Kuchipudi
Kuchipudi is one of the eight major Indian classical dance forms. It originated in Kuchipudi, a village in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Kuchipudi is a dance-drama performance, with its roots in the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text of Natya Shastra. It developed as a religious art linked to traveling bards, temples and spiritual beliefs, like all major classical dances of India.
Evidence of Kuchipudi's existence in an older version is found in copper inscriptions of the 10th century, and by the 15th century in texts such as the Machupalli Kaifat. Kuchipudi tradition holds that Narahari Tirtha – a sanyassin of Dvaita Vedanta persuasion, and his disciple, an orphan named Siddhendra Yogi, founded and systematized the modern version of Kuchipudi in the 17th century. Kuchipudi largely developed as a Krishna-oriented Vaishnavism tradition, and it is known by the name of Bhagavata Mela in Thanjavur.
In the past, an all male troupe performed the traditional Kuchipudi. A dancer in a male role would be in Agnivastra, also known as, wear a dhoti. A dancer in a female role would wear a Sari with light makeup. The Kuchipudi performance usually begins with an invocation. Then, each costumed actor is introduced, their role stated, and they perform a short preliminary dance set to music. Next, the performance presents pure dance. This is followed with by the expressive part of the performance, where rhythmic hand gestures help convey the story. Vocal and instrumental Carnatic music in the Telugu language accompanies the performance. The typical musical instruments in Kuchipudi are mridangam, cymbals, veena, flute and the tambura. The popularity of Kuchipudi has grown within India and it is performed worldwide.
Nomenclature, orthography and etymology
Kuchipudi is named after the village in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh named Kuchipudi – shortened form of the full name Kuchelapuram or Kuchilapuri – where it developed. The name of the village, states Ragini Devi, is itself derived from Sanskrit Kusilava-puram, which means "the village of actors". Kusilava is a term found in ancient Sanskrit texts and refers to "traveling bard, dancer, newsmonger".History
Like other classical dance forms in India, Kuchipudi traces its roots to the Sanskrit Natya Shastra, a foundational treatise on the performing arts. Its first complete compilation is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, but estimates vary between 500 BCE and 500 CE. The most studied version of the Natya Shastra text consists of about 6000 verses structured into 36 chapters. The text, states Natalia Lidova, describes the theory of Tāṇḍava dance, the theory of rasa, of bhāva, expression, gestures, acting techniques, basic steps, standing postures – all of which are part of Indian classical dances. Dance and performance arts, states this ancient text, are a form of expression of spiritual ideas, virtues, and the essence of scriptures.The dance-drama tradition in Andhra Pradesh is of ancient origins, and the region is mentioned in the Natya Shastra. Bharata Muni credits a graceful movement to the Andhra region and discusses it as Kaishiki vritti. The pre-2nd century CE text calls one raga Andhri, which is from Andhra. The Andhri, is related to Gandhari and Arsabhi, and is discussed in many other 1st millennium Sanskrit texts. Some, state Bruno Nettle and others, place the origins of Kuchipudi to 3rd-century BCE.
Dance-drama performance arts related to Shaivism, in Telugu-speaking parts of South India, are evidenced in 10th-century copper inscriptions, and these were called or. The medieval era dance-drama performance artists were Brahmins. This art was likely adopted by the musical and dancing Bhakti traditions of Vaishnavism which grew in the 2nd millennium, whose devotees were called in Andhra region and in Tamil region of south India. In Andhra, this performance art evolved into Kuchipudi, while in Tamil Nadu it became known as. According to Saskia Kersenboom, both the Telugu Kuchipudi and Tamil Bhagavata Mela are strongly related to the classical Hindu dance tradition of found in Karnataka, all three involve Carnatic music, but these dance-drama traditions have differences such as in costumes, structure, interpretation and creative innovations.
Kuchipudi traces its origins to its founder Narahari Tirtha, the disciple of Sri Ananda Tirtha a.k.a. Madhvacharya, when he was the high priest at his matha at Srikurmam and Simhachalam.
To implant bhakti among layman he is credited with organizing Bhagavata Melas throughout the nights and adapting many dance forms from the Srimad Bhagavatha Puranas.
Vaishnavism received a big boost in the Kalinga regions of Andhra and Orissa due to the efforts of Narahari Tirtha, Sri Jagannatha Tirtha and his disciples, the message of Bhakti was percolated through the masses via Kuchpudi and The Bhagavata Melas of Sri Narahari Tirtha and his disciples.
