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Rajika Puri has acted in Meera Nair's 'Mississippi Masala' and Deb Benegal's 'Split Wide Open'. |
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Kuchipudi dancer Derick Munro is a descendant of Lt. General William Munro who was appointed by Lord Amherst as the first commissioner and ruler of Burma. Born in a Scottish Catholic family in Burma, he migrated to India in 1942. He learnt under Guru Guntur Lakshmi Narasimha Sastry in Andra Pradesh and because of his love for the art, he adopted the name M C Vedanta Krishna. |
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Mallika Sarabai never had an arangetram herself. The closest she got to one was when at the age of 14, she enacted a character Madhavi whose arangetram was part of the dance sequence. |
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Kudiyattam is performed only in a few major temples of Kerala like Irinjalakuda, Perumanam, Kottiyar etc. |
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In Kathakali, which was performed in temples, only Hindu themes were enacted and Hindu audiences alone were permitted to see the performance. Hence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the leaders of church, in close collaboration with the Portuguese missionaries, evolved a new theatrical art called Chavittunatakam with the objectives of presenting Christian or Biblical themes for the sake of Christian audiences. In Chavittunatakam, the actors not only speak or sing but also stamp on the wooden platform with their feet to the tune of songs and beating of drums. It is because acting and stamping form important elements in Chavittunatakam that it has come to be called so - chavittu means stamping with the feet and natakam means drama. |
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Kalaripayattu, the ancient martial art of Kerala literally means, “combat training inside the gymnasium”. The word kalari has been derived from the Sanskrit “Kholoorika” meaning a military training ground. With the help of available historical evidences, the present practicing traditions origin can be traced back to the 12th century AD. |
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Misinterpreting Mohiniattam made it a taboo. As recently as 1915, a Mohiniattam dancer was stoned in the city of Trissur and is believed to have died of her wounds. The ill-fated dancer was a pupil of the late guru Krishnan Panikkar. |
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Movva village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh is the birthplace of Kshetrayya, who composed hundreds of dance songs. |
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