Adieu Kamala – Legend of our times

It was Kamala who transformed almost overnight, the loathsome into the laudable.”

I wrote this in 1988 in my biography of Kamala for Sruti Magazine 

It was the late 1930s when the Sadir tradition was undergoing a renaissance with a new name Bharatanatyam. Scholars, art lovers and institutions were making all out efforts to revive the art. Oppositions were strong and society was unprepared to accept it. Some of the artists from the traditional community were still performing. Rukmini Devi was starting an institution to teach Bharatanatyam. Still the opposition to the art was unyielding.

Kamala’s advent achieved at one stroke a total change in the social perspective. “The timing was perfect, the conditions ideal. And her age was just right.”

‘Baby Kamala’ inspired every mother to overcome familial, communal and social taboos to make her daughter into a Kamala. Thousands of lotuses bloomed all over the land. Every young dancer of Bharatanatyam anywhere in the world today, who may not even have heard the name of Kamala, owes her art to that legendary dancer who blazed a trail across the firmament of the art for all time. It was Kamala who was the cultural ambassador for more than four decades, taking Bharatanatyam to every part of our country and the world. 

She and her guru Vazhuvoor Ramiah Pillai were synonymous with the Vazhuvoor bani, that reigned supreme for nearly half a century. “In the race against the various banis at that time, Kamala’s dance superseded the rest,” said Swamimalai S.K.Rajarathnam, who had sung for decades for Kamala. 

Grace, fluidity, perfection marked her nritta while subtlety, poetry and instant communication defined her abhinaya. Underlying them both was her strong and deep knowledge of Carnatic music. From the instant she made her entry from the wings until she concluded with the mangalam she held the audience in a magic spell. With no apparent effort to cover the stage she still created the illusion of the stage teeming with several Kamalas. It was visual poetry in the most appealing and magical sense. 

Vazhuvoor Ramiah Pillai was an astute and accomplished natyacharya with awareness of the needs of the time. His redefining the margam with songs and items of contemporary relevance introduced a new trend. In a manner he did to Bharatanatyam what Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar did to the kutcheri format. While he retained the alarippu, jatiswaram, sabdam, varnam and tillana, he introduced a variety of songs in Tamil from literature and musical compositions. Contemporary poems composed by Subramanya Bharathi, Kalki Krishnamurthi and others had an instant appeal. Kamala dancing in mirror image to Bharathi’s Aduvome Pallu Paduvome became iconic, both for the song, its sentiments and the dance. Kamala shared an interesting tidbit about filming of the sequence. Contrary to the assumption that it was a camera trick, it was filmed twice, once on the right and then the left with Kamala performing twice. 

In 1959, I had the rare privilege of singing for Kamala for her performances in Ceylon, today’s Sri Lanka. She had been requesting my mother Ananthalakshmi Sadagopan, an acclaimed musician, to sing for her on one of her trips abroad. Since Amma had a deep appreciation of Kamala’s dance and her knowledge of music, she had agreed to do so. We had to learn a few new songs and the short dance dramas of Andal and Aichiyar Kuravai. We attended rehearsals for about a week in Kamala’s home in Santhome. Rhadha, her younger sister also performed some solo and duo items with her. 

The rehearsals would have her guru with the entire orchestra. While Swamimalai S.K. Rajarathnam and Kallidaikurichi K.R. Radhakrishnan sang for the first half and the tillana, my mother and I sang for the second half and the short dance dramas. It was a treat to watch her as she would dance every time at the rehearsal as though she was on stage. During the three or even four-hour sessions she would remain fresh and energetic till the end. If we needed her to repeat an item or a portion, she would be only too happy to repeat it for our sake. The series went 

like a dream. Every show in cities like Colombo, Kandy, Mathale Jaffna and Trinco drew full houses packed with admirers. Some of whom travelled to other cities to watch her again. At every venue 

crowds gathered outside to catch a glimpse of her as she came in and left. 

Halfway through the performance at Colombo she asked my mother if she would sing the javali Sakhi prana (Prana sakuditu) for her abhinaya. This was a request from a friend and rasika. We had not rehearsed it with her. She asked us to sing according to our pathantaram and said that she will be able to follow. As we sang, it was amazing how she went with every nuance of the song. Even though it was a standard version and she knew it backwards, it was a revelation to us how she could provide an immersive experience to us as well as the audience. 

Her knowledge of music was her greatest strength. 

A disciple of the doyen Ramnad Krishnan, she 

soaked herself in the bhava-laden music of her guru and his contemporaries. During the December festival, on days she was not performing, she would 

be at the music concerts at the Music Academy and other sabhas, savouring it again later with my mother. Her ears were always on the alert for new compositions that could be brought into dance. Every time she met a musician, whom she was close to, her first enquiry would be, “Any new song I can take for dance?”

