Kalamandalam Kalyanikutty Amma, often called the mother of her form, is associated with which dance?

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.