Ram Gopal

Bissano Ram Gopal OBE (20 November 1912 – 12 October 2003) was an Indian dancer and choreographer who performed mostly as a soloist and toured extensively throughout his lengthy career. A modernist, he blended classical Indian dance styles, folk dance and balletic choreography, ballerina Dame Alicia Markova, in 1960. They lived in a mansion called Torquay Castle. His grandmother was a well known dancer. Drawn to dance early on in his life, he learned Kathakali from Guru Kunju Kurup and Chandu Panickar. Once he danced at the annual garden party of the Maharaja of Mysore without his father's permission, but the Maharaja persuaded his father to allow him to receive further dance training.

While in this early forties, he discovered Guru Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai of Pandanallur style under whom he started learning Bharatanatyam, followed by Muthukumaran Pillai; he also learned Kathak from Sohanlal and Bowri Prasad and even Manipuri dance, all of which he assimilated into his choreographies in the coming decades. His impresario was Polish writer , who organized Gopal's tournée across Poland in June 1938. In 1939, Gopal was invited to Paris, where he went with Kathak dancer, Sohanlal. In the later years, he also danced with Mrinalini Sarabhai in Bangalore, and toured with Kumudini Lakhia.

In Kay Ambrose's book published in 1950, "Classical Dances and Costumes of India," the book is introduced by Ram Gopal, with foreword by Arnold Haskell containing 53 illustrations from photographs and many drawings by the author. In this introduction is included a letter Ram Gopal wrote to Kay Ambrose from Bangalore, his birthplace in February 1942. The book has many photos and illustrations of Ram Gopal performing these classical dances.

He published Indian Dancing in 1951, and his autobiography Rhythms in the Heavens in 1957; he also opened two dance schools for a short while, first in Bangalore before moving to England and later "Academy of Indian Dance and Music" in London in 1962. In his later years he lived in London, Venice and the South of France. Gopal featured in the Indian-born British documentary filmmaker Sarah Erulkar's short Lord Siva Danced (1947).

He received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to dance in 1999, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama in 1990. where he spent the last three years of his life after unsuccessfully attempting to settle down in his native Bangalore. His stay was sponsored by the Lamorrise family, Croydon Council and the Royal Ballet Benevolent Fund. After cremation his ashes were scattered on the grounds of Lamorrise family chateau in South of France where, he had spent a decade as a house guest of Mrs Claude Lamorrise. Pam Cullen, former cultural advisor to the Indian High Commission and Gopal's close friend, became the executor of the "Ram Gopal Estate" and donated some of his costume pieces, especially ornate headgears to V&A Museum, London.

Works Indian dancing, by Ram Gopal, Serozh Dadachanji. Phoenix House, 1951. Ram Gopal: rhythm in the heavens : an autobiography, by Ram Gopal. Secker and Warburg, 1957