‘Abhinaya’ was her forte (1928-2016)
Kalanidhi Narayanan embarked on a career as a classical dancer at the age of seven, and was recognised as the first non-devadasi girl to perform in front of audiences in the 1930s. However, after an early marriage which was de rigeur in those days, she became a part of a conservative family and bid adieu to dance in the 1940s, although she had by then gained a lot of popularity in the field. A good three decades later she returned in 1973 as a dance teacher, and thereafter blazed a golden trail that ended only with her demise in February 2016 at the age of eighty seven.
Kalanidhi Ganapathy as she was known before her marriage, revealed a flair for dance even as a sprightly girl of seven, and was put under the tutelage of a number of gurus like Kamalakshi Ammai, daughter of the famous Veena Dhanam for padams and javalis, and Chinnayya Naidu, another teacher of repute. She trained in vocals under Manakkal Sivarajan, nritya under Kannappa Pillai, and picked up the nuances of abhinaya from Mylapore Gauri Ammal. She had her arangetram at the age of twelve and went on to perform in a number of concerts winning critical acclaim till she reached the age of sixteen, after which she had to hang up her anklets, as it was unthinkable in those days for married women to opt for dance as a career.
An accidental meeting with dance connoisseur and a patron of the fine arts Y.G. Doraiswamy proved instrumental in Kalanidhi Narayanan returning to the firmament of classical dance in her late forties, and at his instance she took on the assignment of teaching abhinaya to Alarmel Valli, a young, up and coming dancer, who needed a capable trainer. It was a challenging assignment for someone who had all but hung up her boots, and Kalanidhi had to pick up the threads all over again.
Backed by a strong will and an overwhelming desire to reach out to the world through the medium of Bharatanatyam, Kalanidhi took pains to reeducate herself and even enrolled for a course conducted by one of her illustrious contemporaries Padma Subramaniam, to polish her skills and also fine tune her knowledge of dance theory. She soon became popular all over again, and in no time became the most sought after teacher, patronised extensively by those who were keen to hone their talents in abhinaya. Among her earliest students were Alarmel Valli, Malavikka Sarukkai, Protima Bedi and Pratibha Prahlad, all of whom went on to carve their own niche in the world of dance. She established dance schools all over the world and continuously travelled abroad even in her later years to monitor the progress of the institutions and also to brief her senior students who functioned as instructors. A noteworthy feature of her dance schools was that the students were given a firm grounding in the dance form and were also allowed sufficient leeway to improvise.
It was in her second avatar as a teacher that Kalanidhi Narayanan touched the dizzy heights of fame and her glorious second innings saw her winning a number of coveted awards as well. She was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 1985, the Sangeet Natak Academy Award in 1990, and the prestigious Kalidas Samman in 1998. She also published and released several CDs and DVDs on the various aspects of the dance form, and most of them contained live demonstrations by her, and these have served as valuable references to those interested in learning dance in its most pristine form. Many of her students and art critics paid handsome tributes to the late dancer, and a number of them recalled her mastery over the navarasas and how her expressive eyes and face could convey a wealth of emotions in a jiffy. A celebrated and honoured dancer who was ranked on par with greats like Balasaraswathi, Kalanidhi Narayanan has certainly left her indelible imprint as a teacher.