left in the KAA version is the use of anchitam. This

subtle shift in the way a movement commences makes a world of difference in how a dancer

moves across a space. The folding of the leg followed by the rolling of the foot from heel to sole

reduces the impact, but also makes the movement look seamless, an adjective that haunted me

throughout my ethnographic experiences at the KAA as I grappled with understanding the

mechanics behind the affect. The entire lateral motion appears fluid. It is this affect that then

translates into grace, and ultimately, femininity.

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 Figure 5.4 – Kuchipudi adavu demonstrating movement by anchitam in the KAA style
Photo courtesy of the Anjali Center for Performing Arts

WOMEN PLAYING WOMEN

I’m exhausted, but drag myself to class today. I’m pretty excited as I’m
going to rework “Krishna Shabdam,” a piece I’ve heard described more
than once as Kuchipudi at its best. Disappointingly, I am totally
unprepared for how incompetent I feel despite knowing this dance very
well. The mannerisms that I’m being asked to incorporate are so difficult
for me! It’s as if being female isn’t enough. I have to learn how to affect
an Indian female. And not even just an Indian female, but a historically
specific Telugu female. My technique garners a lot of critique as Bali
Akka11 tells me I look too Bharatanatyam. For my femininity to “look
more Kuchipudi,” I need to work on softening the movements and they
can’t be so “technical.” Bottom line for today: I am a Telugu woman, but I
don’t dance enough like a Telugu woman to look Kuchipudi.12

My experiences learning one particular dance piece from various teachers at the KAA

illustrate the emphasis placed on grace and femininity in Kuchipudi. The piece, “Krishna

Shabdam,” has been part of the Kuchipudi repertoire for generations and judging by the content

(see below), is most likely a crossover from Telugu courtesan traditions. Every Kuchipudi dancer

11
Term of affection and respect used to refer to an older sister, in this case, the woman who was
training me.
12
Fieldnote excerpt, Hyderabad, May 3, 2009
168
provides his/her own interpretation, and during my time in India, I encountered several different

versions that all made specific claims to being both historical and classical.

The piece itself was originally written in praise of a mythological patron-King, Damera

Timmendra Kumara, according to Kuchipudi guru Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma, but over

time was revised and performed in nṛṭya-nāṭakālu (dance-dramas) as a solo piece addressing

Krishna (Sarma pers. comm.). The lyrics lend themselves nicely to this double-entendre since

one can interpret the opening line, Yaduvamsa sudambudhi chandra, as a reference to Krishna or

to Damera Timmendra Kumara.

“Damera Shabdam”/”Krishna Shabdam”

Rā, rā, Yaduvamsa sudāmbudhi chandra. Come, you, the moon of the sweet ocean of
the Yadava lineage.
Rathnākara sama gambīra. You are powerful like the ocean.
Sathakoṭi Manmadākāra. You are million times more handsome than
Cupid.
Bāsura buja bala rana sūra. You are a powerful, valiant warrior.
Nārījana mānasa chōra. You steal women’s hearts.
Mahameru samāna dīra. Your bravery is as high as Mt. Meru.
Kavijana pōshaka mandāra. You are the patron of poets.
Para rāju sathru samhāra. You are the destroyer of evil kings.
Bharata śāstra nidi nīvēra. You are the treasurer of Bharata’s Sastra.
Sarasatha gala dora nīvēra. You are charming, my lord.
Nanu karuna chūchūtaku. Please shower mercy on me.
Vēlara. It is the time.
Ithi vēlara. This is the time.
Chalamēlara. Why do you delay?
Mathi Būnara Take my heart.
Nīdānara I’m yours.
Nannu ēlukōra. Rule me.

As a solo, romantic dance performed in the first-person, “Krishna Shabdam” provides an

excellent example of the legacy of parodied female impersonation or stri vesam in historical

Kuchipudi taught today as an overtly feminine, “coquettish” style at the KAA (Kothari 2001;

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Rama Rao 1992). The dancer is communicating with and seducing her lover; the entire song is

spoken directly to him.

The feminine grace that is considered essential to Kuchipudi is apparent in every

movement of this piece, beginning with the opening jathi (technical section). Though I had

learned and even performed this dance before arriving in India, the process of “making it

Kuchipudi” as I was trained in Chennai by Vempati Ravi and by his sister, Bali, in Hyderabad

involved relearning even the technical elements, like the jathi. “Even the jathi needs to be

depicted in srngaram (romantic feeling),” was my directive. “But how?” was my reaction. In my

mind, a jathi was meant to be technical, precise; it is generally comprised of pure nrtta

(footwork) and there was nothing to be interpreted in a jathi. How could there be room for

softening the movements in that context? It was in the course of (re)learning this particular piece,

that Kuchipudi’s femininity, which simultaneously allows Kuchipudi to adhere to Chennai taste

habits while referencing a specifically Telugu womanhood, came into focus for me.

In this piece and others based on similar romantic themes in the KAA repertoire, the

movements are enacted with an extremely loose torso, enabling the body to follow the limbs.

The abhinayam (facial expressions) also play a part in the effectiveness of srngara rasa—the

mannerisms are based on a Telugu body-language and utilize hand-gestures and expressions that

are marked as Telugu in various contexts, such as film and theater (see Chapter 6). However, it is

the modification of the nrtta that provides the most effective heuristic device in the comparison

of Kuchipudi with Bharatanatyam. Whatever rasa a dancer might be exploring in the course of a

performance, nrtta is a mark of technique and technical prowess. It is nothing more and nothing

less than a technical exhibition. So, to experience the softening of footwork and other nrtta

elements in “Krishna Shabdam” at the KAA was, frankly, an anxious process for me. Directives
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like “loosen” and “soften” cut against the grain of my conditioning as a classical dancer because

they suggest bad dance or, at the very least, poor, sloppy technique.

THE FEMININE AND THE CLASSICAL

At the KAA, however, “good dance,” that is, classical dance, attempts to balance its

femininity with what is an increasingly athletic, institutionalized aesthetic. As Vempati Ravi

explained to me, classicism “is systemization—the ability to produce the same product every

time, in every dancer” (Vempati Ravi, pers. comm.). The institutionalization of dance in modern

India began to creep into my understanding of my experiences with Kuchipudi in Chennai at this

very point in my fieldwork. As the model for Indian classical dance pedagogy in the twentieth

century, the Kalakshetra Academy was founded by Rukmini Arundale in 1936. Vempati Chinna

Satyam openly acknowledges that he sought to emulate the Kalakshetra Academy when he

founded his own Academy in 1963 (Andavalli and Pemmaraju 1994).

Kuchipudi at the KAA, however, is still a personality-driven solo form. In other words,

the nature of the Kuchipudi ideal, iconicized in characters like Satyabhama, does not lend itself

to the kind of group-synchronized, systematized affect for which Bharatanatyam, and

Kalakshetra Bharatanatyam in particular, is known. As long as grace, expression and

individuality are the reigning principles in Kuchipudi, creating absolute coordination—what

Vempati Ravi describes as systematization—is next to impossible. The grace of a dancer’s body

and the way she communicates emotion is extremely subjective, making the kind of spot-on

coordination that has come to define classical dance in Chennai and now across India, a

contradictory goal within the context of Kuchipudi technique.

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 This point is brought into sharp relief in the choreography of the New Delhi-based

Kuchipudi dancing duo, Raja-Radha Reddy. This dancing team presents a version of Kuchipudi

that operates on the same principles as Bharatanatyam—the aesthetic of powerful, vigorous

movements performed in group coordination. The hallmark of the Reddys’ style is their energy

and athleticism. In contrast to the Kuchipudi taught at the KAA under Chinna Satyam and more

recently, under his son Ravi, the Reddys’ style relies almost exclusively on power, rhythm,

virtuosic footwork and sudden poses. The reliance on anchitam, which marks KAA technique in

contradistinction to Bharatanatyam, is noticeably absent in the Reddys’ technique.

The use of sudden poses in a manner that demonstrates flair and showmanship is a

hallmark of the Reddys’ version of Kuchipudi. Generally, the pose is struck suddenly, in the

middle of a fast sequence of footwork. The pose is held for at least four beats (out of an eight-

beat cycle) before the dancer returns to the fast, virtuosic segment.

Figure 5.5 – Raja and Radha Reddy’s students in a group formation typical of their style of
Kuchipudi at the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremonies, New Delhi, 2010
Photo courtesy of Natya Tarangini

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I came to understand this element of the Reddys’ Kuchipudi as an emphasis on dynamics in the

course of a performance. The technique recalled a subito piano or a sforzando in the western

classical musical tradition wherein the music undergoes a drastic change in volume. This aspect

of the Reddys’ technique is particularly effective in the group choreography setting. The use of

variations and shifting formations combined with the utterly stunning synchronicity of the

dancers provides an incredibly effective visual affect, but does not differ from Bharatanatyam in

any significant way besides costuming.

This version of Kuchipudi stood out during my time in India simply for its reliance on

and success with the group choreography aesthetic. The fact that the movement techniques that

registered grace at the KAA were missing from this style further underscores this contrast. The

Reddys’ version of Kuchipudi and the popular perception of it as “Bharatanatyam influenced-

Kuchipudi” or “commercial Kuchipudi” among my dancer friends and informants in Andhra,

particularly in Kuchipudi village and Chennai, further solidified my theory that a significant

portion of contemporary semantics in defining classicism are tied to aesthetic principles that are

articulated most effectively in group choreography.

