Kuchipudi

Kuchipudi is an Indian classical dance form from Andhra Pradesh. It takes its name from Kuchipudi village in Krishna district. A performance, set to Carnatic music, joins nritta (pure dance), nritya (expressive dance) and natya (drama). The form grew out of Telugu yakshagana. The village's Brahmin performers, the Bhagavatulu, staged it, and tradition credits Siddhendra Yogi with composing Bhama Kalapam, a play on Krishna's wife Satyabhama and still the central work of the repertoire.

The troupes were all-male, and men played every female role, a practice called stree vesham that hereditary masters still keep. In the dance-drama, performers speak and sing as well as dance. A signature item is the tarangam: the dancer stands on the rim of a brass plate and moves it with the rhythm, sometimes with a pot of water on the head. A vocalist, the mridangam (barrel drum), violin, veena and flute accompany the dance. A cymbal player conducts and recites the rhythmic syllables (sollukattu).

Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri is credited with introducing solo items in the twentieth century and with teaching women. His pupil Vempati Chinna Satyam founded the Kuchipudi Art Academy in Madras (Chennai) and codified the technique. Kuchipudi now has two forms, the dance-drama and the solo dance, and shares much of its movement vocabulary with Bharatanatyam.