Kuchipudi

Kuchipudi takes its name from a village in Krishna district where Brahmin families performed dance drama as an offering, and the form is still closer to theatre than any other classical solo dance. The dancer speaks, which a Bharatanatyam dancer does not, and enters in character with a spoken introduction. Its best known sequences are a dance on the rim of a brass plate and a dance with a pot of water balanced on the head, both of which belong to the drama rather than being added display. For most of its history it was performed only by men, including the women’s roles.

The repertoire runs from dance drama, the Bhagavatam, to the solo items a concert now uses. Bhamakalapam, the quarrel and reconciliation of Satyabhama and Krishna, is the central drama and takes a whole evening. The tarangam is the plate dance, performed to a tarangam of Narayana Teertha, with the dancer moving on the raised rim and sometimes with a pot on the head and a diya in each hand. The footwork is quicker and more rounded than Bharatanatyam’s, the torso more mobile, and the entrance with spoken self introduction, the pravesa daruvu, is unique to it.

A child begins at about six. Early training is the adugulu, the basic steps, and the jatis, and the hand vocabulary overlaps heavily with Bharatanatyam, which is why many dancers hold both. Three to five years brings the first solo items; the tarangam is given later and practised for months on a plate on the floor before it is attempted on the rim. A dancer who wants the dramas must also learn to speak and to sing in Telugu. The rangapravesam, the first full performance, usually comes at eight to twelve years of training.

Tradition credits Siddhendra Yogi, probably of the fifteenth or seventeenth century, with composing Bhamakalapam and with binding the village Brahmin families to perform it. The hereditary families of Kuchipudi village performed as men only, and the shift to a solo concert form danced largely by women happened in the twentieth century through Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry and then Vempati Chinna Satyam, who built the solo repertoire now taught everywhere. The hereditary families and the solo school do not always agree about which is the tradition, and the village still performs the dramas in its own way.

Andhra and Telangana

Kuchipudi village in Krishna district is the home and still performs the dramas; the solo concert form is taught across Andhra, Telangana and beyond.

Tamil Nadu

Taught in Chennai alongside Bharatanatyam and performed in the December season, with many dancers trained in both.

Deities

• Krishna
• Vishnu
• Lakshmi

Festivals

• Krishna Jayanthi · Gokulashtami
• Krishna Janmashtami
• Navaratri begins

Related arts

• Bharatanatyam
• Carnatic music