Academicians, Kuchipudi gurus and the entire dance fraternity of the sleepy village of Kuchipudi on Tuesday came to an unwritten consensus to revive the true format of Kuchipudi Yakshaganam.
The tiny house of Guru Chinta Venkata Ramayya in the Nadi Street of Kuchipudi village had once witnessed the rise of Kuchipudi Yakshaganam.
Guru Venkata Ramayya is the father of Kuchipudi Yakshaganam, for which he had developed a systematic form of presentation and popularised it till he took the last breath in 1949.
He was born in 1860. A list of luminaries including Vedantam Ramakrishnayya, Vedantam Janardhanayya and Eleswarapu Venkateswaram were groomed by this guru. His rare gift to the dance was simplification of ‘Bhama Kalapam’, ‘Prahlada’, ‘Seshirekha Parinayam’ and many other Kuchipudi Yakshaganas.
“Once there was a thatched house where Guru Venkata Ramayya experimented and taught the Yakshaganas. We consider the house in the Nadi Street as a heritage site,” opined Pasumarthy Kesava Prasad. Mr. Prasad belongs to one of the dance families here. On the sidelines of the beginning of Kuchipudi Yakshaganas’ training here on Tuesday, Professor at University of Hyderabad J. Anuradha opined that revival of Yakshaganam was the need of the hour. “We are producing audio, video and photo archives of Kuchipudi Yakshaganas and an archive on the Kuchipudi village in collaboration with the Andhra Pradesh government,” Sangeet Natak Academy Deputy Secretary (Documentation) Joseph D. Raj told The Hindu . On Tuesday, Seshirekha Parinayam by Pasumarthy Ramalinga Sastry and Golla Kalapam by Guru Vedantam Radheshyam were archived and performed for public.
The Sangeet Natak Academy (SNA) is telecasting the one-week Yakshagayam festival online through its website http://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/ webcast.htm .
