Kuchipudi is a Classical Indian dance form from Andhra Pradesh, a state of South India. Kuchipudi is the name of a small village in the Divi Taluq of Krishna district that borders the Bay of Bengal and with resident Brahmins practising this traditional dance form, it acquired the present name.
With the dance form attaining perfection by the time of Golconda king Abdul Hassan Tanesha, Kuchipudi brahmins are said to have received 600 acres (2.4 km²) of land as an endowment from Tanesha for the great presentation before him.
Siddhendra Yogi is said to be the first scholar to give it the current form of dance drama. Bhamakalapam is one of his celebrated compositions. He also reserved the art to males by teaching it to young brahmin boys of the village. However, in modern times, the art has been dominated by women.
The performance usually begins with some stage rites, after which each of the character comes on to the stage and introduces him/herself with a daru (a small composition of both song and dance) to introduce the identity, set the mood, of the character in the drama. The drama then begins. The dance is accompanied by song which is typically Carnatic music. The singer is accompanied by mridangam (a classical South Indian percussion instrument), violin, flute and the tambura (a drone instrument with strings which are plucked). Ornaments worn by the artists are generally made of a light weight wood called Boorugu.
Some of the well known people in this tradition are Dr. Vempati Chinna Satyam,Guru Jayarama Rao and Vanashree Rao Vedantam Lakshminarayana, Dr. Uma Rama Rao, Tadepalli Perayya, Chinta Krishna Murthy, Vedantam Sathya Narayana Sarma, Sobha Naidu, Pasumarthi Venu Gopala Krishna Sarma, Raja Reddy and Radha Reddy swagath kuchipiudi, Mahamkali Surya Narayana Sarma, Dr. Yashoda Thakore, Sarala Kumari Ghanta, Libin Kadackal Philip, Yamini Reddy.
The prominence of Kuchipudi dance form is not limited to India alone. There are now a number of popular Kuchipudi teachers, choreographers and dancers in North America and Australia. Most prominent include Indira Sreeram Dixit in Princeton, New Jersey; Sumithira Anand in MA, Nilimma Devi [3], Sasikala Penumarthi and Revathi Komanduri in Atlanta, Kamala Reddy in Pittsburgh, Ratna Papa in Texas, Shoba Natarajan in Chicago, Jyothi Lakkaraju , Vaidehi Yellai, Himabindu Challa, and Madhuri Kishore in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sandhya Sree Atmakuri in Detroit, Jayasree Kottapalli in Princeton, Divya Yeluri, Chandrika Ramprasad Yamijala; in New York/New Jersey, Mallika Ramaprasad, Subha Maruvada, Mrinalini Sadananda, Lakshmi Babu, Anuradha Nehru in Maryland/Virginia/DC, Prafulla Velury in Rhode Island, and in Sydney, Australia Vimala Sarma.