|
Kuchipudi is
a Classical Indian dance form from Andhra Pradesh, a state of
South India. Kuchipudi is the
 name
of a small village in the Divi Taluq of Krishna district that
borders the Bay of Bengal and with resident Brahmins practicing
this traditional dance form, it acquired the present name.
With the dance form attaining perfection by the time of Golconda
king Abdul Hassan Tanesha, Kuchipudi brahmins are said to have
received 600 acres (2.4 kmē) of land as an endowment from
Tanesha for the great presentation before him.
Siddhendra Yogi is said to be the first scholar to give it the
current form of dance drama. Bhamakalapam is one of his
celebrated compositions. He also reserved the art to males by
teaching it to young brahmin boys of the village. However, in
modern times, the art has been dominated by women.
The performance usually begins with some stage rites, after
which each of the character comes on to the stage and introduces
him/herself with a daru (a small composition of both song and
dance) to introduce the identity, set the mood, of the character
in the drama. The drama then begins. The dance is accompanied by
song which is typically Carnatic music. The singer is
accompanied by mridangam (a classical South Indian percussion
instrument), violin, flute and the tambura (a drone instrument
with strings which are plucked). Ornaments worn by the artists
are generally made of a light weight wood called Boorugu.
Some of the well known people in this tradition are Dr. Vempati
Chinna Satyam,Guru Jayarama Rao and Vanashree Rao Vedantam
Lakshminarayana, Tadepalli Perayya, Chinta Krishna Murthy,
Vedantam Sathya Narayana Sarma, Sobha Naidu. |
