Famous Dancers of India: Forms, Gurus and Institutions

The correct answer is B, Rukmini Devi Arundale. Rukmini Devi Arundale founded Kalakshetra at Madras in 1936, and the institution reshaped the presentation of Bharatanatyam and trained most of the following generations of dancers in the form. Option A is wrong because Balasaraswati came from a hereditary family of performers and kept the older style of the dance, celebrated above all for abhinaya, but she founded no institution of this kind. Option C is wrong because Mrinalini Sarabhai founded the Darpana Academy at Ahmedabad, a different institution, and she was trained in both Bharatanatyam and Kathakali. Option D is wrong because Yamini Krishnamurthy was a performer of Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi of a later generation. The pairs to hold are Kalakshetra with Rukmini Devi and Darpana with Mrinalini Sarabhai.

The correct answer is B, Kathak. Birju Maharaj belonged to the Lucknow gharana of Kathak and to the Kalka-Bindadin family of dancers, and he is the name most often set when this form is tested; Shambhu Maharaj and Lachhu Maharaj of the same family came before him. Option A is wrong because Odissi, the dance of Odisha, is associated with Kelucharan Mohapatra, Pankaj Charan Das and Sanjukta Panigrahi. Option C is wrong because Kuchipudi, from Andhra Pradesh, is associated with Vempati Chinna Satyam and with Raja and Radha Reddy. Option D is wrong because Manipuri is associated with Guru Bipin Singh and the Jhaveri sisters. Kathak is also the one classical form of north India, and it grew in gharanas named after Lucknow, Jaipur, Banaras and Raigarh.

The correct answer is B, Kathak. Sitara Devi was one of the great Kathak dancers of the twentieth century, and Rabindranath Tagore is said to have called her the empress of dance after watching her perform. Option A is wrong because Bharatanatyam, the dance of Tamil Nadu, is associated with Rukmini Devi Arundale, Balasaraswati and Padma Subrahmanyam. Option C is wrong because Mohiniyattam, the graceful dance of Kerala, is associated above all with Kalamandalam Kalyanikutty Amma, often called its mother. Option D is wrong because Sattriya comes from the monasteries of Assam and is traced to the Vaishnava saint Srimanta Sankardeva. The useful pairing here is Sitara Devi and Birju Maharaj, both of Kathak, who are frequently placed in the same set of options. The safest method with this family of questions is to file each name under its form at the time of first learning, because the options are always drawn from four different forms.

The correct answer is A, Odissi. Kelucharan Mohapatra was the guru who, with Pankaj Charan Das and others, reconstructed Odissi in the twentieth century from temple sculpture and the surviving traditions of Odisha, and he trained a generation of dancers including Sanjukta Panigrahi. Option B is wrong because Kathakali, the story-play of Kerala, is associated with Guru Kunchu Kurup and with the gurus of Kerala Kalamandalam. Option C is wrong because Kuchipudi is associated with Siddhendra Yogi in tradition and with Vempati Chinna Satyam in modern times. Option D is wrong because Bharatanatyam belongs to Tamil Nadu and to Rukmini Devi Arundale and Balasaraswati. Odissi and Odisha share the first syllable, which is the simplest way to remember this pairing. A further anchor is that Odissi was reconstructed in living memory rather than handed down unbroken, which is why its gurus are named so precisely in the question papers.

The correct answer is B, Protima Gauri. Protima Gauri, also known as Protima Bedi, founded Nrityagram near Bengaluru as a residential village where dancers live and train in the manner of the old gurukul, and she herself was a dancer of Odissi. Option A is wrong because Sonal Mansingh is a distinguished dancer of Odissi and Bharatanatyam but is not the founder of Nrityagram. Option C is wrong because Kumudini Lakhia founded Kadamb at Ahmedabad and belongs to Kathak. Option D is wrong because Sanjukta Panigrahi, the Odissi dancer who took the form to international stages, founded no such institution. The institutions and founders are best learnt as a short list, since a question will usually give one and ask for the other. The five institutions worth holding together are Kalakshetra, Kerala Kalamandalam, Darpana, Nrityagram and Kadamb, with their founders beside them.