The Reddys represent one end of the spectrum where classicism, to cite Vempati Ravi’s

terminology, is defined by the coordination of the group and the ability of one dancer to look just

like another. This aesthetic is popularized by the Reddys through powerful and athletic dance.

Staged in huge auditoriums in New Delhi, grace and abhinayam are not highlighted forms of

expression in their performances. Indeed, Kuchipudi is defined in New Delhi by its fast rhythmic

footwork punctuated by acrobatic poses.13

13
See “Friday Review: Classicism at Its Best,” The Hindu, September 7, 2007

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 Vempati’s Ravi’s choreography for his group numbers, such as his presentation in 2009

at the Madras Music Academy, also demonstrates a similar philosophy.

Figure 5.6 – KAA at the Madras Music Academy

January 5, 2009
Photo by author

This trend is not specific to New Delhi, to Chennai or even to India. Performances in the United

States by Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer Rathna Kumar and her Anjali Dance Company

demonstrate a similar aesthetic principle.

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 Figure 5.7 – Anjali Dance Company, 2010
Photo courtesy of the Anjali Center for Performing Arts

I understand this trend as a move towards athletic, non-expressive and thereby somewhat

abstracted, impersonal dance. This dichotomy and the controversy surrounding it was already in

place by the mid-century, personified by Rukmini Arundale and Balasaraswati’s and each

dancer’s respective interpretations of Bharatanatyam’s communicative potential (See O’Shea

2007). As I discuss in the following chapter, in Kuchipudi’s case, the move to depersonalize,

systematize and classicize dance in South India stems directly from the ways in which “good”

dance communicates, whether implicitly or explicitly, through the medium of a gendered body.

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 CHAPTER SIX

KUCHIPUDI AND THE SEMANTICS OF CLASSICISM IN ANDHRA PRADESH

Figure 6.1 – Comparison of Andhra Natyam (left) and Kuchipudi (right) Costumes
Photo left courtesy of Kalakrishna, Photo right by author

When I arrived in Andhra Pradesh in December of 2004, halfway through my first year of

graduate school, I landed at the now-defunct Begumpet International Terminal in Hyderabad. As

I disembarked, I was greeted by an Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation

(APTDC) poster that featured a female dancer, ostensibly depicting Satyabhama, wearing a

traditional Kuchipudi costume (see Figure 6.1, left, above). The caption under the photo,

however, did not name this dancer as a Kuchipudi dancer, but instead read, “Andhra Natyam:

Andhra’s Classical Dance for Thousands of Years.”

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 I had heard of Andhra Natyam, but only vaguely, by that point and usually as a

derogatory reference to a Kuchipudi performance that did not meet the mark. The term Andhra

Natyam, (literally: Andhra Dance) was coined in 1970, in many ways as a response to the

perceived dominance of Kuchipudi and Kuchipudi dancers. The Andhra Natyam movement,

launched in the late 1960s-early 1970s by Nataraja Ramakrishna (1923–2011) seeks to establish

a more honest and ethical representation of dance and hereditary practitioners in Andhra Pradesh.

As Kuchipudi was naturalized as the classical dance style representing Andhra Pradesh in

the 1960s and 1970s, Ramakrishna began pointing out the inconsistencies in Telugu dance

history that had elided the female courtesan traditions with the male dramatic traditions under the

umbrella term “Kuchipudi.” In 1970, at a conference in Rajahmundry, a town in Northern

Andhra Pradesh and part of an area1 known for its courtesan dance traditions, Ramakrishna

hosted a conference, Abhinaya Sadasu, at which a group of lāsya narthakis (graceful female

dancers), many from hereditary kalavantulu families, were given a platform to demonstrate their

traditions. By the time these women, from various parts of Andhra Pradesh and representing

varying traditions from temple to salon dance, were identified and invited to this Seminar,

however, Kuchipudi teachers had already incorporated pieces from these female traditions into

their own performances and institutions.

The historical ownership of certain dance repertoire was an openly debated issue as early

as 1967 when Ramakrishna published an article urging the APSNA to differentiate and delineate

Kuchipudi from the female traditions as the organization instituted curriculum standards for

classical dance in Andhra Pradesh. In his article, “Kuchipudi Bhagavata Dance Syllabus,”

1
Also known as the Konaseema delta region. See Map 6.1 below.

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published in the literary Telugu cultural arts journal, Natyakala, Ramakrishna warned against

combining female and male traditions under the name Kuchipudi. He acknowledged that

Kuchipudi had gained currency as a notable dance form, but argued that, as a male dance, it bore

no relation to the female traditions that it was naming and performing as its own. If the APSNA

wanted to institute a syllabus on Kuchipudi (group male) training, it must leave out the lasya

(female, graceful) as these did not belong to the bhagavatulu tradition practiced in Kuchipudi

village.

The formulation of a syllabus represented the codification and reification of a dance

form, and Ramakrishna recognized that if the Kuchipudi syllabus included solo female repertoire

like padams, javalis, and astapadis, the female tradition had little ground left to stand upon. He

concluded the article by pointing out that Kuchipudi was only one tradition among a plethora in

the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh. Instead of focusing on the most popular at the

moment, he urged the APSNA to take stock of the dance traditions across Andhra Pradesh and

formulate a dance curriculum that reflected the diversity and richness of Telugu dance.

Ramakrishna’s efforts to nuance the representation of dance culture, specifically genres

practiced by women, about women, in Andhra Pradesh proved only marginally successful. By

his efforts, the kalavantulu and other related female artists2 were given a few opportunities over

the years to demonstrate that the men of Kuchipudi were, by no means, the exclusive bearers of a

rich Telugu dance culture. By 1983, however, the Andhra Pradesh Nritya Academy, under the

APSNA, convened a panel of expert gurus—four Brahmin men from Kuchipudi village—to

2
Besides the temple dancers (devadasi) these women were known variously as kalavantulu,
bhogam or sani based on their social/ritual function. The term mejuvani is also used to describe
the salon gatherings where these women performed. See Soneji 2004 and 2011.
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formulate a syllabus at the state level. This Kuchipudi syllabus, which remains in place today at

Telugu University and other institutions in Andhra, merged the history of the bhagavata tradition

at Kuchipudi village with the practice and repertoire of a variety of Telugu courtesan cultures.

Kuchipudi was thus memorialized and imparted to the post-independence generation, and those

to follow, as an iconic representation of Telugu dance culture—a singular form to capture a

variety of dance cultures in Andhra Pradesh.

Twelve years later, on January 23, 1995, the Andhra Pradesh government approved a

syllabus3 and the introduction of courses at the certificate and diploma level for Andhra

Natyam.4 The training and performance repertoire reflected in this codified articulation of

Telugu courtesan genres bears remarkable similarity to modern-day Kuchipudi practice,

particularly the version promoted by institutions like the KAA. Indeed, while Kuchipudi places

Satyabhama and Bhamakalapam at the center of its legacy, Andhra Natyam’s pièce de

résistance, Nava Janardhana Parijatam, also features Satyabhama as its main character. The

iconography and female character portrayal (see Figure 6.1 above), a hallmark of each style, are

remarkably similar. At present, however, despite its obvious implication in what qualifies as

modern Kuchipudi practice, Andhra Natyam is not considered a “major,” or classical, dance

form by the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi.

While in Chapter 5 I addressed the varying definitions of classicism in the context of

Telugu- vs. Tamil-language politics in Chennai, in this chapter I turn my focus to the internal

discourse on dance in Andhra Pradesh that the Andhra Natyam movement and its relative
3
This syllabus was originally drafted in 1982 by an expert group of hereditary devadasis
convened by Nataraja Ramakrishna at the Andhra Pradesh Nritya Academy.
4
New Delhi-based dancer, Swapnasundari, has studied with hereditary dancers in Andhra and
has dubbed her style “Vilasini Natyam” (vilasini is another name for a Telugu courtesan like
bhogam, sani, devadasi etc.).
179
minority status underscores. At their core, the efforts to recognize Kuchipudi as a classical dance

form sought to validate a unique, but widespread and recognizably Telugu cultural identity. This

was accomplished by aligning Kuchipudi with Bharatanatyam in terms of its cultural status (i.e.,

a dance form popularized by Brahmins), while establishing a historical and social difference

between the male Brahmin legacy of Kuchipudi and the female courtesan history of

Bharatanatyam. While in Bharatanatyam’s case, the adoption5 of the name “Bharatanatyam” by

Brahmin reformers such as Rukmini Arundale accomplished a sufficient distancing of the dance

from its traditional practitioners, in Kuchipudi’s case, naturalizing a name for a Telugu dance

form proved far more complicated. By naming the classical dance style of Andhra Pradesh as

“Kuchipudi,” Telugu cultural activists literally grounded a Telugu identity; a necessary tool in

what was a geographically based linguistic/cultural movement. By doing so, however, these

activists circumscribed the representation of Telugu dance to a specific locale that was known

primarily for its male dance-drama traditions.

As I have discussed in previous chapters, however, the semantics of classicism in South

India involved the formulation of a powerful icon: the female dancer. This icon is particularly

potent in Chennai, whose sabha audiences remain the primary arbiters of what qualifies as

classical (see Rudisill 2007). Though it was initially expedient for Telugu cultural politics to

differentiate Kuchipudi from Bharatanatyam by relying on accepted dichotomies, such as group,

male dance-drama vs. solo, female recital, particularly in the wake of patriarchal and elitist

reform ideology, in the end, it is image of the solo female dancer that has proved most palatable

to Chennai, pan-Indian, and now, diasporic audiences.

