Classical Dances in Kannada Films - Part 1

Subba Shastry DVD Cover

Throughout all of my posts on classical dance, one thing that has bothered me is the lack of representation from Kannada movies.  Tamil and Telugu films seem to dominate the landscape of filmi classical dance offerings with Malayalam films in a distant third likely due to Kerala's rich classical dance traditions.  But finding native Kannada films (not dubbings) with classical dance content has been difficult. 

There is a relative lack of information about Sandalwood (the Kannada film industry) online compared to other southern industries which means an outsider like me has put forth extra effort to unearth anything useful. When I first pondered why I had so few Kannada songs in my blog posts, I wondered if the film industry's obscurity relative to its southern counterparts had simply hidden songs from my view.  Or was it the industry's recent struggles compared to its earlier golden years?  I even started to wonder if Karnataka had less of an engrained classical dance tradition that would be reflected in film compared to, say, Tamil Nadu, but I suspect I'm ignorant on the subject. In any case, here's what I've been able to find about classical-inspired dances in Kannada cinema.

Continue Reading >>>

9 comments Anuj Mishra, Bharatanatyam, Gopi Krishna, Kamala, Kannada, Kuchipudi, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Latha, Male Dance, Odissi, Sridhar, Yakshagana