Kalanidhi Narayanan

Kalanidhi Narayanan was an Indian dancer who was born on December 7, 1928. She was an instructor of the Bharatnatyam style of Indian classical dance. In the 1930s and 1940s, she was the first non-Devadasi female to learn the dance style and execute it live on stage. She began her rigorous training in the field at the age of seven, studying vocal training with Manakkal Sivarajan and Padam and Javali training with Kamakshi Ammal. She received her primary training in nritta (dancing) from renowned guru Kannappa Pillai of Kanchipuram.

At the age of 12, she made her stage debut (Arangetram) for the Madras Music Academy at Chennai's Senate House. She performed two memorable recitals while still in her teens, one with Dhanamanikkam and the other with Nattuvanar K. Ganesan. In the 1940s, she had a brief dance career, but when her mother passed away and she was married into a strict household, she left the industry at the age of sixteen. When prominent art patron Y. G. Doraiswamy decided to teach dancer Alarmel Valli the ‘abhinaya’ in 1973, she decided to return to dancing with the support of her sons after watching the performances.

At the age of 46, after a gap of 30 years, she started the second phase of her career. She also re-educated herself in dance and began attending dance shows and Arangetrams in the city. She also enrolled in a course taught by Dr. Padma Subramaniam on the dance theory of Bharatanatyam. As time passed, more pupils began to attend her classes, and throughout the years, she rose to the position of ‘the most sought-after teacher for Abhinaya.’ At the Luz Community Hall in Chennai on December 7, 2003, several dance instructors and her students commemorated her 75th birthday.

Prominent Bharatanatyam gurus took part in a two-day conference on abhinaya. Ramya Harishankar, A. Lakshmanaswamy, Bragha Bessell, Hema Rajagopalan, Madhusri Sethuraman, Subashree Narayanan, Minal Prabhu, Priya Govind, Sharmila Biswas, Meenakshi Chitharanjan (abhinaya), Milana Severskaya, are among her notable students. In 1985, she received the third-highest civilian distinction in India, the Padma Bhushan Award. In 1990, the National Academy of Music, Dance, and Drama of India presented her with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Bharatnatyam. In 1998, she received the Kalidas Samman. Sangeet Natak Akademi Tagore Ratna for Dance was also given to her in 2011. She passed away on 21 February 2016 in Chennai, India.