5
Soneji (2010) has argued that this term was not invented by reformers, but rather adopted from
the courtesans themselves who were using the name Bharatanatyam to refer to their dance as
early as 1806.
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 Figure 6.2 – Popular mid-century Kuchipudi dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy, c. 1960
Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives

The female dancer resonates powerfully as a symbol precisely because she represents a

narrative so fundamental to the essence of an Indian modernity—an unbroken link connecting a

romanticized ancient dancing girl to today’s middle-class Indian woman. In Andhra Pradesh’s

case, however, Kuchipudi’s paradoxical construction as a male Brahmin form performed by

women essentially elbowed out Andhra Natyam. If Kuchipudi represented both the female and

male forms of Andhra Pradesh, there was little cultural capital left for Telugu courtesan dancers

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to recuperate their own modern identity.

TELUGU FILMS, THE “TELUGU ELITE” AND NOSTALGIA

This apparent lack of cultural space for Andhra Natyam is particularly curious if one

considers modern Andhra Pradesh’s apparent fascination with the figure of the courtesan,

evident in her ubiquitous representation in Telugu films, such as the phenomenally successful

Sankarabharanam (1979).

Figure 6.3 – DVD/CD jacket cover to Sankarabharanam (1979)

Directed by K. Viswanath
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

As the photo above illustrates, the elision between a modern-day courtesan and the

ancient celestial dancer imaged in temple sculpture communicates a powerful ideology on the
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connections between India’s past and present. The film Sankarabharanam relies on a number of

such narratives, based on patriarchal ideologies on caste and religion—a signature of director K.

Viswanath’s style. Viswanath’s films are particularly popular among Telugu Brahmins due to the

fact that his films characterize the Brahmin man vis-à-vis his speech: a high-caste Telugu dialect

that incorporates a Sanskritized, literary vocabulary. Pandian (1996) has noted a similar trend in

Tamil cinema, which he theorizes as cinematic “realism” (Pandian 1996, 952).

What got privileged in the new discourse of the Tamil elite on cinema was
dialogue…N. Shrinivas, the founder of the film magazine Talk-a-Tone
wrote, “Dialogues should be written so as to fit the roles of the
actors…one who is drawn from upper class speaks in a particular way.
Illiterate low caste person speaks differently. When a rich man addresses
labourers, he speaks in a specific fashion. Labourers do not speak the same
way as their employers.”

A Brahmin himself, Viswanath’s films follow this model of “realism”—what I prefer to

describe as mirroring (in the Lacanian sense)—and celebrate high-caste culture, specifically the

Brahmin man, for his religious, cultural and literary knowledge. His films follow a trend that can

be traced back to early Telugu films such as Yogi Vemana (1947), which emphasize the

Sanskritic, Vedic traditions practiced by upper-caste men. Though he had been directing films as

early as the 1960s, Sankarabharanam catapulted Viswanath into the pantheon of cultural elite

whose depictions of life in Andhra Pradesh highlight Karnatic music, Kuchipudi dance and

Telugu literature. Indeed, with the release and subsequent popularity of Sankarabharanam

Viswanath joined the ranks of movie directors and cultural icons such as Mullapudi Venkata

Ramana (1931–2011), Sattiraju Lakshmi Narayana (1933–), better known by his pen name,

Bapu, as well as other Telugu Brahmin film directors like Jandhyala Subramanyasastry (1951–

2001), all of whom emphasize dance and music in high-caste culture.

While these films are popular among a particular segment of society, it is important to
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note that they exist somewhat separate from, if not explicitly in contradistinction to commercial

Telugu films. Many of Viswanath’s films actually critique the commercial film industry in

Andhra as a symbol of the “low-brow” degeneration of “traditional” culture such as classical

dance, music and literature. To this end, practically all of Viswanath’s films feature the Brahmin

man as a guru and include extensive Karnatic music and Kuchipudi scenes (see Appendix 2).

Sankarabharanam, for example, tells the story of a humble Brahmin man, Sastry, a once-

celebrated Karnatic singer, and a bhogam woman, Tulasi, who is a dancer. Despite coming from

a low-caste prostitute background, Tulasi has a deep appreciation for Karnatic music. Her mother

sends her to receive dance training so she can demand more payment from Tulasi’s patrons. A

great admirer of Sastry’s art, when Tulasi comes across Sastry teaching his daughter music near

the river banks, she is moved to dance to his music.

Figure 6.4 – Tulasi (left) dances while Sastry teaches his young daughter (right) music
Photo courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

184
The contrast between Sastry’s daughter and Tulasi in the film reminds us that, even as late as

1979, it was still more respectable to train a middle-to-upper class/caste girl in music rather than

dance.

After her mother demands that she take a patron, Tulasi runs away and Sastry takes her

in. Over time, Tulasi comes to see Sastry as her guru as well as her savior, and her dance is

framed as increasingly more spiritual and religious through his involvement in her life. In the

film, while listening to his music, she imagines herself dancing. The dream-sequence scenes

feature monuments to Telugu cultural pride as Tulasi dances in front of temples, along the banks

of the Krishna river and in the lush, green fields of the Andhra heartland.

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Figure 6.5 – In clockwise order, Tulasi dances at a temple in Halebedu (Karnataka), on the banks
of the Krishna River and in the fields of the Krishna district
Photos courtesy of the National Film Archives of India

The primary conflict of the film stems from Tulasi murdering the zamindar-patron her

mother has chosen for her after he kicks a picture of Sastry, her guru. Though Tulasi is saved

from prosecution by Sastry’s influence, he faces insults and a loss of stature because he takes

Tulasi into his home and provides for her. Tulasi is embarrassed by the stigma and disrespect she

has brought to Sastry’s life so she leaves. Despite disassociating herself from him to save his

reputation, Sastry’s popularity diminishes anyway as society loses interest in Karnatic music.

During this time, Tulasi inherits her mother’s property and uses the income to support Sastry

186
anonymously. In the final sequence of the film, as his anonymous patron, Tulasi arranges a

concert for Sastry. At this concert, Sastry suffers a heart-attack and Tulasi’s son, who has been

studying with Sastry, takes over for him. With the tradition safely in the hands of a new heir,

both Sastry and Tulasi die and the film ends.

In Sankarabharanam, the simultaneous characterization of Tulasi as a morally

questionable bhogam woman and a modern symbol of Telugu cultural pride underscores the

complicated and often paradoxical representation of the female dancer in Telugu films. The film

also echoes the current disconnect between the two primary discourses on the Telugu courtesan.

On the one hand, scholarship on the historical courtesan celebrates her long-lost artistic and

cultural legacy while bemoaning her current state of disenfranchisement in the narratives of the

Indian nation-state (e.g., Allen 1997; Meduri 1996; Soneji 2010, 2011). On the other, current

events in courtesan communities speak to a very present and pressing humanitarian crisis

wherein poverty, illiteracy, and casteism enable a practice of dedicating young girls to lives of

forced prostitution in the name of an ancient, once glorious tradition.

While in the case of Bharatanatyam, reformers created enough distance between the

mythical, romanticized courtesan and her modern counterpart, this has not been possible in

Andhra Natyam historiography. This is because unlike Bharatanatyam, Andhra Natyam has

never denied the contemporary existence of these hereditary dancers. Bharatanatyam reformers

were able to use a rhetoric of “rescue” and “revival” by claiming that courtesan culture only

survived in the hands of a few aging women. In his research on Bharatanatyam, Soneji stresses

this point, reminding us that though modern patronage systems like the Madras Music Academy

hosted performances by hereditary female dancers starting in 1931, by the 1940s these women

no longer appeared in public performances under the pretense that these communities were now
187
extinct (Soneji 2010, xvii; Gaston 1990). This erasure was possible because, by the 1940s, these

courtesan women had been thoroughly vilified in South Indian bourgeois society and thus easily

replaced by the newly constructed and respectable Bharatanatyam dancer.

In Andhra Pradesh’s case, figures like Dr. Nataraja Ramakrishna have consistently fought

to celebrate Telugu courtesans as living legends at conferences and seminars on Andhra dance,

like the Seminar in 1959 and more recently, at a Nrityosava (Festival of Dance) in 1995,

organized by the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi. Yet, as I have experienced as a Telugu dancer,

the issue of recognizing and representing Telugu courtesan dance is not simply a matter of

acknowledging the existence of these women and their art, but accounting for the “distaste” for

their style of dance. To refer to a dance performance as “Andhra Natyam” in my experiences as a

Kuchipudi dancer is a thinly veiled critique of a dancer’s technique, specifically her posture and

the ways in which she adheres to physical principles of “classical” dance such as those discussed

in previous chapters. In other words, the Andhra Natyam technique represents an anachronism—

a personalized aesthetic that privileges individual expression over the defined and circumscribed

communication that typifies classical dance today.

