Mohiniyattam
മോഹിനിയാട്ടം मोहिनीयाट्टम्
Also Dance of the enchantress.
Dance Kerala
What it is
Mohiniyattam is the solo dance of Kerala, danced by women, named for Mohini, the form Vishnu took to enchant the asuras out of the nectar. Where Kathakali is angular and loud, this is circular and quiet: the body sways, the torso moves continuously, and the whole effect is of something swinging rather than striking. The costume is the Kerala kasavu, white with a gold border, and the hair is gathered in a bun to the left with jasmine, so a dancer looks like a Kerala woman dressed for a temple rather than like a stage figure.
How it is built
The basic stance is wide and the knees turned out, with the weight shifting continuously side to side so the dance never fully stops moving. The repertoire follows a sequence like Bharatanatyam’s: cholkettu, jatiswaram, varnam, padam, tillana, with a Kerala item or two. The music is Sopana sangeetam, the Kerala temple style, slower and more open than Carnatic concert music, sung to the edakka or the mizhavu, though many modern performances use Carnatic accompaniment. The lasya quality, soft and feminine in the classical categories, is the whole aesthetic.
How it is learnt
The question a family actually has
Begun at six or seven. The particular difficulty is the torso: the continuous lateral movement of the upper body is unlike anything in the other forms and takes a long time to make unconscious, and dancers trained in Bharatanatyam first often find it the hardest adjustment. Five to eight years brings a first recital. Kerala Kalamandalam runs a four year diploma. The eye movements are drilled as in Kathakali, inherited from the same body of training.
Whose lineage is whose
Where a claim is contested, by whom
Documented from the sixteenth century and shaped as a court form under Swathi Thirunal of Travancore in the nineteenth, with his compositions still central to the repertoire. It declined and was nearly lost, and was revived from the 1930s by Vallathol Narayana Menon at Kalamandalam, with Kalyanikutty Amma, often called the mother of the form, doing much of the reconstruction and arguing publicly about what it should be. Her line and the Kalamandalam institutional line differ in emphasis, and Kerala is aware of the difference.
Worth knowing
Named for a disguise
Mohini is Vishnu in a woman’s form, taken once to get the nectar away from the asuras and once more so that Siva could see it, from which Ayyappa was born. A dance named for a god in disguise, performed in the plainest Kerala dress, with no dramatic costume at all, is making a quiet point about where the enchantment is supposed to be: not in the clothes, which are what a woman would wear to a temple, but in the movement.
Kalyanikutty Amma and the argument
Reviving a nearly lost form means deciding what it was, and Kalyanikutty Amma spent decades asserting a particular answer against the institutional one: that Mohiniyattam was a complete classical form in its own right with its own repertoire, not a soft adjunct to Kathakali, and that its music should be Sopana rather than Carnatic. She wrote, taught and argued it. Much of what is now standard follows her, and the disagreement about the music is still live in Kerala.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Kerala
- Kalamandalam and the Thiruvananthapuram schools, with Swathi Thirunal’s compositions and the Sopana music that belongs to it.
- Tamil Nadu
- Taught in Chennai and performed in the season, usually with Carnatic accompaniment rather than Sopana.
Connected to
Deities
Festivals
Temples
Related arts