Kalanidhi Narayanan

Kalanidhi Narayanan

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Category: Art

Kalanidhi Narayanan Profile

  • Name:
  • Kalanidhi Narayanan
  • Born:
  • December 7, 1928
  • Father:
  • Ganapati
  • Mother:
  • Sumitra

Kalanidhi Narayanan Biography

Kalanidhi Narayanan is a Bharatnatyam dancer and teacher, who trains students. She is the early non-devadasi lady to learn this dance and perform it on stage in 1930s and 1940s.  After a brief career as a performer, she became active once again in 1970’s in the form of a teacher. She is a notable teacher of abhinaya. She received Padma Bhushan Award in 1985, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Bharatnatyam in 1990 and Kalidas Samman in 1998.

 

Her birth name is Kalanidhi Ganapathi and she was born to Sumitra and Ganapati in a Brahmin family of Tamil Nadu on December 7, 1928. Both her parents were interested in teaching her this art form. Thus she started formal learning of this art form at the age of 7 and learnt under various gurus including Kamakshi Ammal (Padams and Javalis), Manakkal Sivarajan (vocal lessons) and Kannappa Pillai (Nritham). Chinnayya Naidu and Mylapore Gauri Ammal taught her Abhinaya. She made Arangetram at the age of 12 at the Senate House in Chennai, for the Madras Music Academy. Her recitals in the teens, one with Dhanamanikkam and another with Nattuvanar K. Ganesan were notable.

 

She had a brief dance career in the 1940s. After her mother’s death, she got married in the age of 16. As she was married into a conservative family, she couldn’t continue dancing as her career. But in the year 1973, she returned back as a dance teacher.  Y. G. Doraiswamy, who had seen her dancing in teens, asked her to start a career as a teacher and thus she stepped in.  He asked to instruct dancer Alarmel Valli in abhinaya and she agreed. She got support from her grownup kids too.  Thus she started the second phase of her career after a gap of 30 years at the age of 46. Sharmila Biswas, Uma Vasudevan, Ramya Harishankar and Hema Rajagopalan are among her notable disciples.

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Updated: January 23, 2014

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