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 Figure 6.6 – Participants at the SNA’s 1995 Nrityosava in Hyderabad.
From L-R: Saride Manikyamma, Annabattula Satyabhama, C.R. Acharyalu,
Joysula Seetharamaiah, Natajara Ramakrishna, Pasumarti Venu Gopala Krishna Sarma,
Pasumarti Krishnamurthy, Vempati Chinna Satyam, Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma,
Korada Narsimha Rao, Pasumarti Seetharamaiah, Maddula Lakshminarayana
Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives

The photo (Figure 6.6) above captures the essence of gender politics within dance history

in Andhra Pradesh—female dancers and hereditary courtesans, literally placed at the periphery.

Unlike Bharatanatyam, these women and their contribution is acknowledged, but not necessarily

accepted and certainly not valued. Indeed, this picture testifies to the politics of representation in

Andhra, for Kuchipudi’s success as the primary emblem for a Telugu identity, iconicized by a

female dancer, relies on Andhra Natyam’s failure. As long as the female dance traditions of

Andhra Pradesh honestly, if uncomfortably, acknowledge their living female courtesan legacy,

189
these women and their representation of female dance will continue to be relegated to the

margins.

TOURISM AND TASTE: ANNUAL HERITAGE FESTIVAL IN KUCHIPUDI VILLAGE

These issues of representation are made abundantly clear in the recent initiatives by the

APTDC to host an annual tourism festival, Siddendhra Yogi Mahotsav, in Kuchipudi village.

Billed as a yearly event since 1948, but under corporate sponsorship since 2006, the festival

organizers employ a rhetoric in the program brochure that posits a seamless transition from

village to nation to diaspora and back again.

Dances all over India have been effective in carrying forward the various
mythological stories, folklore and classical literature from generation to
generation while entertaining the audiences. These dances evolved into
classical styles around 2 BC (sic) when the ancient treatise on dance,
Natya Shastra, was compiled. Kuchipudi that is so much a part of the
“Telugu heritage” of Andhra Pradesh, originated in a tiny village.

The first Kuchipudi festival “Siddendra Yogi Prathama Varshika Jayanthi

Utsavam” was held in December of 1948 and was organized by “Sri
Lalitha Natya Kala Samithi” with the participation of several important
dancers and patrons of Kuchipudi. Since then, the Kuchipudi festival is
being conducted annually.

The objective behind this enterprising initiative is to bring the rich cultural
heritage of Kuchipudi to limelight and mark this tiny village on the map as
an abode of art and encourage more artists and residents to pursue their
careers in propagating and perpetuating the art form. (Mahotsav 2009
Program Brochure)

The festival I attended on March 6-12, 2009 was organized into two main events. Each morning,

there was a training and lecture-demonstration session held at the newly-constructed Telugu

University dance school in the village, Sri Siddendra Kalakshetram. Each evening featured

190
performances by dancers from all over India, with about half of the total evening slots allotted

for dancers and teachers from the village.

The morning session was listed in the program as “under the guidance of Guru Dr.

Vempati Chinna Satyam” from the KAA in Chennai, attesting to the Chennai-centric practice of

classical Kuchipudi today. Though I was expecting the pedagogy at these training camps to

reflect a different aspect of Kuchipudi specific to the village, it turned out that I had travelled

from Chennai to Kuchipudi village to learn the same style, from the same teachers with whom I

was studying in Chennai. Satyam’s son, Ravi, the heir apparent to the KAA, led these training

sessions most mornings accompanied by his sister-in-law, a KAA senior instructor, Srimoy. The

demographic breakdown of the training sessions could be described as follows: Telugu NRIs,

such as myself, who were interested in some much-needed practice and/or some heritage

tourism, the students from the KAA in Chennai who were dancing in the evening performances,

and a handful of students who were living and studying dance at the dance college.

The interaction in these morning sessions between the students and teachers from the

KAA and those who were studying in the village provided valuable insight into the issues of

representation I discuss above. The differentiation between the dancers from the KAA and those

from the village is marked by gendered distinctions: the latter maintained a strong masculine

bhagavata flavor, including a pronounced ubuku or bounce, while the former exhibited the

feminized style popularized in Chennai. The students studying in Kuchipudi village, either at the

institution or through traditional guru-sisya arrangements, were clearly intent on emulating the

dancers trained in the KAA style. These training sessions demonstrated to me that as a

Kuchipudi dancer, the KAA style was, simply put, more coveted.

191
 This aesthetic hierarchy initially struck me as bizarre—why were those living in

Kuchipudi, studying with hereditary gurus interested in emulating the style taught in Chennai at

the KAA? During our training sessions, the students from the village, especially the men who

danced in the older, masculine style, were openly admired and even asked to demonstrate their

bhagavata-style athleticism for the class by the teachers from Chennai. These men, like

Vedantam Muthyam, a dancer I had the pleasure of getting to know during my time in

Hyderabad and in Kuchipudi, were ostensibly pleased to receive such attention and praise. In our

conversations, however, he acknowledged that he represented what he termed the “old village

style” which was valuable for its historicity, but that the dancers trained at the KAA exhibited a

more broadly accepted and marketable style (V. Muthyam, pers. comm.).

MAPPING KUCHIPUDI

The positioning of Kuchipudi dancers, between the style practiced in Kuchipudi and the

style taught at the KAA in Chennai, was on display throughout the festival programming and

speaks to issues of socio-economics as well as aesthetics and audience taste. In terms of finances,

the festival itself is primarily organized by the KAA administrative offices in Chennai with

supplemental funding provided by corporate sponsors from Andhra Pradesh. In my interviews

with the organizational head of the KAA, Vempati Venkat, he explained to me that his main goal

since 2006 has been to provide a platform for the dancers who remained in the village as well as

to bring some tourist revenue to an otherwise impoverished area. As Venkat put it, “like

Chidambaram, Konark, Khajuraho, now also Kuchipudi,” a reference to the most popular

destination tourism dance festivals in India with which he hoped his event would be associated.
192
Like these other festivals, the Mahotsav in Kuchipudi featured world-renown dancers, such as

Padma Subrahmanyam, but in 2009, the organizers reserved the most respected slot (9 pm) each

night for a village guru and his students.

Friday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 6, 2009
-
Performer Inaugural events Padma Subrahmanyam
Dance Style - Bharatanrityam -
Description/Title
- - -
of Presentation
Saturday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 7, 2009
Kalamandalam Vedantam Venku &
Annabattula Lakshmi
Performer Raman Kutty Kuchipudi Bhagavata
Mangatayaru
Nair Melam*
Dance Style Kathakali Konaseema Sampradayam Kuchipudi*
Description/Title
of Presentation -
Gollakalapam Bhamakalapam*
(if applicable)
Sunday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 8, 2009
Pasumarti Rattayya Sarma
Performer Hari & Chethna Vempati Ravi Shankar**
& Group *
Dance Style Kathak Kuchipudi ** Kuchipudi*
Description/Title Usha Parinayam
of Presentation - Dance-Drama*
Monday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 9, 2009
Kalamandalam Anuradha Jonnalagadda Vedantam Ramalinga
Performer
Shylaja Tadakamalla & Group** Sastry & Group*
Dance Style Kutiyattam Kuchipudi** Kuchipudi*

Table 6.1 – Evening Programming at Siddendra Yogi Mahotsv

March 6-12, 2009
*indicates that the performer teaches in Kuchipudi village
** indicates performer teaches/was trained at the KAA in Chennai

193
Description/Title Chandalika Vinayaka Chaviti
Nangiarkuttu
of Presentation Dance-Drama** Dance-Drama*
Tuesday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 10, 2009
Shridhar &
Vedantam Radhesyam &
Performer Anuradha Yamini Reddy
Group*
Shridhar
Dance Style Bharatanatyam Kuchipudi Kuchipudi*
Description/Title Prahalada
Mahabharatam -
of Presentation Yakshaganam*
Wednesday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 11, 2009
Pasumarti Venkateswara
Performer Leela Mohanty Imocha Singh
Sarma*
Dance Style Odissi Manipuri Kuchipudi*
Description/Title Mohini Basmasura
- -
of Presentation Dance-Drama
Thursday 9 pm
7pm 8 pm
March 12, 2009
Sheela
Kuchipudi Arts Academy
Performer Unnikrishnan & Closing Remarks
(KAA) Troupe**
Students
Dance Style Bharatanatyam Kuchipudi** -
Parvati
Description/Title Ksheera Sagara
Parinayam -
of Presentation Madanam**
Dance-Drama

Table 6.1, continued

The stage for the evening performances was set up next to the main temple dedicated to

the deities Ramalingeswara Swami and Balatripurasundari, in the center of the Brahmin quarter

of the village. The audience each night of the seven nights was relatively small, with no more

than 150 in attendance. The audience members who were from the area were either from

Kuchipudi or a neighboring village within walking distance. The rest of the audience consisted

of dignitaries, press, or performers from a city, like Chennai or New Delhi, who were in

attendance because they were somehow involved in the event. Despite the rhetoric on turning
194
Kuchipudi into a tourist attraction, I did not observe more than perhaps two visitors from outside

of the immediate area who were not involved with the event, besides myself. Even this couple, a

man and a woman from Moscow, were only in attendance because the woman had come to study

with Vempati Ravi in Chennai, so she followed him to Kuchipudi for the week. In fact, I did not

even come across a sizable portion of the audience from the closest city, Vijayawada, a statistic

that was driven home when I went looking for a map of Andhra Pradesh that marked

Kuchipudi’s location at a Vijayawada bookstore and had to explain to a number of booksellers

where and what Kuchipudi was.

