Kalanidhi Narayanan

Kalanidhi Narayanan (7 December 1928) was an Indian dancer and teacher of the Indian classical dance form of Bharatnatyam, who was the early non-devadasi girl to learn the dance form and perform it on stage in the 1930s and 1940s. After a brief career in the 1940s, she returned to dance in 1973 and became a notable teacher of abhinaya.

She was awarded the Padma Bhushan Award, India's third highest civilian honour in 1985, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Bharatnatyam in 1990, given by Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama and Kalidas Samman (1998). She was also conferred Sangeet Natak Akademi Tagore Ratna for Dance in 2011.

Early life and training Born Kalanidhi Ganapathi

Career She had a brief dance career in the 1940s, before she stepped out at the age of sixteen when her mother died and she was married into a conservative family. She returned to dance when in 1973, noted art-patron, Y. G. Doraiswamy, who had seen her performances as a teen, asked to instruct dancer Alarmel Valli in abhinaya, to which she agreed, encouraged by her sons who had by now grown up. This started the second phase of her career after a gap of 30 years at the age of 46. She also started to re-educate herself in dance, luckily her books from her younger days had survived, she started attending dance performances and Arangetram in the city, also enrolled in a course on dance theory on Bharatanatyam by Dr. Padma Subramaniam . Gradually more students started coming to her and in the coming decades she became "the most sought after teacher for abhinaya".

On 7 December 2003, various dance teachers and her disciples, celebrated her 75th birthday at Luz Community Hall in Chennai, it was marked by a two-day seminar on abhinaya, where prominent gurus of Bharatanatyam participated. On the occasion, a set of 4 CDs on Padams was also released.

Disciples Amongst her noted disciples are, Ramya Harishankar (USA), A.Lakshmanaswamy (India), Bragha Bessell (India), Hema Rajagopalan (India), Madhusri Sethuraman (USA), Subashree Narayanan (USA), Minal Prabhu (India), Priya Govind (India), Meenakshi Chitharanjan (abhinaya), Milana Severskaya (Russia) to name a few. She has taught numerous disciples over the years, many of whom have personalised her philosophies.