Celebrating Kali: The goddess of time and timelessness through dance

Kuchipudi exponent, Dr Anuradha J Tadakamalla, brings her dance production Mahakali, to Bengaluru as part of the Nayika - Celebrating Womanhood 2025 festival

Mahakali. The name evokes either extreme devotion or fear. Kali is known to represent the ultimate reality, which goes beyond the realm of time and darkness. She is described as the embodiment of feminine power, strength and resilience. And, these are the very attributes of the deity, that captivated dancer-professor, Dr Anuradha J Tadakamalla, to conceptualise and choreograph the dance Mahakali.

Anuradha and the Team of Art India Foundation, Hyderabad, will perform Mahakali in Bengaluru this weekend, as part of the ninth edition of Nayika - Celebrating Womanhood 2025, presented by Shambhavi School of Dance, Bengaluru. 

“Mahakali is a work that was initially created as a dance film during the pandemic. We took the varied forms of Devi and Kali is depicted as one who is dark skinned, wearing a garland of skulls. This was the form I was most drawn to and delved deep into a research about her,” says the dancer, teacher and scholar of Kuchipudi over a call from Hyderabad. Anuradha has a PhD in Traditions and Innovations in Kuchipudi Dance.

She explains that the Kali she discovered led, “me into a totally different direction, where we see her as a force of dynamic energy — the Maha Shakti as Shankaracharya calls her. This energy, when looked at in our philosophy, is multi-dimensional. I started studying the Devi Bhagavatam too, where Kali is talked about as the force that annihilates every evil and darkness. This was a concept I wanted to introduce through dance — Maha Shakti, the time and the cycles of time.”

“Our Vedic literature has the calculation of time right from the Truti to the gigantic time cycles known as Kalpas. Mahakali is a representation of how she becomes an instrument in creating this universe too. She represents all that is dynamic in nature and how miniscule we are in this vast galaxy, where nothing stops.”

Anuradha, who has also authored and edited books such as Celebrating Life: A collection of Writing, Photographs and Remembrances on Vedantam Raghavayya, Telangana lo Nrityam (Telugu), Kuchipudi Dance, Who is Who to name a few, talks about the perception of time itself.

“Western philosophy sees time in a linear format — with a beginning and an end. In our philosophy, time is cyclic. This is also a concept established in Mahakali, where the end is seen not as an end, but as a pause before a new beginning. The theme is linked in a dance with Maha Shakti and the black hole, which again, is associated with Kali, who absorbs everything into herself.”