KUCHIPUDI, LAUGHTER, AND THE FOURTH WALL

The opening night drew the largest crowd, with dignitaries participating in the inaugural

ceremonies and the world-famous Padma Subrahmanyam performing. I had recently attended a

thematically related lecture-demonstration by Subrahmanyam in Chennai so I had a pretty good

idea of what I would see. As I watched and listened to the audience react to her performance,

however, I realized that though Subrahmanyam was a highly-regarded dancer and her presence at

the Mahotsav functioned as an endorsement of the event, the audience and its tastes in Kuchipudi

differed from a Chennai sabha in telling ways.

In her performance, Subrahmanyam provided a “realistic” characterization of Vinayaka

(also known as Ganesha) as a comical, ungraceful, chubby figure—a hallmark of her style,

which she refers to as “Bharata Nrityam”—in contrast to Bharatanatyam (see Subrahmanyam

1978 and 2003). In her style of dance, Subrahmanyam’s representational methods often blur the

line between constructed categories like folk and classical. She draws heavily from idiomatic and

colloquial forms of expression (lok-dharmi) rather than abstracted representation-based

195
movement vocabularies (nāṭya -dharmi) (see Raghavan 2004, 149-194). That is, while lok-

dharmi depicts an action as it occurs in real life, natya-dharmi relies on mudras or other stylized

gestures to communicate the same message. This differentiation is highlighted by most scholars

of Indian dance as the primary contradistinction between natya melam and nattuva melam

traditions in India (see Chapter 3, figure 3.6).

In terms of taste and reception, the distinction between folk and classical, as well as

between lok-dharmi and natya-dharmi can also be mapped onto two equally ubiquitous, heuristic

binaries: amateur/professional and low-brow/high-brow. The performances at the Mahotsav,

beginning with Subrahmanyam’s, illustrated the extent to which these binaries align with

audience perceptions as to what is a “good” performance, a commentary I both overheard and

witnessed as audience members remarked to one another, laughed either with or at the performer

or left the performance.

Figure 6.7 – Padma Subramanyam depicting Vinayaka at the 2009 Kuchipudi Mahotsav
Photo by author

196
 I had observed Subrahmanyam perform an almost identical performance in Chennai

during the Natyakala conference in December. While her philosophy towards verisimilitude was

lauded as artistic and provocative in Chennai at the Sree Krishna Gana Sabha, the audience in

Kuchipudi, particularly the Telugu Brahmin dignitaries I was seated closest to, tisked at her

portryal, commenting that her mocking portrayal of Vinayaka was sacrilegious and in poor taste.

The reactions to Subrahmanyam’s performance I overheard suggest that the audience in

Kuchipudi at the Mahotsav, in comparison to Chennai, identified with the dancer/performer in

ways that speak to a shared conception of art and entertainment as well as a positioning in a

caste- and language-conscious social order. In Chennai, in front of a predominantly Tamil

audience, Subrahmanyam (a Tamilian herself) presented similar material that highlighted her

skill at verisimilitude as she embodied animal and human characters with what she described as a

more sincere affect (Subrahmanyam 2008). In Andhra, the audience did not receive her sincerity

in her characterization of Vinayaka as a reflection of their own beliefs, but rather as that of an

outsider, and a Tamilian at that.

I understand the audience’s lack of connection to Subrahmanyam’s performance as an

example of what Susan Seizer has described in her work with Special Drama artists in Tamil

Nadu as “humor… operating as a process of defamiliarization” (Seizer 2005, 199). Here, Seizer

is referring to Bertolt Brecht’s ([1957] 1964) theatrical models for activist art—what he termed

“the alienation effect”—to capture the interaction between audience and performer wherein the

“audience judges a performance within a shared context of known style and standard of common

behavior” (ibid., 267). I realized during Subrahmanyam’s performance that though the audience

acknowledged her status as a classical dancer from Chennai, her portrayal of Vinayaka was not a

method of representation with which the audience in Kuchipudi could or would identify.
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 The Brechtian design, which breaks down the “fourth wall” by focusing on audience

approval as a means of self-identification, informs my analysis of the Kuchipudi dance

performances at the Mahotsav. While the KAA performances exhibited the highest degree of

professionalism in terms of set-design, coordination of dancers’ movements, and music that was

in-tune (sruti), the performances by two troupes, Vedantam Radhesyam’s, and Vedantam

Venku’s, both from the village, elicited greater audience reaction, particularly laughter. This is

not to say that the KAA performances were not well received—indeed, the audience was

considerably larger on these two nights than any other besides the opening night. The grace and

coordination of the KAA dancers, however, a necessary aspect of performance success in

Chennai (see Chapter 5), did not elicit a reaction from the audience in Kuchipudi the way

Radhesyam and Venku’s performances did.

Among the performances by self-identified Kuchipudi dancers, the troupes that employed

dramatic tools like comic interludes, which rely primarily on speech, garnered a notable reaction

from the audience, locals and visiting dignitaries alike. This dynamic between the performer and

the audience was specific to my experiences at the Mahotsav in contrast with the sabhas and

assembly halls of New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Stated another way, while in urban

settings I observed a performance model for dance recitals that relied on the proverbial fourth

wall, at the Mahotsav, this wall came down in the performances by two Kuchipudi troupes: the

troupe led by Vedantam Radhesyam and the one led by Vedantam Venku. Unlike most of the

performances I had witnessed up until this point, both of these performances communicated

directly with the audience, utilizing both humor and speech-dialogue, hallmarks of the bhagavata

tradition. In the next and final section of this chapter, I interrogate the construction of classicism

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in Telugu dance culture vis-à-vis audience laughter in performances at the 2009 Kuchipudi

Mahotsav.

DANCE AS ART/DANCE AS ENTERTAINMENT

My comparison and contrast of the Kuchipudi troupes that interacted with the audience

through irony or humor (or did not) stemmed directly from the discomfort I witnessed in my

fellow audience members during Subrahmanyam’s performance. Subrahmanyam’s performance

was feted as the inaugural event, a respect shown only to a dancer who has reached a certain

level of fame for their artistry. In this regard, her comical portrayal of Vinayaka sat poorly with

an audience who experience farce or irony as part of entertainment culture, not classical dance,

and certainly not by an esteemed dancer from Chennai like Subrahmanyam.6

In light of the reaction to Subrahmanyam’s performance, the resonance of humor in the

Kuchipudi performances provides an important index of how Telugu audiences understand dance

culture. In a Kuchipudi performance, humor, most often irony, occurs in an interlude and

primarily through a speech-dialogue initiated by the character of the sutradhar. The sutradhar sets

the tone of the performance and it is primarily through his performance that the audience

experiences a dance event as art or entertainment.

6
The difference between dance as art (or religion) and dance as entertainment forms a
foundational premise in many sociological or anthropological studies of the performing arts in
South Asia. See, for example P. Sambamoorthy’s (1952) taxonomy in his seminal three-volume
Dictionary of South Indian Music and Musicians.

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 Vedantam Radhesyam embodies the historical, jack-of-all-trades Kuchipudi sutradhar. In

contrast to the other Kuchipudi performances, Radhesyam’s orchestra did not include another

male vocalist. Throughout his performance, he sang and played nattuvangam (conductor’s

cymbals), all the while hopping up from his seated position in the orchestra to enact the role of

sutradhar. Every other Kuchipudi troupe that performed at the Mahotsav used a professional

male singer, trained in the Karnatic style, in their orchestra and/or two sutradhars to avoid the

awkward movement between different microphones on stage as well as a transgression of

boundaries between orchestra and dancers.

Figure 6.8 – Radhesyam seated with the orchestra playing the role of sutradhar.
Photo by author

In the picture above, Radhesyam can be seen in costume, as sutradhar, singing the male

vocals as well as providing his character’s narration while seated with the orchestra. In contrast

with the other Kuchipudi performances, Radhesyam’s vocals were markedly less Karnatic,

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which is to say, his is not a trained melodious voice. Though his vocals were perfectly in tune,

unlike the singers for the KAA as well as the other Kuchipudi troupes, his singing differed from

the accepted Karnatic singing style both in terms of his comparatively rough vocal timbre and

limited melodic ornamentation.

The Kuchipudi troupe that performed under Vedantam Venku (pictured below) combined

the two models by having a professional Karnatic singer alongside a traditional sutradhar.

Figure 6.9 – Pasumarti Rattayya Sarma as sutradhar singing with Karnatic vocalist
D. S. V. Sastry
Photo by author

The ultimate outcome of this combination of old and new musical accompaniment style was that

the sutradhar, Pasumarti Rattayya Sarma, dropped in an out of the vocals, particularly in

moments when the professional vocalist, D. S. V. Sastri, was singing intricate ornamental

passages. At times, Rattayya Sarma appeared self-conscious of his own non-professional voice in

the company of a celebrated singer like Sastri, who is respected and sought after as a vocalist for

Kuchipudi performances all over the world.

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 The spectrum of vocal accompaniment on display at the Mahotsav points to underlying

conceptions of musical classicism in Kuchipudi dance performances (see Chapter 3). The voice

of the sutradhar provides a marker, identifying a Kuchipudi troupe’s relative folkness or

classicism. The sutradhar’s character also possesses the potential to break the illusion of a

theatrical presentation because we are literally watching him change roles across an important

boundary between off-stage and on-stage, between character or accompanist. At the Mahotsav,

this boundary was further tested in moments when Radhesyam and Rattayya Sarma played the

character of sutradhar as was once the practice in Kuchipudi—as a narrator-cum-comedian.

