Pedagogy

inDANCE's traces the core of our Bharatnatyam dance practices to the training we have received from our revered teachers (gurus), K.P. Kittappa Pillai, R. Muttukannamal and other hereditary members of the devadasi (courtesan) and nattuvanar Icei-Velalar communities of South India. The knowledge we have imbibed from our gurus has enabled us to mature as research scholars and performers who examine pedagogy, choreography, and the history of Bharatanatyam from critical perspectives.inDANCE's performances of the South Indian dance form known today as Bharatanatyam are unique in the dance world- presenting courtesan-inspired repertoire and music for the contemporary global stage. They originate out of a critical awareness of historical context and meaning that are rooted in ethnographic and textual research.

Guru K.P. Kittappa Pillai (1913-1999) was one of the last great hereditary dance masters of the twentieth century in South India. He falls in the direct family line of Civanantam of the Tanjavur brothers, popularly refered to as the Tanjavur Quartet.  The Tanjavur Brothers (tancai nalvar), Cinnaiya (1802-1856), Ponnaiya (1804-1864), Civanantam (1808-1863) and Vativel (1810-1847), were four dance-masters and musicians who descended from a clan of musicians who were patronized by the Nayaka and Maratha dynasties in the South Indian city of Tanjavur. Kittappa Pillai is the grandson of Meenakshisundaram Pillai (1869-1954), the grandson of Ponnaiya of the Tanjavur Brothers.  His early training in music was under Natesa Sastri, in the direct music lineage of the composer Syama Sastri (1762-1827).  He later studied the hereditary music traditions of his family under his father, the highly accomplished musician and musicologist, K.Ponnaiya Pillai (1888-1945).  Until his father's demise in 1945, Kittappa Pillai presented vocal music concerts together with his cousin.  From 1945 onward however, he decided to focus on the resuscitation of some of the dance compositions in his family's repertoire and began to teach dance.  Together with some of his students, he unearthed several hundred compositions by the Tanjavur Quartet, as well as pre-Quartet compositions and ritual repertoire from the Brhadisvara temple traditions.

Guru R. Muttukkannammal is the last devadasi to be dedicated at the Viralimalai temple in Tamil Nadu, South India. Muttukkannammal was born in 1929, and at the age of seven, in the year 1936, was married to Murukan at the Viralimalai temple.  She performed ritual tasks in the temple and also performed the courtly dances from 1937 until the early 1950s.  Gifted with a resonant voice and an incredibly sharp memory, Muttukkannammal is one of the last living women to have been married to a deity before 1947.  Her artistry embodies the spirit of spontaneity and technique emblematic of courtesan dance. Muttukkannammal's father, Ramachandra Nattuvanar (1890-1988), who was also her dance-master, was trained by his mother, his aunt and also by their teacher Kumarasvami Nattuvanar of Tanjavur.  According to Muttukkannammal, the ritual songs and dances of the temple were taught to Ramachandra Nattuvanar by the women in the family, and the courtly Tanjavur-style catir kacceri was taught to him by Kumarasvami Nattuvanar.