 History tells us that in Andhra, dance flourished in the hands of Devadasi's temple dancers since ancient times. Due to decline in their status, dance was gradually discredited. Thus it became necessary for men to learn the art. Legend tells us that dance found new life in the hands of male Brahmins whose guiding light was Siddhendra Yogi. These Brahmins propagated the dance with the principal idea of devotion to the Supreme Godhead. Successive generations of these Brahmins have propagated this dance from their village of Kuchipudi, giving the dance form its name. How entertaining this art has become today, combining features of popular appeal with pulsating rhythms and a spirit of joyous abandon, even in the most traditional items. There are lots of things that are happening in Kuchipudi, which is making it very different from what it used to be in those days. I think it was probably during the time of Vedantam Lakshmi Narayana Shastri, one of the great exponents of this dance tradition, that this idea of having separate items which had nothing to do with a full-length presentation of a dance drama where all the items were interconnected from beginning to end started. The wheel seems to have come full circle. We are now, not only have we gone through forty years of the solo tradition, which was a very very eventful period marked with great innovation, great changes and some very dynamic interpolations in the tradition, but we are now again into group work. So those changes in the solo tradition necessarily are very different from what we see in traditional dance drama. In the audience, awaiting a performance by a young dancer is Vedantam Satyanayana Sharma, the famous exponent of Sri Vesham or female impersonation. This practice was developed in the early years of revival of dance by the male Brahmin dancers and is followed even today. I can explain the fact that it had to be an all-male tradition if the Brahmin were to dance because being what they were, the women probably would not have been allowed to dance. And the impracticalities of itinerant groups having women with them, which means tagging on the children, moving from place to place, it would have been very difficult. So perhaps it was much easier to do everything with just the male, which is why women did not participate. I think it's just a practical explanation. The love poetry of Kshetraya is much used literature in traditional Kuchipudi, particularly for expressional dance called Abhinaya. In Andhra, there are many theatre traditions as well as folk dances. Some of the famous theatre traditions are the Turpu Bhagavatam, the Chindu Bhagavatam, the Yaksagana tradition of course, which is a dance drama tradition. And amongst the folk traditions we have Pagati Vesham, we have many other folk theatre forms. All of them are very interesting and colourful. The Yaksagana theatre tradition, a precursor of Kuchipudi, requires that every artist must sing and enact the character being played. Who can afford the kind of time we spent on years of learning and toil? Today's students can barely manage an hour to attempt to learn what we did in a whole week. The times have changed, there is less devotion and less patience. Today's dance student caught amidst various diversions finds little time for following the traditional system of learning, use of modern methods for revising their lessons, for learning items or for teaching new dance items as well as performing to taped music have become common features now.