SPEECH AND IRONY

One of the most obvious changes Vempati Chinna Satyam introduced into his

reformulation of Kuchipudi at the KAA in the 1960s was the removal of extended speech7

passages between the sutradhar and other characters. Instead, Chinna Satyam set these

conversational interactions to music, akin to the formulation of recitative in Western classical

operatic performance. A number of the Kuchipudi presentations at the Mahotsav emulated this

style of purely musical dance-drama8 popularized by Chinna Satyam and his troupe. The ones

who did not follow suit, however, notably Radhesyam and Vedantam Venku’s troupes,

maintained an important aspect of the spoken dialogues in Kuchipudi performance practice—

humor.

7
Also known as vacchikabhinayam
8
Also known as nrtya-natakam
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 Out of the Kuchipudi performances at the Mahotsav, Vedantam Radhesyam and

Vedentam Venku’s troupes provided the only examples of spoken dialogue and humor, both

hallmarks of the older bhagavatam performance practice in Kuchipudi village. Neither

Radhesyam nor Venku adhere to the KAA performance practice because both of these men place

themselves and their respective dance styles in opposition to the KAA style of Kuchipudi.

Radhesyam, for example, holds the position of lecturer at the Siddendhra Kalakshetra, but is an

otherwise unsung hero in terms of accolades among the gurus who remain in the village. In my

personal experiences with Radhesyam over many years, I have observed a number of his

performances, both in India and in the United States and have come to understand that he wishes

to maintain the older tradition of Kuchipudi in his performances and teaching. His performances

are a prime example of Kuchipudi as it was, in terms of technique, content, music, and staging.

In sum, he and his students represent a conscious counterpoint to the style popularized by the

KAA.

Radhesyam’s performances are always crowd-pleasers among Telugu-speakers,

particularly outside of the village setting precisely because he presents a historical and reified

version of Kuchipudi dance. Through his use of humor, his performances not only accomplish

historicism, but also cultural intimacy as he plays with stereotypes and audience expectations.

The performance at the Mahotsav in 2009 was no exception. In a filler scene during a costume

change, Radhesyam as sutradhar started up a semi-improvised conversation with two minor

characters, who are depicted as low-caste snake-charmers. In the interaction, through a

combination of sarcasm and irony, Radhesyam poked fun at the snake charmers’ low intelligence

and poor pronunciation to the great enjoyment of the audience as well as his orchestra who could

be seen laughing along with the audience.

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 Figure 6.10 – Radhesyam mocking the snake-charmers
Photo by author

Besides making the audience roar with laughter at the buffoonery of the snake-charmers, in this

scene Radhesyam established his authority with the audience as narrator, primary entertainer,

and member of the Brahmin caste.9 Indeed, in the course of mocking the snake-charmers,

Radhesyam underlines his caste position, reminding them they are not allowed to come too close

to him after one of the charmers reaches to pay his respects by touching Radhesyam’s feet.

I had witnessed an identical performance by Radhesyam in Chennai, in December 2005,

during the annual Natyakala Conference hosted by the Sree Krishna Gana Sabha. Though in

Chennai, in a sabha setting, I watched audience members shift in their seats, discomforted at the

9
See Seizer (2005) for an analysis of stock characters, such as the buffoon, in South Indian
theater.
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“crudeness” of Radhesyam’s performance, at the Mahotsav, the audience laughed aloud, readily

siding with Radhesyam as he poked fun at these men. In terms of theatrical devices, this scene

provided a prime example of dramatic irony wherein the audience is in on the joke with the

sutradhar, but the snake charmers remain behind the fourth wall. In identifying with

Radhesyam’s characer, the audience accepted his social commentary, at least for the comedic

value it provided.

Vedantam Venku’s performance at the Mahotsav included an almost identical interlude,

but this time between the sutradhar, played by Pasumarti Rattayya Sarma, and the main

character, Satyabhama, played in stri vesam by Venku. Like Radhesyam, Venku’s success as a

dancer has been founded on his representation of historical Kuchipudi rather than the KAA style.

While Radhesyam is famous for performing as sutradhar in the bhagavata style, Venku has

earned his accolades by playing female characters, continuing the tradition of stri vesam in the

village.

During one interaction between the sutradhar and Satyabhama, she asks him to “go there”

and bring her love, Krishna, to her. Pretending to misunderstand her, the sutradhar walks to the

end of the stage, turns around and returns to her, reporting that he did not see anything or anyone

“over there.”

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 Figure 6.11 – Rattayya Sarma as sutradhar mocking Venku as Satyabhama
Photo by author

In his affected feminine voice, Venku clarifies what he meant, but the sutradhar, gesturing to the

audience, pokes fun at Satyabhama’s misspeaking, portraying her as a silly, inarticulate woman.

Here, again, the sutradhar mocks the speech of a character, underscoring the importance of

language, winking all the while to the audience, which is in on the joke. This scene compounds

the politics of representation, however, because Venku is a Brahmin man and in his

impersonation of a woman, he participates in the mockery. The implicit, but discernable

intentions of the performers and the audience’s informed listenership make this interaction

possible. The audience members laugh because they can identify with the characterizations, if

not outright mockery, taking place on stage.

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 I encountered laughter one other time at the Mahotsav in 2009, during a performance by a

troupe of hereditary kalavantulu performers. In the programming, these women are not described

by style, but rather by their place of origin, Konaseema, mentioned in Chapters 2 and 3 as a delta

region in Andhra Pradesh famous for its female dance traditions.

Map 6.1 – Map of the Konaseema region of Andhra Pradesh

The women who had been invited to perform at the 1959 Seminar, Vaidehi and Induvadana,

were also from this region, from a town just east of Tadepallegudem known as Marampally. At

the Mahotsav, much like at the 1959 Seminar, the Konaseema kalavantulu preformed

Gollakalapam as a duo. In 2009, the character of Gollabhama was played by Annabattula

Lakshmi Mangatayaru of Mummidivaram (see map above), the granddaughter of one of the
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women in the 1995 Nrityosava photo above (figure 6.6). As in 1959, the 2009 performance

featured two dancers, with one woman playing the character of Gollabhama while the other acted

as the sutradhar.

Figure 6.12 – Left, Vaidehi and Induvadana perform Gollakalapam from the Konaseema
tradition at the APSNA Kuchipudi Seminar, Hyderabad, 1959
Photo courtesy of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Archives
Right, Annabattula Mangatayaru and troupe perform Gollakalapam from the Konaseema
tradition at the Kuchipudi Mahotsav, Kuchipudi, 2009
Photo by author

While Vaidehi and Induvadana were celebrated in written accounts as the “highlight” of

the Seminar in 1959, forty years later, Mangatayaru’s performance was met with derision and

snickering (1959 Seminar Souvenir, 43). In my conversations with audience members, mostly

women dressed in fine paṭṭu sarees, bedecked in the seven-stone diamond earrings so ubiquitous

in the sabha it seems a uniform, I asked them to explain why they were laughing. In response,

they mimicked the sutradhar’s performance, and in a high-pitched voice, joked to one another
208
about her pronunciation of “Gollabhama.” As I walked towards my taxi, with the members of the

audience whose cars would also ferry them to hotels or guesthouse accommodations, I overheard

several comments on the pronunciation of the sutradhar when she said “Gollabhama”—

apparently she had overemphasized the “h” in “Bhama.”

While it is usually the practice of the sutradhar in Gollakalapam to tease the Gollabhama

on her low-caste pronunciation, in this performance, the audience interpreted this literally, as a

mark against the dancer, the woman who was playing sutradhar. Moreover, in comparison with

the other Telugu dance performances (i.e., the Kuchipudi performances), the costuming, sets, and

music for the Konaseema performance stood out. There was little instrumental accompaniment,

and the violin and vocalist frequently played/sang out of tune throughout the performance.

Audience members’ comments during the performance and after in regards to the Konaseema

women’s “lack of refinement and professionalism” spoke directly to the differentiation between

art and entertainment as well as taste perceptions on what denotes a dance performance and a

good one at that.

While in 1959 the women had both worn saris for the performance, in 2009, the woman

playing sutradhar was dressed as a Brahmin man. Though this was ostensibly a move to validate

the performance by adopting Kuchipudi costuming practice, the performance of a hereditary

courtesan woman, in Kuchipudi village, dressed as a Brahmin man provided an easy target for

audience disapproval. The real problem, however, remained the matter of the dancer’s poor

diction. To me, it seemed crystal clear that the sutradhar in the Konaseema performance was

drawing on the same dramatic devices as the Kuchipudi troupes to poke fun at Gollabhama’s

character. Despite my suggestion that she was simply playing her character, and as sutradhar, she

would be expected to mock Gollabhama’s pronunciation, the audience members, particularly the
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women seated next to me, did not agree with my assessment. While these same women readily

accepted and laughed out-loud at Radhesyam’s mockery of the snake charmers’ poor diction, in

the Konaseema performance, it was interpreted as a sign of the Konaseema dancer’s own poor

articulation and low-caste.

