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Immaculate artistry

Guru Gopinath in a dance pose.

Trendsetter: Guru Gopinath

“S ome days ago, Ragini Devi, the dancer, came here with her party. She gave two performances. Her dancing was hardly worth looking at but Gopinath, her partner, was superb. His expression, his movements, and the strength and vigour with which he danced were simply marvellous. Some people go so far as to say that he is even better than the great Uday Shankar,” wrote Indira Gandhi, during her student days at Santiniketan, in a letter of February 1935 to Nehru. (‘Freedom’s Daughter’ edited by Sonia Gandhi.)

That comment speaks about the immaculate artistry of Guru Gopinath. His birth centenary (2007-08) is being celebrated the world over by his disciples and their disciples. Guru Gopinath hailed from a family with two centuries of tradition in Kathakali. Bheeman Paramu Pillai, a known Kathakali actor of his times, was his maternal grandfather. Master exponent of chuvannathadi roles, Chambakkulam Pachu Pillai was his elder brother.

Born on June 24, 1908, Gopinath was trained in Kathakali and had his arangetam at the age of 13. In 1931, he was sent to the newly formed Kerala Kalamandalam for further studies, thus becoming one of the earliest students of the institution.

Collaboration

A turning point in his artistic life was his collaboration with American danseuse Ragini Devi (Esther Luella Sherman), the first foreign student of the Kalamandalam. Subsequently, she formed a dance troupe and invited Gopinath, ‘who had an ideal physique of a dancer.’ They staged several choreographed pieces throughout the country and in Europe that brought laurels to them; Chambakkulam Gopinathan became renowned as Guru Gopinath.

Gopinath popularised the refined physical elements of Kathakali minus its intricacies and attire. He blended the fundamentals of Kathakali and Mohinyattom and presented it as Indian ballet. He first named his repertoires as Indian classical dances. Subsequently he changed it to Kathakali Natanam when he started focussing more on the thouryatrika elements (combination of vocal music, instrumental music and dance) and nritta, nritya and natya aspects of Kathakali in his presentations. Later, he renamed it as Kerala Natanam. He structured Kerala Natanam in such a way that it could be performed as a solo, group or dance drama and described it respectively as Ekamga Natanam, Samkha Natanam and Nataka Natanam with repertoires for a male-female duo.

He believed that the intricate techniques of Kathakali could not be easily appreciated by a larger audience and that the requirement of that time was to attract more aficionados towards classical dance. The puritans of those periods castigated him ‘for diluting the quintessence of Kathakali for individual fame and recognition and making it a slapstick art piece.’

Nevertheless, his endeavour won recognition right from the start.

“As a choreographer, the mass was always in his mind and the stress was on perfection; thus there is no other dance that is simple and communicates well with all, yet classical, as his style,” observes Vinodini, his youngest daughter and a protégé of his legacy.

“Nowadays Kerala Natanam is performed by ill-trained artistes and the themes chosen are unsuitable for the art form. This has affected the reputation of the form itself,” rues Kangazha Chellappan Nair, nephew of the Guru and general secretary of Guru Gopinath Trust, founded in 1996, to propagate Kerala Natanam.

Guru Gopinath was married to Thankamani, the first and only Mohiniyattam student of the Kerala Kalamandalam in 1937.

Palace dancer

He was the palace dancer of erstwhile Travancore. In 1942, the duo started their dance school Natana Niketan in Chennai and, later, in 1959, the Guru relocated to Delhi. He opened a dance school called Viswakalakendram in 1961, in Thiruvananthapuram. Some of his renowned ballets are ‘Narayaneeyam,’ ‘Mahabharatam,’ ‘Chandalabhikshuki,’ ‘Ramayana,’ ‘Banayudham,’ ‘Kumarasambhavam,’ ‘Geetopadesam’ and ‘Mary of Magdalene.’ While his solo choreographs include Shiva thandavam, the hunter dance and Garuda dance; his Shiva-Parvathi, Laxmi-Narayana, Usha-Anirudha and so on were meant to be performed by a duo. Thodayam and Purappadu, the technical prelude of a traditional Kathakali repertoire, was also choreographed by him as a group dance in his style. In the film ‘Hiryanakasipu’ (1938), Gopinath donned the role of Prahlad, followed by the role of Jesus in ‘Jeevitanouka.’

“After our maiden performance in Scotland, on seeing Bhartatanatyam and Kerala Natanam in the same show, the audience were astonished by the energy of Kerala Natanam. So, it was wonderful to introduce this strong, masculine dance form with lasya elements embedded in this rounded structure where it feels like women are dancing something that is meant to be danced by men,” remarks Kerala Natanam exponent Priya Shrikumar, the artistic director of the Scotland-based Danceihayami, who popularised the form in Europe.

Gopinath passed away on October 9, 1987, at Kerala Fine Arts Hall, Kochi.

He authored six books, including an autobiography and two books in English: ‘The Classical Dance Poses of India’ and ‘Abhinaya Prakashika.’ The Central Sangeet Nataka akademi award came to him in 1965 and in 1972 the Rabindra Bharati University (Kolkata) honoured him with a honourary doctorate.

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