The correct answer is A, Vallathol Narayana Menon. The poet Vallathol Narayana Menon founded Kerala Kalamandalam in the twentieth century to revive Kathakali and the other performing arts of Kerala, and the gurus trained there carry the name of the institution before their own. Option B is wrong because Kumaran Asan, though one of the three great modern Malayalam poets along with Vallathol and Ulloor, founded no such institution. Option C is wrong because Kalamandalam Gopi is a celebrated Kathakali performer trained at the institution, not its founder, and his name itself shows the connection. Option D is wrong because Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai was a novelist, the author of Chemmeen, with no role in the revival of the dance. The habit of placing the institution's name before a performer's own, as in Kalamandalam Gopi, is itself a clue the question paper often relies on.

The correct answer is C, Kuchipudi. Vempati Chinna Satyam was the guru who shaped the modern repertoire of Kuchipudi, the dance that takes its name from a village in Andhra Pradesh and is traditionally traced to the saint-poet Siddhendra Yogi. Option A is wrong because Manipuri is associated with Guru Bipin Singh and the Jhaveri sisters. Option B is wrong because Mohiniyattam is associated with Kalamandalam Kalyanikutty Amma and Bharati Shivaji. Option D is wrong because Sattriya comes from the sattras of Assam and is traced to Srimanta Sankardeva. Another pair of names worth holding with Kuchipudi is Raja and Radha Reddy, the husband and wife duo who carried the form to audiences across the country and abroad. Kuchipudi is also distinctive for being named after a village rather than a region or a state, which is a detail papers sometimes test on its own.

The correct answer is A, Manipuri. Guru Bipin Singh was the teacher who systematised Manipuri dance and, with the Jhaveri sisters as his leading pupils, carried it from Manipur to concert stages across India. Option B is wrong because Odissi is associated with Kelucharan Mohapatra and Pankaj Charan Das. Option C is wrong because Kathak is associated with Birju Maharaj and Sitara Devi. Option D is wrong because Kathakali is associated with Guru Kunchu Kurup and the gurus of Kerala Kalamandalam. Manipuri is recognised by its Ras Leela themes drawn from the life of Krishna and by its gentle, rounded movement, which sets it apart from the sharp footwork of Kathak and the strong lines of Bharatanatyam. Manipuri is also the only one of the eight classical forms whose home state lies in the north-east along with Sattriya of Assam, and the two are often set together.

The correct answer is B, Srimanta Sankardeva. Sattriya grew in the sattras, the Vaishnava monasteries of Assam, and is traced to the saint and reformer Srimanta Sankardeva, who used dance and drama to carry his teaching to ordinary people; it is the most recent of the eight forms to be recognised as classical. Option A is wrong because Chaitanya Mahaprabhu led the Vaishnava movement in Bengal and Odisha and is not the figure behind this form. Option C is wrong because Siddhendra Yogi is the saint-poet traditionally associated with Kuchipudi in Andhra Pradesh, and he is the strongest distractor here. Option D is wrong because Madhavdeva was Sankardeva's principal disciple, who carried the tradition forward rather than beginning it. Sattriya was recognised as a classical form much later than the others, which is the detail that most often appears alongside the name of Sankardeva.

The correct answer is A, Modern or creative dance. Uday Shankar was not a classical dancer in the strict sense; he created a new idiom by blending Indian movement with Western stagecraft, and he is regarded as the pioneer of modern or creative dance in India, having performed with the ballerina Anna Pavlova early in his career. Option B is wrong because the revival of Bharatanatyam in the modern concert hall is associated with Rukmini Devi Arundale and Balasaraswati. Option C is wrong because the revival of Kathakali is associated with Kerala Kalamandalam, founded by Vallathol Narayana Menon. Option D is wrong because the reconstruction of Odissi is associated with Kelucharan Mohapatra and Pankaj Charan Das. His name is also set against those of his contemporaries in the classical revival, so the word modern or creative in the option is the signal to look for.

The correct answer is B, Mohiniyattam. Kalamandalam Kalyanikutty Amma is often described as the mother of Mohiniyattam, because she gathered and set in order the movements and repertoire of this graceful dance of Kerala, which is performed by women and belongs to the lasya or gentle style. Option A is wrong because Kathakali, the other great form of Kerala, is a vigorous story-play with elaborate make-up, and its gurus are Kunchu Kurup, Ramankutty Nair and Kalamandalam Gopi. Option C is wrong because Bharatanatyam belongs to Tamil Nadu. Option D is wrong because Odissi belongs to Odisha. The point to carry away is that Kerala has two of the eight classical forms, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam, and questions often turn on telling them apart. Kathakali is danced chiefly by men in heavy costume while Mohiniyattam is danced by women in plain white and gold, and that contrast alone answers most questions on the pair.