The audience’s ability to identify with Radhesyam but inability to do so with the

Konaseema women provided a stark example of the social construction of good, classical dance

as well as the politics of gender, caste and representation in Andhra Pradesh. Though the

kalavantulu performance referenced a historical Telugu dance tradition, similar to the ways in

which Venku and Radhesyam position themselves as examples of pre-modern Kuchipudi, the

Konaseema women were perceived as unpolished rather than authentic.

A review of the same performance, by the same group of women at a recent academic

symposium held at the University of Hyderabad in 2011, describes the dynamics of audience

reception and conceptions of historicity in Andhra Pradesh.

The Gollakalapam by Annabattula Mangatayaru of Mummidivaram and

her disciples charmed the spectators with the witty repartees of the
Gollabhama (girl from a shepherd community) and the Vipra (a Brahmin)
who engage in an argument whereby a discourse on spiritual truths
unfolds and the ultimate goal of human life, to attain moksha, is stressed
upon. In their tradition of Lasya Nartanam, Tarigonda Vengamamba's
script of Gollakalapam is performed, as devised by Atkuri Subbarayudu of
the early 20th century who passed it on to Annabattula Buli Venkata
Ratnamma. Her grand-daughters, the Annabattula sisters, have kept alive
the legacy and are grooming yet another generation of performers. The
spectators' repeated applause drew one's attention to the fact that the
seemingly less classical and lesser known forms can also provide
wholesome entertainment to the contemporary spectators; they only need
to be staged frequently, to be seen more often by more people. (Puranam
2011)

The relative success at the symposium in comparison to the performance at the Mahotsav,

described in terms of perceived classicism and historical value, speaks directly to the
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complicated and at times disparate ways in which representations of the past through dance are

framed and thus received. Despite its agenda to popularize rural forms and performers, providing

a platform for an urban viewership to experience authentic dance culture, the audience at the

Mahotsav demonstrated a distaste for certain forms of authenticity, such as courtesan dance. On

the other hand, the passage above reveals the subaltern academic discourse on historicism and

dance in Andhra Pradesh, which seeks to popularize Mangataryu specifically for the courtesan

legacy she represents.

Despite what scholars or advocates of Andhra Natyam or other “marginalized” cultural

forms might declare in print or at academic seminars on dance, the reception of the Konaseema

performance at the Mahotsav in 2009 demonstrates why the Andhra Natyam movement to train

young, urban girls in the traditions of the Telugu courtesans has never gained much momentum.

Modern Telugu parents can feel good about sending their daughters to learn Kuchipudi, which

traces its roots to a group of religious, Brahmin men, because they are participating in a version

of Indian culture and self-reflection that is both idealized and nostalgic. As long as dancers like

Mangatayaru openly acknowledge their lineage, the same cannot be said for Andhra Natyam.

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 EPILOGUE

EXIT FROM THE CLASSICAL

I left Andhra and India soon after the Mahotsav. On one of my final days in India, I was

staying with the former mayor of Vijayawada (city closest to Kuchipudi village) and invaluable

mentor, Jandhyala Shankar. As we were chatting over lunch I mentioned, in passing, that I had

tried and failed to procure a map of Andhra Pradesh that marked Kuchipudi village. I told him

that though I had visited a number of bookshops in Vijayawada, I couldn’t find anything, not

even a road atlas. Upon hearing this, Shankar was outraged and demanded that I take him back to

the bookstores I had visited. As a local political figure and celebrity-of-sorts, Shankar caused

quite a stir at these bookstores as he chastised the owners for carrying such inadequate maps. As

a gathering crowd of neighboring shop-owners and passersby watched on, Shankar declared that

the owners of these bookstores were derelict in their duties as Telugus. Gesturing toward me,

Shankar scolded the booksellers for knowing less about their own heritage than an “American

girl.” He demanded that they order maps that marked Kuchipudi village, immediately. If they

could find none, he directed the booksellers to let him know so he could see to commissioning

more accurate maps of Andhra Pradesh himself.

As we were leaving after Shankar’s impromptu speech, I tried to smile apologetically to

the staff for causing such a stir. I had visited these bookshops often while in Vijayawada and had

fostered friendly relationships with many of the staff members, so I was painfully aware of how

entitled the “American girl” must have appeared at that moment. One shop clerk, a young

woman in her mid-twenties, Rani, whom I had gotten to know fairly well, came over with a few

of her friends (members of the staff) to say hello to me. As we were chatting, Rani asked me,
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“Madam, we were all wondering why he [Shankar] is so angry about this map. What is this

Kuchipudi Shankar-Garu1 is asking about? Why is it so important to him?”

I have thought of that conversation many times over the course of writing the

dissertation. Ultimately, I have come to understand that day as a metaphor for the Telugu history

that Kuchipudi represents and what that history says about the divide between identity, writ

large, and what resonates on the ground, in lived day-to-day communities in Andhra. Kuchipudi

and its classicism function as symbols within a particular group of Telugus: those who either

claim or aspire to claim a high-caste identity, but as an elitist symbol, it bears little significance

to those, such as my friend Rani, who have limited access or exposure to such forms of cultural

production.

While Rani and I could chat easily about newly released films starring the latest Telugu

heartthrob, Kuchipudi’s cultivated symbolism is more potent for a particular generation, the

generation to which Shankar, born in the 1940s, belongs. It is his generation that came of age as

India gained independence, as Andhra became Andhra Pradesh, and educated, upper-class/caste

men and women (like his son and daughter) immigrated in the 1960s and 1970s to the United

States to pursue graduate degrees.

When Shankar speaks nostalgically about Kuchipudi, he speaks not of the theatrical

performances of local Kuchipudi troupes he saw in his youth in Vijayawada, but of the part he

was able to play as mayor in promoting Vempati Chinna Satyam, who was based in Madras, the

cosmopolitan capital of southeast India. In the time I spent with him, he reminisced with me

about traveling with Satyam to Europe as the KAA went on tour, or about the success of K.

1
Term of respect in Telugu. Equivalent to “Ji” in Hindi.

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Viswanath’s films in the diaspora. His pride is for the fact that, through Satyam’s dance school

and Telugu films, Kuchipudi, as Telugu identity, is now globally situated and recognized.

The nostalgia that Kuchipudi and the image of the female Kuchipudi dancer evoke speaks

to Telugus’ emigration across the world, but also to their sustained and abiding connection to

Andhra both as a place and as an idea. Kuchipudi circulates and resonates precisely because of

the movement of Telugus away from Andhra, but in turn, as a sign of their commitment to

maintaining an Andhra identity, regardless of geography. Kuchipudi’s classicism, then,

ultimately enables the globalization of Telugu culture by fusing a mythical, but deeply personal

past to a postmodern diasporic present. As an emblem, this classicism serves as a way of locating

oneself as a Telugu today; its significance in India and across the diaspora providing an internal

compass to a representation, if not a physical place called Kuchipudi.

Indeed, on the day I was scheduled to leave for the United States, Shankar’s niece and

teenage grandniece arrived from the United States. As Shankar was proud to inform me, this

“American teenager” had decided to spend her summer vacation in India, learning Kuchipudi

dance, or as she put it to me, “becoming” a Kuchipudi dancer.

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 GLOSSARY OF TERMS
(listed alphabetically)

abhinayam – facial expressions

aḍavu – basic step

agrahāram – Brahmin quarter

anchitam – a basic step in Kuchipudi, which uses the heel

ardhamandala/aramanḍi – half-sitting position

avatārā – incarnation or reincarnation. Generally used to reference the ten reincarnations of

Vishu

bhāgavatam – theatrical, staged production. Usually based on themes from the epics.

bhāgavatulu – men, usually high-caste, who act in bhāgavatam

bhaktī – religious devotion or spirituality

bhāvam – expression of an emotional state

bhogam – a reference to a female courtesan in South India. Etymologically traced to the courtly
culture of bhoga or enjoyment under the Nayaka Kings of Tanjavur (r. 1532–1676)

bol – rhythmic syllable

daruvu – a song in a larger compositional work

devadāsī – literally, a servant of god. A reference to a social group of female courtesans in South
India who dance and sing primarily in temples.

gamakas – melodic ornaments

guru – teacher

hastābhinayam – expression through mudras or hand gestures

jathi – a technical section in a dance which focuses on footwork and virtuosity

kaĉēri – classical music concert

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kalāvantulu – literally, artists. A reference to a social group of female courtesans in South India
who dance and sing at festivals and special occasions

kālekshāpam – pass-time

karanas – dance poses. The Natya Shastra lists 108.

kelika – solo female dance

kīrtanams – a bipartite song form in South Indian classical (Karnatic) music. The formal
sections, in order, are pallavi and charanam.

kṛiti – a tripartite song form in South Indian classical (Karnatic) music. The formal sections, in
order, are pallavi, anupallavi, charanam.

lāsya narthakī – literally, graceful female dancer. A reference to courtesan dance.

lok-dharmi – literally local philosophy. A theory of representation in dance and theater that
communicates through explicit portrayal. Utilizes natural ideas and ideas-from day-to-day life.
Contrasts with nāṭya-dharmi

mantra – a word or set of words that is chanted.

mejuvāṇi – literally “performed for a host.” A courtesan salon performance.

mudra – hand gesture

muktaimpu – equivalent to tīrmanam, cadential pattern in Karnatic music. In Adi talam (8-beat
cycle) solkattu, ta-din-gin-a-thom repeated thrice.

