Profile of Kathkali Dancer Kalamandalam Amaljith

             

Born on 25 May 1974 at Allepey to Shri P muraleedharan Nair and Smt Shyamala Nair in to a Traditional family of Kathakali dancers. GrandfathersGuru Champakulam Pachu Pillai a well known Kathakali dancer and Dr.Guru Gopinath a well known dancer.

            At the age of 12 yrs he started learning Kathakali under his grandfather Guru Champakulam Pachu Pillai and later Completed three years Preliminary course at Kudamaloor Kalakendram under Guru Kudamaloor Karunakaran Nair, Guru Mathoor Govindan kutty, Kalamandalam Ramakrishnan and Kalamandalam Murali. After his initial training he joined Kerala Kalamandalam, Trichur Kerala and Passed 6 year diploma and 2 year post diploma in kathakali vesham.

            Joined The International Centre for Kathakali, New Delhi as a Teacher-cum-Artiste in 2000. He has worked under the guidance of the then Principal Shri. Sadanam P. V. Balakrishnan. He has been teaching students in the Centre and has performed extensively in India and abroad like USA, Thailand, Netherland, Spain, Kazakistan, Pakistan, France, Italy etc. Has performed in the Fusion Programme of Kendra Sangeet Natak Academy, incorporating five classical dance forms of India in “Incredible India” in New York in 2009. Has performed in the “International Film Festival 2010” in Goa.

            During this tenure with the Centre, he has performed various characters of Ramanaya & Mahabharata as well as stories like William Shakespeare’s “Othello & Macbeth”, a Nigerian Play ‘Sakara”, ”Kalevala” a folklore from Finland etc. He has done equal justice to all veshams such as Pacha, Kathi, Kari, Tadi & Minuku.

He has also extended his services for Lecture demonstrations of CCRT in Delhi & Hyderabad; workshop in Spain & teachings for various institutions such as National School of Drama in Delhi. He is Certified as ‘B’ Grade artiste of “Delhi Doordarshan”.

            Received scholarship from Department of Culture (Government of India) in1997 and Junior Fellowship from Department of Culture (Government of India) for the period 2000-2002 (“Decline & fall in Kathakali Training - The Role of Institutionalisation”.)

            He was awarded the ‘Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar’ 2010 from Sangeet Natak Academi ,New Delhi, ‘Natana Praveena’ award from Dr. Guru Gopinath Trust, Kottayam in the year 2011 and the ‘KPS Menon Award’ for the best student in the year 1992-93 at Kerala kalamandalam.