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 Centenary celebrations of Kuchipudi Guru Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy- Sudha Sridhare-mail: sudhasridhar@gmail.com January 11, 2026 Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Hyderabad, was witness to a very unique well-orchestrated event on 11th December 2025, to mark the celebration of the centenary birth anniversary of Kuchipudi Guru Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy. The proceedings of the evening brought to life the exemplary work of the legend through an enjoyable fare dished out by the organizers, Team Kuchipudi and Kuchipudi Foundation under the aegis of Department of Language and Culture, Telangana.  Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy Seeing the occasion graced by the who's who of the Hyderabad Kuchipudi fraternity, one can make out how much they hold in high esteem the work of Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy. Full credit to the organizers for the design of the event, it attracted the participation of several Kuchipudi Gurus along with their students showcasing their prowess while trying to do justice to the phenomenal work of the doyen in the celluloid world through their live performances to several of Krishnamurthy's choreographies. They brought to life once again the various choreographies of Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy from the films for which he was the Dance Director. In all one could count at least 26 films and 35 songs that were recreated during the evening. The oft repeated song that was performed were 'Jaya Jaya Sarada' from the movie 'Maha Kavi Kalidasu' (1960) and 'Siva Deeksha paru ralanu raa' from the movie 'Puja phalam' (1964). One got to see a glimpse of the wide range of songs for which Krishnamurthy had choreographed in over 400 films in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi films during his five-decade successful tenure as Dance Director in a field where one gets outdated and exhausted in a few years if not decades. It speaks volumes of his tenacity as well as native talent and grooming as a full-fledged Kuchipudi artiste and Guru under the watchful eyes of his illustrious Gurus including two of the Kuchipudi Trinity, Chinta Venkataramaiah and Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry, Vedantam Raghavaiah and others.  Jayapradha, A Nageswara Rao and Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy The evening clearly highlighted Krishnamurthy's skill in adapting to showcasing choreographies for Keertanas, Javalis, Padams, Folk as well as modern songs. Also, his genius in handling the dance movements for actresses / actors as different in dancing skills as that of Bhanumathy, Raja Sulochana, Savitri, Padmini, L Vijayalakshmi, Manju Bhargavi, Jayapradha, A Nageswara Rao, N T Rama Rao, S V Ranga Rao, including that of the stoic comedian Relanki Venkata Ramaiah (in the block buster hit of all times - 'Maya Bazaar'), among others. He used to remark that when it came to translating what was in his mind exactly by the artiste, he credited the honor to L Vijayalakshmi among all the cinema artistes whom he directed to perform dance. Absolutely no compromise when it came to maintaining classicism and aesthetic presentation of the dance form, Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy was the epitome and one of the best when it came to expressing Kaisiki vritti and Satvika abhinaya. He had the ability to portray the characters with classicism even in such erotic numbers in a dignified manner instead of bordering on vulgarity. All the Nayaki qualities, Uttama, Madhyama and Adhama, he was able to portray with dignity, their predicament as natural as one depicts in a classicism. Thereby he could elevate even the baser qualities to an acceptable level of dignity, which was a very remarkable achievement, one should say.   After each of the performances of the evening, Kuchipudi Guru Pasumarthy Ramalinga Sastry would by way of moderating, call upon one of the Kuchipudi stalwarts who was present, to share their views and their appreciation of the legend's choreography. It was not surprising that almost all of them starting with Prof Anuradha Jonnalagadda, unanimously placed on record the fact that Krishnamurthy could imbibe the nuances of Kuchipudi art form in his choreography, in all the genre in the songs, be it a Padam, Javali, Keertana, Ashtapadi, folk or others in the film songs choregraphed by him. One can boldly say that the choreographies were so much soaked in the nuances of Kuchipudi classic art form, adhering to the aesthetic aspects to such an extent that it elevated the entire experience of the audience to a different realm. The performances were also generally marked with such an infectious enthusiasm, that time just flew by and yet the audience was prepared to sit to watch more songs. Special mention should be made of the costumes and make up for the students, by the famous Surabhi - second generation - to such authenticity to the throwback decades of the golden period of Indian cinema post-independence.   