Professor C V Chandrasekhar (May 22, 1935-June 19, 2024) — Chandru Anna to us — was one of the last of the legendary greats who studied Bharatanatyam with Peria Sarada, Chinna Sarada, and Guru Dandayudhapani Pillai, in the Pandanallur style, at Chennai’s Kalakshetra during its founder Rukmini Devi’s time. He was, afterwards, a senior member of the faculty of Dance at Banaras Hindu University; and professor and head of the Dance department, and, then, dean of Fine Arts at M S University, Baroda, for a long period. He won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the Padma Bhushan, and the Kalidas Samman. He was a student of music before he became a dancer; and that wellspring illuminated his art. A robust knowledge of music is imperative for classical Indian dance, and Chandrasekhar possessed way more than a fair share of it.
Chandrasekhar was blessed with a handsome and expressive face and a lean, tall frame. He was a dancer’s dancer: Eloquent, chiselled, poised, perfect, and moving. Bharatanatyam’s sitting posture is called the araimandi (or ardhamandali) and it is the mandatory base from which the dance grows, and strikes roots, branches and flowers. It is difficult, but compulsory, to maintain the araimandi through an entire recital — but it is alarmingly absent today. When you sit in the araimandi, and your feet are together, pointing out in opposite directions, at 180 degrees, and, consequently, you are at two-thirds of your height, you are doing........