Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, a Padma Bhushan awardee, was associated with which dance form?

Explanation

Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam (1929-2012) was the most influential guru of Kuchipudi, the classical dance of Andhra Pradesh, in the 20th century. He is credited with giving Kuchipudi its modern form and bringing it to the national and international stage.

Vempati Chinna Satyam was born in the village of Kuchipudi in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, which gave the dance its name, into a family of traditional Kuchipudi performers. He learnt the dance from Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry and other gurus. In 1963, he founded the Kuchipudi Art Academy in Chennai (then Madras), which became the leading centre for training in Kuchipudi. He refined the dance, gave it more grace and technical precision, and turned it from a dance-drama performed only by men into a solo and group dance performed by both women and men. He also choreographed many dance-dramas, such as "Sri Krishna Parijatam", "Chandalika", "Padmavati Srinivasa Kalyanam" and "Kshira Sagara Madhanam". He trained many famous Kuchipudi dancers, such as Shobha Naidu, Manju Bhargavi and the actress Hema Malini. He received the Padma Bhushan (1998) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1967), as well as the Kalidas Samman.

Kuchipudi was given its traditional form by Siddhendra Yogi in the 17th century. It combines speech, mime and pure dance and is famous for the Tarangam, in which the dancer balances on the rim of a brass plate. It is accompanied by Carnatic music, with songs mostly in Telugu.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Bharatanatyam is linked with gurus such as Meenakshisundaram Pillai and Rukmini Devi Arundale.
• ✗Kathakali is linked with gurus such as Kunchu Kurup and Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair.
• ✗Odissi is linked with gurus such as Kelucharan Mohapatra.