Thanks to two YouTubers who have uploaded songs from the 1947 Tamil film Kannika in the past few months, Bharatanatyam dance history aficionados can now witness on screen the nattuvanar Kattumannar Koil Muthukumara Pillai (1874-1960, also known as Muthukumaran or Muthukumarappa, of the village Kattumannarkoil aka Mannargudi or Kattumannargudi) at the age of 73 playing the role of a nattuvanar in the song "Natanam Adinar":
How do I know it's him? I had read a while back in the September 1993 Sruti magazine feature on Muthukumara Pillai (for brevity, MKP) that when he was in Coimbatore from 1944-1947 teaching exercises and dances to young boys at a drama company, he "came in contact with Pakshiraja Studios and trained the proprietor Sriramulu Naidu's wife Saroja for her lead role in the film 'Kannika' [and] Muthukumara Pillai himself too made a brief appearance in the film." When I watched the recently-uploaded songs and compared the nattuvanar's appearance with known photos of Muthukumara Pillai, it was clearly him! Compare these stills from Kannika with a photo of MKP that I featured in my post on Muthuswami Pillai and that must have been taken in the late 1930s which were the years the young man on the right, Muthuswami Pillai, trained with MKP.
This Kannika footage is incredible because Muthukumara Pillai belonged to the oldest generation of nattuvanars whose hereditary artistic practice was discovered in the twentieth century transformation of what we today call Bharatanatyam. What's more, he along with his contemporary Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai (also known as Pandanallur Meenakshisundaram Pillai, from Pandanallur village, for brevity MSP) are often remembered today as the two top-ranking gurus and nattuvanars of their generation who trained most of the first non-hereditary Bharatanatyam dancers who spread and popularized the art form far and wide. The two of them each trained such legends as Ram Gopal, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Mrinalini Sarabhai, and Kamala Lakshman.
Muthukumara Pillai can be seen at 1:14, 1:58, closeup at 2:55, and 3:51 onward
(the lower quality version includes 2 more seconds where he begins to speak, but it's cut off!!)
(the lower quality version includes 2 more seconds where he begins to speak, but it's cut off!!)
How do I know it's him? I had read a while back in the September 1993 Sruti magazine feature on Muthukumara Pillai (for brevity, MKP) that when he was in Coimbatore from 1944-1947 teaching exercises and dances to young boys at a drama company, he "came in contact with Pakshiraja Studios and trained the proprietor Sriramulu Naidu's wife Saroja for her lead role in the film 'Kannika' [and] Muthukumara Pillai himself too made a brief appearance in the film." When I watched the recently-uploaded songs and compared the nattuvanar's appearance with known photos of Muthukumara Pillai, it was clearly him! Compare these stills from Kannika with a photo of MKP that I featured in my post on Muthuswami Pillai and that must have been taken in the late 1930s which were the years the young man on the right, Muthuswami Pillai, trained with MKP.
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| Left: Kannika Right: Muthukumara Pillai [credit: Mohan Khokar] |