naḍakas – equivalent to bols and solkaṭṭu, but a phrase more commonly used in Kuchipudi
practice.

nāndi – invocatory verse from Chapter 5 of the Natya Shastra. Incorporated into Kuchipudi
performance practice by Banda Kanakalingeswara Rao in the late 1950s.

naṭṭuva meḷam – melam literally translates to troupe or band. Nattuvamelam refers

speciafically to female courtesan troupes.

naṭṭuvangam – refers to both the hand cymbals (tālālu) and the direction provided during a
dance performance by the guru or dance master

nāṭakam – a drama, play or theatrical presentation

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nāṭya – literally drama. As a technique in dance incorporates hand gestures, but relies generally
on first-person narration.

nāṭya-dharmi – literally dramatic philosophy. A theory of representation in dance and theater

that communicates through abstract portrayal. Utilizes stylized expressions and methods of
representation. Contrasts with lok-dharmi

nāṭya meḷam – troupe of male performers, generally bhagavatulu who perform theatrical genres

nayika – a female character in dance

nṛṭṭa – technical or abstract dance, i.e. footwork.

nṛṭya – interpretative dance which incorporates hand gestures as well as footwork. Generally
relies on third-person narration.

nṛṭya -nāṭakam – literally, dance-drama.

pāda bhedālu – basic steps in Kuchipudi

pagaṭi veṣam –literally, daytime disguise. Refers to single character theatrical performances
from well-known plays or dramas.

pārijāta – jasmine flower

parampara – tradition

paṭṭu – a high quality of silk prized in South India

purāṇa – written works, Hindu epics

rāgam – mode or set of pitches in Indian classical music systems

rāja – king

rājanarthaki – king’s court dancer

rasa – literally juice; mood in dance and music.

rasikas – dance and music connoisseurs, particularly in Chennai

samāpādam – literarlly, flat foot. An adavu wherein the foot is placed flat on the ground.

sampradāya – performance practice

217
sāni – a reference to a social group of female courtesans in South India.

sanud – title deed or documents that record a gift or endowment of property

śāstra – literally science or theory. Refers to foundational texts on dance, music and dramaturgy
like the Natya Shastra

sāttvikam – expression of emotional states in dance. Also specifically refers to one of the nine
(nava) rasas that depicts tranquility.

śiṣya – student

ślokam – poetry verse

solkaṭṭu – equivalent to bol and nadaka, but a phrase used specifically in percussion practice in
South India.

śṛṅgāra – one of the nine (nava) rasas that depicts romantic, erotic, sensual emotions. Generally
expressed for a man character (nayaka) by a female character (nayika).

śruti – pitch or tone

stotriya dharmaśāsana – religious endowment, generally of property

strī veṣam – female impersonation or literally female disguise

sūtradhāra – literally, the one who leads the thread of a story. In theatrical forms in South India,
the narrator or conductor.

tālam – literally, beat. Also used to refer to many aspects of musical time such as rhythm and
meter.

tīrmānam – equivalent to muktaimpu, cadential pattern in Karnatic music. In Adi talam (8-beat
cycle) solkaṭṭu, ta-din-gin-a-thom repeated thrice.

ubuku – bounce or horizontal movement where the knees are bent and straightened quickly in
Kuchipudi.

usi – same as above

ustad – Muslim teacher in the North Indian Hindustani classical tradition

vācchikam – speech

veṣam – literally, disguise

218
vīdhi nāṭakam – literally, street drama.

vijñānam – knowledge

yakṣagāna – full-length dramas that tell a story from beginning to end (usually linear narratives).
Many actors playing different parts.

zamīndār – feudal landowner during colonial era

219
 APPENDIX 1

TRANSCRIPT OF APPA RAO’S 1958 DANCE SEMINAR LECTURE

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 APPENDIX TWO

KUCHIPUDI IN TELUGU CINEMA 1

1
This list is based on the films I screened for the dissertation. An * denotes a film that
characterizes courtesan dance.
245
 Year Film Director Dance Choreographer

1939 Raitu Bidda* Gudavalli Ramabrahmam Vedantam Raghavayya

Seeta Rama
1942 Ghantasala Balaramaiah Vedantam Raghavayya
Jananam
1943 Panthulamma Gudavalli Ramabrahmam Vedantam Raghavayya
Garuda
1943 Ghantasala Balaramaiah Vedantam Raghavayya
Garvabhangam
1945 Swargaseema* B.N. Reddi Vedantam Raghavayya
1946 Thyagayya* Chittor V. Nagaiah Vedantam Raghavayya
1947 Yogi Vemana* Kadri Venkata Reddy Vedantam Raghavayya
L.V. Prasad, Gudavalli
1947 Palnati Yudham Vedantam Raghavayya
Ramabrahmam
1948 Vande Mataram Ram Narayan Gabale Vedantam Raghavayya
1949 Gunasundari Katha Kadri Venkata Reddy Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1949 Raksharekha R. Padmanabhan Vedantam Raghavayya
1949 Laila Majnu P.S. Ramakrishna Rao Vedantam Raghavayya
1950 Shavukaru L.V. Prasad Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Sri Venkateswara
1950 P. Pullaiah Vempati Pedda Satyam
Mahatyam
1951 Mayalamari Sridhar P. Vedantam Raghavayya
1951 Mallesvari* B.N. Reddi Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1953 Kanna Talli K.S. Prakash Rao Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1953 Devadasu* Vedantam Raghavayya Vempati Chinna Satyam
1954 Peddamanushulu Kadri Venkata Reddy Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1954 Vipranarayana* P.S. Ramakrishna Rao Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1955 Ardhangi P. Pullaiah Vempati Chinna Satyam
1956 Charana Dasi T. Prakash Rao Vempati Pedda Satyam
1957 Sarangadhara Raghavan V.S. Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1957 Maya Bazaar Kadri Venkata Reddy Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Panduranga Kamalakara Kameshwara
1957 Vempati Pedda Satyam
Mahatyam Rao
1957 Bhagya Rekha B.N. Reddi Vempati Pedda Satyam
1957 Suvarna Sundari Vedantam Raghavaiah Vempati Pedda Satyam
Samudrala
1957 Vinayaka Chaviti Vempati Chinna Satyam
Raghavacharya
Appu Chesi Pappu
1958 L.V. Prasad Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Koodu
1959 Jaya Bheri* P. Pullaiah Vempati Pedda Satyam
246
1960 Runanu Bandham Vedantam Raghavayya Vedantam Raghavayya
Jagadeka Veeruni
1961 Kadri Venkata Reddy Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Katha*
Sri Sita Rama Taraka Rama Rao
1961 Vempati Pedda Satyam
Kalyanam Nandamuri
Taraka Rama Rao
1961 Sitarama Kalyanam Vempati Pedda Satyam
Nandamuri
1962 Dakshayagnam Kadaru Nagabhushanam Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Chaduvukunna
1963 Adurthi Subba Rao Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Ammayilu
Sri Krishnarjuna
1963 Kadri Venkata Reddy Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Yudham
Kamalakara Kameshwara
1963 Nartanasala* Vempati Pedda Satyam
Rao
Rao C.S.R. and
1963 Lavakusha Vempati Pedda Satyam
Chittajalu Pullayya
Samudrala
1964 Babruvahana Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Raghavacharya
1964 Poojaphalam* B.N. Reddi Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1967 Sakshi Bapu Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
1967 Bhakta Prahalada Chitrapu Narayana Rao Vempati Pedda Satyam
Vempati Pedda Satyam and
1967 Rahasyam Vedantam Raghavayya
Vedantam Raghavayya
1967 Eka Veera* Rao. C.S.R. Vempati Pedda Satyam
Kamalakara Kameshwara
1967 Sri Krishnavataram Vempati Chinna Satyam
Rao
Sree Krishna Kamalakara Kameshwara
1970 Vempati Chinna Satyam
Vijayam Rao
1971 Choti Bahu* K.B. Tilak Vempati Pedda Satyam
1973 Andala Ramudu Bapu Pasumarti Krishnamurthi
Rama Anjaneya
1974 Bapu Vempati Chinna Satyam
Yuddam
Singeetham Srinivasa
1976 America Ammayi Vempati Chinna Satyam
Rao
1979 Sankarabharanam* K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
1980 Saptapadi K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
1981 Premamandiram* Narayana Rao Dasari
1982 Subhalekha K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
1982 Krishna Avataram Bapu Vempati Chinna Satyam
1983 Sagara Sangamam* K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
1984 Ananada Bhairavi* Jandhyala V. Seshu Parupalli
1986 Alapana* Vamsi S. P. Anand
1987 Sruti Layalu K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
247
1988 Swarnakamalam K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
2004 Swarabhishekam K. Viswanath V. Seshu Parupalli
Vedantam Venkatachalapathy
2010 Subhapradam K. Viswanath
(Venku)

248
 UNPUBLISHED FIELD/ARCHIVAL MATERIALS

Maranganti Kanchanamala, Vissa Appa Rao, Rukmini Arundale and V. Raghavan, “Kuchipudi
Demonstration and Discussion on Kuchipudi” March 31, 1958, ACD 470-II, Audio-
visual archives, Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Siddhendra Yogi Mahotsav Brochure. 2009.

Subrahmanyam, Padma. 2008. “Characters of the Ramayana.” Lecture-Demonstration presented

at the Natya Kala Conference: Ramayana in Peforming Arts, December 17, Sree Krishna
Gana Sabha.

249
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