For decades, Mohiniyattam has been presented through a ‘classical’ lens — polished, codified, and Brahminised. And all the while, it has often obscured the realities of those who shaped its earlier iterations.
Mohiniyattam dancer, choreographer and researcher Amith K always felt that gap, especially while looking back to trace the beginnings of this art form. A PhD graduate from Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Amith has always been interested in exploring the nuanced intersections of caste, culture, gender, and history within Kerala’s performing arts.
His latest project ventures deeper, into the forgotten lineage of women practitioners whose contributions have been sidelined or erased in dominant narratives.
“When I started focusing on the women practitioners in Kerala, I realised how many gaps exist in Mohiniyattam’s recorded history,” Amith explains. “Even at Kerala Kalamandalam, where the form was institutionalised, the stories we hear about early Mohiniyattam are vague at best. Nobody talks about who the women dancers really were or why their names disappeared.”
It is this silence that pointed him towards Thottashery Chinnammu Amma. Though credited with reviving Mohiniyattam at Kalamandalam in the 1950s, her actual teaching legacy lacks documentation. It is said that she taught there for around 15 years.
“People remember her as the teacher who was there at the beginning of Mohiniyattam’s revival, but there are no records about what she taught. That absence haunted me,” Amith says.
Amith’s intensive research and fieldwork led him to Kalamandalam Chandrika, a direct disciple of Chinnammu Amma from whom he learnt many fragments of that past choreography. Under Chandrika’s guidance, he discovered movements, abhinaya (expressive gestures), adavu (steps), mudras, and rhythmic nuances that have mostly disappeared from the contemporary Mohiniyattam repertoire.
He soon realised today’s rigid system was absent then. “Mohiniyattam was not geometrically symmetrical or rhythmically fixed. The style was more traditional and had a unique aesthetic that has been lost or dismissed,” Amith notes.
However, he is not trying to impose a unified structure or claim a ‘pure’ form. Instead, he wants to present Mohiniyattam as a fragmented and historically complex art, embracing its confusions and gaps.
In that way, he questions the entrenched idea of ‘classical dance’ itself — a label that he said emerged post-Independence and has since been wielded to impose rigid standards often aligned with upper-caste, savarna aesthetics. Amith emphasises that what is often called ‘classical’ Mohiniyattam deliberately erases the contributions of Shudra women, the original performers who were marginalised and stigmatised.
“Instead of acknowledging the history of Shudra women, we are told stories about ‘Mohini,’ a mythical figure. Historical texts from the early 20th century reveal how Mohiniyattam was associated with women from marginalised communities and some were even described as sex workers. These women faced social scorn, violence, and exclusion, not only from mainstream society but from within the dance establishment itself. There are earlier writings that explicitly state women should not perform Mohiniyattam,” Amith points out.
He recalls one woman he learnt about during his fieldwork, a woman deeply drawn to Mohiniyattam, but forbidden to pursue it because of social stigma. “The rejection affected her so deeply that she developed mental health issues. I was told she would lock herself in a room and dance alone.”
These stories of pain, love, and resilience are absent from official hostorical accounts, which tend to ‘clean up’ the dance’s messy past and align it with classical ideals and Natyashastra theory.
By dedicating his upcoming performance to Thottashery Chinnammu Amma, Amith honours a forgotten lineage and invites audiences to confront what has been erased.
On the evening of June 29, at Studio Fawn Tierra in Kochi’s Palarivattom, Amith will premiere a Mohiniyattam recital titled ‘Memories in Fragments: A Tribute to Chinnammu Amma’ that goes beyond classical formality to reclaim the complex, fractured history of the dance.
The recital will feature vocals by Rohith Aneesh and nattuvangam by Sreenima, supporting Amith’s choreography. He says he hopes to reach a different audience, those interested not just in the aesthetic, but in the social, caste, and gender histories embedded within the dance.
“My larger project is to dismantle the idea of classical dance, to question its authority, and to say that such categories might not really exist,” he adds. This performance, he explains, is not a polished narrative, but a conversation with lost histories, silenced women, and the realities of an art form still in search of its full truth.