According to Manohar Varadpande, the Kuchipudi dance emerged in the late 13th century, when Ganga rulers from Kalinga were patrons of performance arts based on the 12th-century Sanskrit scholar Jayadeva, particularly the Gita Govinda. This royal sponsorship, states Varadpande, encouraged many poets and dance-drama troupes to adopt Radha-Krishna themes into the then prevailing versions of classical Kuchipudi. These were regionally called Vaishnava Bhagavatulu.
The modern version of Kuchipudi is attributed to Tirtha Narayanayati, a 17th-century Telugu sanyasin of Advaita Vedanta persuasion and particularly his disciple, a Telugu Brahmin orphan named Sidhyendra Yogi. Tirtha Narayanayati authored Sri Krishna Leela Tarangini and introduced sequences of rhythmic dance syllables at the end of the cantos, he wrote this work as a libretto for a dance-drama. Narayanayati lived for a while in the Tanjore district and presented the dance-drama in the Tanjore temple.
Narayanayati's disciple, Sidhyendra Yogi, followed up with another play, the Parijatapaharana, more commonly known as the Bhama Kalapam. When Sidhyendra Yogi finished the play, he had trouble finding suitable performers. So he went to Kuchelapuram, the village of his wife's family and present-day Kuchipudi, where he enlisted a group of young Brahmin boys to perform the play. According to the tradition, Sidhyendra requested and the villagers agreed to perform the play once a year, and this came to be known as Kuchipudi.
Late medieval period
Kuchipudi enjoyed support from medieval era rulers. Copper inscriptions suggest that the dance-drama was seen by the royalty and was influential by 1502 and through the late 16th century. The court records of the Vijayanagara Empire – known for its patronage of the arts – indicate that drama-dance troupes of Bhagavatas from Kuchipudi village performed at the royal court. However, various historical inscriptions often indicate that this dance form can be tracked back to the first century BCE.The region saw wars and political turmoil with Islamic invasions and the formation of Deccan Sultanates in the 16th century. With the fall of Vijayanagara Empire and the destruction of temples and Deccan cities by the Muslim army around 1565, musicians and dance-drama artists migrated south, and Tanjore kingdom records suggest some 500 such Kuchipudi artist families arrived from Andhra, were welcomed and granted land by the Hindu king Achyutappa Nayak, a settlement that grew to become modern Melattur near Tanjore. Not everyone left the old Andhra village of Kuchipudi, and those remaining became the sole custodians of its tradition in Andhra.
Kuchipudi declined and was a dying art in 17th-century Andhra, but in 1678, the last Shia Muslim Sultan of Golkonda, Abul Hasan Tana Shah, saw a Kuchipudi performance and was so pleased that he granted the dancers lands around the Kuchipudi village, with the stipulation that they continue the dance-drama. The Shia Sultanate was overthrown in 1687 by the Sunni Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. In order to regulate public and private morals, as well as end un-Islamic practices, Aurangzeb banned public performances of all music and dance arts, along with ordering the confiscation and destruction of musical instruments in Indian subcontinent under control of his Mughal Empire.
Colonial rule period
After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire collapsed, Hindu rebellion sprouted in many parts of India, including the Deccan region. In the second half of the 18th century, during this period of political turmoil, the colonial Europeans arrived, the Madras Presidency was formed by the East India Company officials and became a part of the British Empire. Andhra was a part of the Madras Presidency. During the colonial era, Hindu arts and traditions such as dance-drama were ridiculed. Christian missionaries and British officials stereotyped and denigrated dancers, calling Indian classical dances as evidence of a tradition of "harlots, debased erotic culture, slavery to idols and priests". Christian missionaries launched the "anti-dance movement" in 1892, to ban all such dance forms. The anti-dance camp accused the various classical Indian dance forms as a front for prostitution, while revivalists questioned the constructed histories by the colonial writers.In 1910, the Madras Presidency of the British Empire altogether banned temple dancing. Kuchipudi, which was traditionally staged at night on a stage attached to a Hindu temple, was impacted and like all classical Indian dances declined during the colonial rule period.
After the ban, many Indians protested against the caricature and cultural discrimination, launching their efforts to preserve and reinvigorate their culture. Due to these efforts from 1920s onwards, the classical Indian dances witnessed a period of renaissance. Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri was the influential figure who led the effort to save, reconstruct and revive Kuchipudi performance art. Sastri worked closely with other revivalists, between 1920 and 1950, particularly Balasaraswati and others determined to save and revive Bharatanatyam.