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DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS

Sreelakshmy Govardhanan

The Journey of Kuchipudi: From Yakshaganam to the Solo

Thursday, October 15 | 7:30PM

Performed by Sreelakshmy Govardhanan

Followed by conversation with Marina Harss

To watch Sreelakshmy Govardhanan perform is to witness a body surrender to, and simultaneously command, the extraordinary demands of Kuchipudi. “Surrender, unlearning and absorption” is how she describes the development of her practice: a state in which rigorous technique unfurls into something far more elusive and expansive. For The Journey of Kuchipudi, Govardhanan will present a solo performance interspersed with historical and cultural context, followed by a conversation with dance critic and writer Marina Harss and the audience.

Through dance, song, music and spoken commentary, Sreelakshmy Govardhanan will explore Kuchipudi’s journey from a dance theater tradition performed by upper-caste men in Andhra Pradesh to its contemporary life as an inclusive, non-gender-specific, and geographically expansive solo dance form.

This presentation brings together excerpts from various Kuchipudi genres, including Sabdham, Tarangam, Ashtapadi, Javali, and choreographies exploring contemporary concepts. It also features dharavus from Kuchipudi Yakshaganam and Kalapams, highlighting the rich interplay of movement, live dialogue, sung passages, and padyam (poetic verse) that characterises these theatrical traditions.

Rather than viewing this transformation as a loss of its former glory, this presentation considers it as an evolution shaped by changing times, audiences, and performance spaces.

Usha Parinayam and Bhamaa Kalapam are among the most celebrated theatrical presentations of Kuchipudi. Excerpts from these traditions, taught to Sreelakshmy by her Guru, Sri Pasumarthy Rattaiah Sarma, form an integral part of this presentation. One of the foremost torchbearers of Kuchipudi Yakshaganam today, he has dedicated his life to living, breathing, and preserving this rich theatrical tradition.

Yakshagana is a broad rubric for traditional dance theater and other embodied narrative forms that evolved in South India; Kuchipudi is an elaborate Yakshagana practice developed by South Indian Telugu-speaking communities. Centuries ago, Kuchipudi Yakshagana productions were full-scale community affairs characterized by lavish sets and live music. Its narratives were based on Indian epics and were performed exclusively by men, with female impersonators (stree vesham) playing women’s roles. With roots in the Bhagavathamelam, groups of itinerant performer-devotees who performed dance-plays based on Hindu scripture, from the 17th century Kuchipudi was practiced by the Telugu Brahmin families of Kuchipudi village, in Andhra Pradesh.

In the 1950s, Kuchipudi became embroiled in the cultural politics of a newly independent India, at the center of a classificatory debate about “folk” versus “classical” dance forms. Teachers began stripping the form of its large-scale theatrical ensemble context and teaching broken-down elements of Kuchipudi dramas as solos to eager students, who were no longer from their own families. This new category of students included not just women, but also people from other castes, locales, languages, religions and dance backgrounds. Between the 1950s and 1970s, a complex new national ecosystem of Kuchipudi emerged. Since the 1980s, Kuchipudi (among other “classical” dance forms of India) has been embedded in the cultural practices of a growing South Asian diaspora, as well as a globalized dance performance discourse—at once contemporary and deeply rooted in a linguistic and cultural context.

Today’s Kuchipudi is known predominantly as a solo dance form, and is often performed by women. In it, the individual becomes a subtle vehicle for the layered complexity of the ensemble. A solo Kuchipudi performer slips between many roles, mastering quicksilver changes of expression and body language. Playing both Rama and Sita in the moment their eyes first meet, a Kuchipudi performer almost gives the sense, in Govardhanan’s words, “of having split.” Such power is achieved through nuance: subtle expressions that invoke rather than represent, in masterful twitches of the eyebrow, calibrated eye movements, and small shivers of the cheek, lips, and chin. A Kuchipudi dancer’s lilting upper body and precise weight shifts are contrasted by propulsive, athletic footwork. Her formidable isolation and control, however, is never detached: a Kuchipudi performer is transported by the emotions of the performance, felt forcefully in her body, to an extent that approaches trance.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Born and raised in Kerala, Sreelaksmy Govardhanan encountered Kuchipudi as a teenager and became a disciple of the distinguished guru Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma at twenty-eight. To immerse herself more fully in the form, she learned Telugu in order to speak with her guru in the language of his tradition and to connect more deeply with the cultural world from which it emerged. Govardhanan is now widely recognized for her virtuosic footwork, extraordinary expressive range, and profound engagement with Kuchipudi’s transmission and evolution. Her abhinaya is particularly celebrated: an ability to make the smallest gesture carry astonishing emotional and narrative weight.

Marina Harss is a writer, journalist, and critic based in New York City, writing on all aspects of dance and occasionally on opera. Her features, profiles, reviews and interviews have appeared in: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Guardian, among others. Her book on the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet, was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux in October 2023.

FourOneOne is a non-profit organization supporting historically aware and rooted performance practices across genres, enabling New York’s many audiences to engage with multiplicity and alternative approaches to time and space. www.fouroneoneprojects.org.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Guru Sri Pasumarthy Rattaiah Sarma and Guru Vasudevan Namboothiri

SUPPORT FOR THIS WORK

This performance is made possible with generous support from Danspace Project funders, donors, and members. For a full list of Danspace Project funders and supporters, visit the page on our website.

FourOneOne’s programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

FourOneOne was supported by New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2026–2027.

Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhattan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present and future.

ABOUT DANSPACE PROJECT

Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences.

For over 50 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned nearly 600 new works since its inception in 1994.

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