Kamala's Peacock Dance Found! (and some other "new" Kamala, Padmini, and Lalitha dances)

Wow! AP International's YouTube channel has some pristinely-preserved songs and scenes from 1940s and 50s Tamil gems—many of which have been MIA online for quite some time!  They've got Penn, Sri Valli, Vedhala Ulagam,Vazhkai, Parasakthi, and more!

But the most exciting random find was a new Kamala dance I've never seen or read of before: her four-part sculptor-deer-PEACOCK-dancer extravaganza in the 1962 Tamil film Sumai Thaangi!  Yes, the Kamala peacock dance that a commenter had mentioned a while back exists!  Many a dancer in Indian cinema has done a signature "peacock" dance (see this post/comments at Richard's blog for a great collection), but until now I never knew that Kamala had one as well. 

Sumai Thaangi (aka Sumaithangi, 1962, Tamil) - "Malaiyai Padaithavan" - This is not your standard Kamala dance number! Kamala's dancing portrayal of a male sculptor is brilliant and lifelike, and the rest of the number supposedly depicts the effects of the enchanting deer and peacock sculptures on Kamala who reacts with a joyous dance.  It's the most unusual and quirky of Kamala's film dances that I've seen, especially as she jumps, prances, and rapidly spins in deer costume (with deer mudra) to sound effects!  The peacock dance is introduced with a beautiful shot, and the musical orchestration is appropriately splendid.  What a dance number!  According to online folks, in this song Gemini Ganesan is trying to win his female companion (Devika)'s affections—I wish the song spent less time cutting to their annoying banter and stayed focused on the important part, Kamala! The camera gets quite shaky at times too, but the print is so lovely and well-preserved.  Good job AP International for actually knowing how to properly encode and size video uploads!  1962 was the year that Kamala's big dance film Konjum Salangai released, and it was also the same year she divorced her first husband R.K. Laxman at age 28, so in adding this dance number to the mix 1962 was quite a year for Kamala!

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10 comments Kamala, Lalitha, Padmini

Rare 1930s Tamil Film and 1950s Padmini Dance Footage from Ellis Dungan’s Collection

Hiding in the most unlikely of places, the West Virginia State Archives in the US, are documentary films and video footage shot/directed by the late Ellis Dungan, an American who made a number of Tamil films in South India from 1935-1950. In the collection are two incredibly-rare videos with footage I assume has not been available publicly until now.  The first video is “Inside India,” a documentary on South Indian village life that has an extended stage dance sequence by "Travancore Sisters" Padmini and Lalitha. The second video is a compilation containing footage Ellis took while directing the Tamil films Sati Leelavati (1936), Seemanthani (1936), Iru Sahodarargal (Two Brothers, 1936), and Ambikapathi (1937), and it reveals rare images of film stars and technicians and gives a visual glimpse into how Tamil films were made in the 1930s.  The thanks for unearthing these videos goes to a wonderfully-knowledgeable online contact, Sreenivas Paruchuri, who sent these links to me.  Thank you! 

Inside India - Featuring a Padmini/Lalitha Dance (at 7:39)!

This documentary at first appears to be just a montage of scenes from village life in South India with a staid, explanatory voiceover. But at 7:39, an audience and stage appear as the voiceover explains, “There are numerous dramatic troupes that travel from village to village in Southern India and evening performances are given in the streets.  Here the people in the village witness one of the most popular musical dramas, Mathura Veeran, the story of Princess Bommi being wooed by Veeran, a commoner.” As the curtain withdraws, the performers are revealed to be Lalitha and then her sister Padmini! The duo doesn't perform much abstract dance and instead focuses on enacting the lyrics of the story for their first act. In their second act, the sisters appear in horse costumes in what looks like a Poikkal Kudirai Aattam “dummy horse” folk dance! Isn't Padmini absolutely luminous here?  The legend the voiceover refers to is that of the folk deity Madurai Veeran, which was the subject of the 1956 Tamil film of the same name which Padmini acted and danced in (and it has a Lalitha/Ragini dance too).  RajVideoVision just recently uploaded a legal copy of the whole film on YouTube!

What remains unknown is when this documentary was filmed. My guess for the dance portion, based on Padmini’s facial shape and appearance, is around 1950-1952 or so given the similarity to her early film appearances from this time. While Dungan is said to have returned to the US soon after his hit film Manthiri Kumari released in 1950, he made frequent trips back to India and made his last film there in 1962, so Inside India conceivably could have been filmed right before he left or when he returned later. I wonder why he didn’t identify the famous sisters by name in the documentary. Surely Dungan would have known who Padmini and Lalitha were given that they danced in Manthiri Kumari and he was familiar with the Tamil cinema world. I also wonder if this is really an “authentic” drama stage performance or if it’s been manufactured for the documentary. Were Padmini and Lalitha in performing drama troupes at this time?

Footage from 1930s Tamil Cinema Sets/Filmings

While the West Virginia Archives calls this video “15 minutes of Dungan’s home movie film of movie-making in India,” it is no simple home movie! It is incredibly rare, silent footage of the movie making process in South India in the 30s and features many shots of actors, technicians, musicians, and producers of the time period as well as the filming and set technology. It also shows Dungan himself and in action! It is very likely that this is the first extant video footage available for some of the lesser-known people in the shots. And to my absolute delight, there are two short dances!

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13 comments Documentary, Lalitha, Padmini, Rare Find

New Kamala and Padmini/Lalitha Dance Finds!

The credit for these finds all goes to cram who has a nice YouTube channel and a knack for finding and posting rare old dance videos and thankfully lets me know about them in the comments.
The picture on the left is Padmini as a dude in the first Digambara Samiyar video below.  It was too delicious not to post, ya? :)

"Theeratha Vilaiyattu Pillai" - Vedhala Ulagam (Tamil, 1948) - Back on one of my posts about Kamala dance finds I listed a slew of dances I was hunting for; one of them was "Thoondil Puzhuvinai Pol" from Vedala Ulagam.  That song hasn't been found yet, but cram alerted me to another song from the film in which Kamala dances a double role as Krishna and a gopi! It's a more low key number but has some lovely dance movements throughout.  Updated March 2013: Embedded better-quality version! 

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13 comments Kamala, Lalitha, Padmini

Rare Dance Songs of Kamala, Sai-Subbalakshmi, Padmini, and More!

I was beyond delighted to come across a number of seemingly-rare or hard to find dance songs from the 1950s and 60s featuring dances by Kamala Lakshman, Sai-Subbalakshmi, Padmini, Lalitha, Ragini, Vyjayanthimala, and a lovely duo whose identity I do not know.  Yay!  Without further ado, I present this fantastic little collection:

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17 comments Bharatanatyam, Kamala, Lalitha, Padmini, Practice Dance, Ragini, Sai-Subbulakshmi, Vyjayanthimala