Once, my mother and I went to meet her at a guest house in Madurai in the forenoon of her performance. This time we had a new song, a lullaby on Krishna’s life, from birth to Rukmini Kalyanam by Ambujam Krishna, five stanzas set in a ragamalika by K.R. Kedaranathan. Excited, she jumped up and declared she would perform it that very evening as a surprise to the composer, who would be in the audience. We sang it a second time as she danced to the song. Presently,  she called her guru in the next room and performed it for him as we sang a third time. He approved of her choreography and suggested a couple of extra variations, which he demonstrated. I was stunned when I saw him sit in full mandi and show Yashoda with Krishna on her lap.

Her constant introduction of new items was one of the features that attracted the audience to watch her again and again. Her performances in December season in Madras were always houseful shows. I remember standing in queue at the Music Academy at 6 am for the counter to open at 8 am or daily tickets for her show. Latecomers had to go away disappointed. 

How does one describe her art? The adavus were a visual image of the solkattus. The vallinam and mellinam and the ringing karvai in the sonorous recitation by the lion among natyacharyas, the Natya Kala Kesari Vazhuvoor Ramiah Pillai, were reflected not just in the footwork, but also through her entire body, eyes, neck, hands, fingers, turns and twirls. The variety of adavus were woven in a seamless flow, one leading to another and blossoming as full-blown flowers of exquisite beauty. There was punch, drama and an instant connectivity with the viewer in every movement that happened on the stage. 

Long before the word karana came to be known in the Bharatanatyam parlance in the sixties, Ramiah Pillai had crystallised the sculpturesque poses of Kamala on stage. Much has been praised and also carped about her poses, which were perfect, statuesque and above all, brimming with life. Vazhuvoorar was perhaps the first to introduce them with his deep knowledge of the silpa shastra and keen observation of our sculptures and icons. They appeared fleetingly and arrestingly for a few seconds as part of a movement, with the perfection of the sculptures. A small pointer would be the tight control up to the fingertips, when an arm was held full-length straight from the shoulder with the fingertips pointing the floor as in an icon of a Devi. No loose fingers allowed. 

Her abhinaya was subtle, poetic and conveyed the character, the action, the context and much more to the audience. And there was an underlying dignity and sheer beauty in whatever she portrayed. In the twinkling of an eye, she could be Dasaratha or Kaikeyi, Rama or Soorpanaka, Lakshmana, Sita or Anjaneya. Kamala vanished and all the characters appeared, particularly in her own choreography of Bhavayami Raghuramam, which she performed as a solo in the place of the varnam. When she performed to the Papanasam Sivan kriti Kaa va va in Varali there was not a dry eye in the audience. As my mother and I sang it for her, I invariably had to stop for the catch in my throat. 

She had established her school for dance in Madras in the sixties and trained many worthy pupils. She produced several thematic, group dance productions such as Tyagaraja’s Nauka Charitram, Prahlada Bhakthi Vijayam, Azhagar Kuravanji,Vallee Bharatham etc. She was still very much in demand for her solo performances. 

But she relocated to USA in the eighties, followed by her husband and son. There she established her school for dance and taught many in New York and New Jersey. She visited Madras off and on and performed on a couple of occasions. Her agility and emotive felicity remained intact. She was thirsting to dance and what she missed more was watching the dances of her contemporaries and younger generation. She would take from me video copies of their short performances I had recorded from Doordarshan. 

Organisers and officialdom had started forgetting her. Pattabhi Raman of Sruti continued his efforts for the Sangita Kalanidhi Award from the Music Academy. They would give her only what was called the Platinum Jubilee award, which later was termed Lifetime Achievement Award. Personal misfortunes dogged her and her husband passed away suddenly. Eventually she stopped visiting India. The slow, inevitable withdrawal from active life due to age stopped contacts with most friends and admirers. The loving care of her son Jainand and his wife Shanthi gave comfort and cheer in her twilight years. 

And on 23 November 2025 she passed away in California at the age of 91. 

More than her passing, the non-availability of her legendary dance is the real loss to the art. Kamala herself was averse to her dance being recorded. When Sruti Pattabhi Raman organised the bani seminar in the early nineties, Kamala was invited by him to perform the demonstration of the Vazhuvoor tradition and give a recital, she stipulated that it 

should not be recorded. Since the seminar was convened to do recordings of the various banis for archival purposes, Kamala’s sister Rhadha was invited to do the recordings. Doordarshan, Sangeet Natak Akademi or any other Government body, either state or central, could have taken the initiative to archive her dance. The Films Division of the Indian government had done a short recording of a margam by her in the early fifties.

With no footage of any of her concerts in her prime, and a tendency in the last few decades to casually forget her name among dance circles, it is not surprising that a whole new generation of Bharatanatyam dancers has come up, unaware of the name of Kamala. No amount of writing can convey the magnitude of her art that made her an ‘all-time great’. 

We who have seen and immersed in Kamala’s peerless art shall count the experience as one of life’s blessings. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. 

Farewell Kamala, you have ascended to dance for the Gods!  

(The author is a writer, musician and dance scholar)