Natyacharya: An Upcoming Bharatanatyam Documentary

A while back, I happened upon this gorgeous slow-motion video of a solo Bharatanatyam dancer on YouTube and was completely mesmerized.

Isn't it stunning? I can't take my eyes off of her.  For a while I had a difficult time finding more information on where this "teaser" video was from (and I made a couple silly YouTube comments). Now I've got all the details.

The video is from an in-production documentary called "Natyacharya" and based on the life of Guru M.R. Krishnamurthy who studied under Rukmini Devi and then taught at Kalakshetra and later formed his own dance school Kalakshiti (The Hindu).  The documentary is being created entirely by DCAM Production Studios, and they now have a short trailer posted on their website which I've embedded below.  Clearly the cinematographic skills of the teaser are continued throughout the documentary as evidenced by the creative camera angles and varied focus.  It looks so pretty!

M.R. Krishnamurthy is a rather adorable elderly man, and from looking at some of the stills it appears he dances in the film himself.  I'm guessing that the woman in the teaser is one of his students at the dance school, and the stills give me the impression that other students dance in the documentary as well.

It's hard to find any updates on the film as DCAM's blog and Twitter page haven't been updated since January.  But given the sumptuous shots and a subject matter of Indian Classical Dance, the documentary looks to be a must watch!

Leave a Comment Documentary

Classical Dances from the film Swathi Thirunal (1987, Malayalam)

Back in my favorite practice dances post and favorite color dances post, I listed two lovely classical dances from the 1987 historical film Swathi Thirunal.  Unfortunately, the upload quality was quite terrible, grainy, and hesitant.  Since then I've gotten a hold of the film and am happy to not only present those two dances in much better condition but also show a third compilation of practice dances of which very few have been seen online before.

First, a bit of history.  When one reads of the history of Mohiniattam dance, two figures are often considered to have been instrumental in ensuring the survival of the dance form to the modern day.  The first is Swathi Thirunal, the Maharaja of the princely state/kingdom of Travancore (roughly modern-day Kerala) in the early 19th century, whose patronage of many forms of classical music and dance at his court helped Mohiniattam survive.  Kerala's Department of Culture has a nice website dedicated to the life and music of Thirunal.  The second figure is Vallathol whose founding of Kerala Kalamandalam in the 1930s revived the dance after a period of decline.

Continue Reading >>>

2 comments Malayalam, Ranjini

Devadasi-Like Dances in Classic South Indian Films

While browsing the website of the National Film Archive of India, I was excited to find that films in the catalog (which can be found through the search) have an extensive cast and crew list that in many cases identifies the choreographer!  [Update: This information no longer appears to be part of the search results that I could see.] The archives have quite a few South Indian titles back to the early 1930s and the majority of them have a choreographer identified, amazingly.  Armed with this information, I did some web searching and found that quite a few dances from 1940s South Indian films immediately struck me as looking like Devadasi dances.

Continue Reading >>>

33 comments Balasaraswati, Devadasis, Research, TR Rajakumari, Vyjayanthimala