Kalamandalam Krishnakumar looks back at his 50-year journey as a Kathakali artiste

Krishnakumar’s strong connect with Kathakali

When Kalamandalam Krishnakumar joined Kalakshetra in Chennai as a teacher, the young Kathakali artiste had to unlearn a few things to meet the institution’s requirement as a part-time Bharatanatyam dancer. This exposure came in handy when Krishnakumar got posted at his alma mater in Cheruthuruthy, not far from his native village in central Kerala.

“I taught Kathakali till my retirement in 2018, but on stage, I sometimes found Bharatanatyam footwork and movements better suited the characters I portrayed,” he says, citing charming Kacha’s bonding with Devayani in her father Shukracharya’s ashram or sage Vishwamitra giving lessons on abhinaya to the Rati-Virati duo in Harischandracharitam.

This is Krishnakumar’s 50th year in Kathakali. And through the journey he has constantly reinvented himself and his art. He moved from the folksy Ayyappanpattu to Kathakali and from the southern school of Kathakali to the northern.

“As a teenager, I had no clue about the stylistic differences between the two streams,” says Krishnakumar. I made the change because the lone teacher of the southern style, Madavoor Vasudevan Nair, used to be busy with night-long shows.”

Influential guru Ramankutty Nair accepted Krishnakumar’s request and sent him to Padmanabhan Nair to learn the northern (Kalluvazhi) methodology. He also trained under Vazhenkada Vijayan and Kalamandalam Gopi. The training lasted for almost a decade, after which he realised a dearth of opportunities to perform.

“I wanted to learn to play the harmonium since my friends told me it could fetch a job abroad.” Krishnakumar then came to know about the vacancy for a Kathakali tutor in Kalakshetra. He applied and landed the job only to realise that Bharatanatyam was the institution’s mainstay. So he gained know-how about the dance form’s repertoire.

At this point of time, Krishnakumar’s batch-mate Kalamandalam Vijayakumar and make up artiste Barbara of Manchester invited him to perform at events at their institute in the U.K. This meant taking long breaks from teaching. Eventually, he quit his job in Kalakshetra and went back to Kerala.