Guru Gopinath

Perumanoor Gopinatha Pillai, more popularly known as Guru Gopinath (24 June 1908 – 9 October 1987) was a well known actor-cum-dancer. He is well regarded as the greatest preserver of the dance tradition. He is a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award.

Guru Gopinath was well tempered by traditional discipline, but he expanded the framework of tradition. He was instrumental in introducing and popularising Kathakali, the illustrious dance drama of Kerala, lying in obscurity, to the outer world.

He is considered one of the epic personalities of Indian dancing in the twentieth century like Uday Shankar. He carved out a contemporary style of dancing, classical in form but popular in appeal, through which the fame of Kathakali spread far and wide in the beginning of the 1930s.

He showed how Indian dancing could handle themes other than those from Hindu mythology. Indian classical dance is the language of humanity, the global language. He popularised it by choreographing dance and ballets having biblical social current and political themes.

He was trained in both southern (Kaplingadan) and northern (Kalluvazhi) style of Kathakali. He was invited for higher studies when poet Vallathol Narayana Menon started Kerala Kalamandalam at Mulamkunnathukavu in Thrissur. He got rigorous training under giants of the fields like Pattikkamthodi Ravunni Menon, Guru Kunchu Kurup and Guru Kavalappara Narayanan Nair. He studied Rasa Abhinaya under Natyaacharya Padma Shri Mani Madhava Chakkiyar. Famous Kathakali artiste Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair and dancer Ananda Shivaram were then students in the first batch of Kalamandalam.

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