That the songs and dance choreographed by Krishnamurthy holds interest for the public even after so many decades, means how steeped his approach was when it came to strictly sticking to classicism at any and every circumstance. Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy was born on 11th December 1925 in Kuchipudi village in one of the most illustrious traditional Kuchipudi family, the 'Pasumarthy'. He was born to Pasumarthy Ramaiah and Adi Lakshmi. His maternal grandfather was none other than the Yakshagana Pithammaha, Chinta Venkatramaiah, one of the Trintiy of Kuchipudi and his paternal grandfather was Pasumarthy Seshaiah, who was a well known Kuchipudi Yakshagana artiste, as a Pageti Vesham exponent. His father Pasumarthy Ramaiah was a member of the Chinta vari melam performing Kuchipudi Yakshagana and Kuchipudi natakam. He was also surrounded and influenced by such Kuchipudi personalities like Vedantam Raghavaiah, Chinta Ramamurthy, Chinta Krishnamurthy among others. He was the fourth child in a family of seven children, right in the middle, Pasumarthy Venkateswaralu (who was a nonagenarian), Mahankali Kameswari, Chinta Rukmini, Mahankali Satyavathi, Pasumarthy Hanumatha Rao and Chinta Bhaskaramma. He was initiated into Kuchipudi dance at a very tender age of seven. As was the general practice of his times, he also started to perform from a very young age, initially the child roles like Lava Kusa, Prahalada, Lohitasaya. He quickly took up to perform more serious roles and as was his wont, he started to perform couple of dance numbers also, during the travels for performance to neighboring villages. He was once taken to Nellore where he was asked to do a javali. Krishnamurthy chose a famous javali, 'Tattara pada nela.....', in which he had shown varied mudras for the one word, 'tattara' meaning fumble and throughout the performance the audience were shouting that they wanted to see more of 'tattara Krishnamurthy'. Such was his performance that day that the 'Subodhni Swantara' newspaper wrote about his amazing performance. How come in such a young age, Krishnamurthy could emote with such authenticity the avasthi of a Parakeeya Nayika to perfection, it raised doubts as to whether Krishnamurthy performed so well with or without understanding the underlying meaning of the javali.  Guru Pasumarthy Krishnamurthy He was too good in female personification roles too and performing as Usha was his favorite. He took to dance director role even before he turned 20 years of age. He followed the footsteps of the likes of Vedantam Raghavaiah, Vempati Pedda Satyam to join the celluloid and shifted to Chennai. He was destined to flourish as a Dance Director and he took it up with both hands. He was employed as a Dance Director with the Vijaya Vauhini studious. His discipline coupled with his god given gift, a natural expertise as a Kasiki vritti and Satvika abhinaya exponent, took him places and there was no looking back. The five-decade long tenure in cinema didn't touch his character and personality in a negative way. He lived a life of balance, discipline and contentment with his wife, 'Sahadramacharini' Lakshmi Narasu and brought up a family of six children in Chennai, Venkata Rama Seshu, Udaya Bhaskar, Subramanya Sastry, Venkata Ramana, Kanaka Durga and Sai Lakshmi. He educated all of them well to take up higher positions in the corporate world, with only one of his sons getting into fine arts. Though his last son did learn Kuchipudi, now Krishnamurthy's dancing legacy is held high by one of his daughters-in-law Mohini Pasumarthy and in all three of his granddaughters who are serious performing Kuchipudi artistes - Sunanda Prashanth (an academician as well as a performing artist), Namrata and Pranita.  The centenary celebration is the brainchild of Krishnamurthy's second son, Udaya Bhaskar. Though generally the success of the celebration cannot be credited to one single person, we are tempted to credit the lion's share of it to Udaya Bhaskar for his tireless role and one only fondly hopes that his journey to contribute for the art form that built the family in the first place continues unabated, touching several deserving and discerning students of the art form.  Sudha Sridhar, a double graduate in Law & Dance is a cultural activist working on advocacy efforts to preserve, promote and propagate art forms and for the cultural rights and welfare measures for artistes. Her main focus is on Kuchipudi heritage village and promotion of all the three streams of South Indian Yakshagana - Karnataka Yakshagana, Kuchipudi Yakshaganam and Melattur Bhagavathamela. |
