Thrissur: It’s not just participants who get stressed and chew their nails off at the State Youth Festival venue, gurus and trainers, some of whom are masters in the trade, also have butterflies in their stomach.
Three of these masters Kalamandalam Bhagyanath in Kathakali, Geetha Padmakumar in Kuchipudi and Sebastian Wayanad in Margam Kali tasted success this time too with ‘A’ grades.
According to Bhagyanath, a native of Kudamaloor in Kottayam and a teacher at the Kalamandalam sub-centre there, the Kathakali group event training has become the most expensive in the youth festival, touching Rs 1.10 lakh per team. “Those who come for training in the event come for ‘Capsule Kathakali’ and many do not follow it as a profession. The number of people involved in the event is higher than other events and makeup also takes time,” he said.
He has been training students for the past 29 years and his disciples have won the title 15 times. This time in HSS category, the Crossroads HSS Pambday team trained by him bagged the A Grade while in the HS section, a team from the same school had to be content with B grade. The students said they became tired just waiting for their turn in costumes and therefore could not perform well.
Geetha Padmakumar who is a disciple of Kuchipudi legend Vempati Chinna Satyam and master of actor Manju Warrier in her ‘second coming’ introduced a new ‘wave’ (tharangam) in this youth festival from the text Sreekrishna Leela Tharangini to show the way to victory to Sreeranjini of St Mary’s GHSS, Pala, Kottayam in HSS category and in another old tharangam to Ambili K V of Koodali HSS Kannur in HS category, both with A grades.
“While Ambili is my direct disciple, Sreeranjini is the disciple of my sishya Sajikumar Pala. Saji wanted a new choreographer to train his disciple for the youth festival and I trained him in that which he taught his disciple Sreeranjini. Hence it is a double delight. Sreeranjini’s wave was on Krishna, Balrama and Kuchela while Ambili did her tharangam on Durga,” said Geetha who belongs to Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district.
Sebastian won the first prize for Presentation Higher Secondary School, Chevayoor, Kozhikode in Margam Kali and this time the school got the A grade. He has been in the field of training for the past 20 years.
