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.
Krishnakumar is the first full-fledged Kathakali artiste in his family| Photo Credit:Special Arrangement “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.