Yamini Krishnamurti, Bharatanatyam benchmark, torchbearer of Kuchipudi and Odissi, dies at 83

Delhi-based Krishnamurti, the doyenne of Indian classical dance, passed away on Saturday afternoon following a prolonged illness. She was 83 and had been in and out of the hospital for the past year. Her body will be brought to her dance centre — Yamini School of Dance — on Sunday in Delhi’s Hauz Khas for visitors to pay their last respects.

Krishnamurti is also credited with a noteworthy contribution to the nation’s soft power in post-independent India. She travelled globally and extensively, besides popularising Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi in North India.

“She was the benchmark. There has never been anyone like her,” said dance historian Ashish Khokhar.

Born in Madanapalli in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor into a family of Sanskrit scholars and art aficionados, Krishnamurti grew up in Tamil Nadu after her family moved there. For a six-year-old Telugu-speaking girl growing up in Chidambaram in the 1950s, there was something mystical about the 2,000-year-old Thillai Nataraja Temple that stood not far from her house.

The bronze statues and stone sculptures depicting deities and legends about Nataraja’s dance were invocation enough for the awed little girl to swirl in the temple, holding her skirt.

In the early 1970s, when she grew up to be Yamini Krishnamurti, showcasing variations of Kuchipudi at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the audience was left delighted. The guest list included Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who, to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s surprise, went up on the stage, held Krishnamurti’s hands and said, “Keep dancing. Don’t stop. Just keep dancing.”

“Such was the pull of her dance,” dance critic Sunil Kothari told this reporter once at a dinner hosted by cultural impresario Anita Singh.

Delhi-based Krishnamurthy, the doyenne of Indian classical dance, and who defined soft power through dance in post-Independence India by travelling globally, besides popularising Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi in North India, passed away at the Capital’s Apollo Hospital (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“I was destined to become a dancer. One has to understand that everything going smoothly is unique. I am grateful. I have found my parakashtha (summit), something that an artist spends a lifetime seeking,” Krishnamurti had said.

In India of the 1960s and 1970s — a time when classical dance had just stepped out of temples and courts onto the proscenium — it was a great time to be on the stage. Arts were being valued as a soft power. Artistes like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Allah Rakha and Ustad Bismillah Khan were taking Indian music to a global audience. “I came at the right time. This wasn’t a time when dance was being looked down upon or attached to prostitution. It was a serious vocation,” said Krishnamurti.

She had come to the fore after learning Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra under Rukmini Devi Arundale. She withdrew from Kalakshetra because of its ‘regimented schedule’ and later trained under famed Gurus Kittappa Pillai, Elappa Pillai and Mylapore Gowri Amma. Her father, a scholar interested in the arts, made sure that his daughter learnt uninterrupted.

Her interest in Kuchipudi grew after Vedantham Laxminarayana Sastri, a celebrated master of the form, insisted that a Telugu-speaking girl should learn Kuchipudi and not Bharatanatyam. Krishnamurti almost immediately fell in love with Kuchipudi’s abhinaya and fluidity. It suited her temperament, was lyrical and she aced it, which set her apart from other dancers of the time. She also learnt the other lyrical form, Odissi, at a time when it was still being systematised. Soon, she was travelling the world.

Her performances from the 60s and 70s are remembered by those who watched, including many young girls who wanted to dance like her. Bharatanatyam exponent Geeta Chandran was one of them. “My father took me to every concert that Yamini akka did. We were looking at dance like a spectacle then, something exotic, and she was at the centre of it all. About seven years ago she told me, she’d never seen a film in a theatre. Imagine! She didn’t have many friends and didn’t socialise much. Dance was the only thing she knew,” says Chandran, about Krishnamurti, who stayed alone. “I didn’t need a man to help me feel complete. Dance was fulfilling enough,” Krishnamurti would say.

Technically, while she redefined Bharatanatyam by increasing the speed of the jatis, mainly because she was performing alongside Kathak legends such as Sitara Devi and Lachhu Maharaj on Delhi rosters, she felt it was significant “to wake up the audience” with faster pieces when performing late at night, what always held her in high stead was her presence. “She was like a sculpture on stage,” says Chandran.

Krishnamurti was only 28 and dancing professionally for a decade when she was honoured with Padma Shri in 1968, followed by a Padma Bhushan in 2001 and a Padma Vibhushan in 2016.

Earlier last month, Bharatanatyam exponent Rama Vaidyanathan, Krishnamurti’s first student, went to visit her guru in the hospital. Krishnamurti had become unresponsive by then. So Vaidyanathan did what a student does to get attention from her teacher. She danced next to her hospital bed, while singing some of Krishnamurti’s favourite compositions, thinking that if nothing is working, dance, the system that Krishnamurti dedicated herself to, may do the trick. “She opened her eyes and kept staring with half a smile,” says Vaidyanathan.