Padmabhushan Dr. Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam

The Kuchipudi dance form is named after a small obscure village in Andhra Pradesh, called Kuchipudi. Historically speaking, it is an art form practiced by men of few traditional families and it is about five centuries old. It was a medieval time when the form flourished and received both royal and popular patronage. With the passage of time and under the onslaught of new and modern forms of popular entertainment, Kuchipudi dance lost its pre-eminence and was reduced to entertainment performed on festive occasions. The weight of the tradition took away its finer aspects and reduced it to a mere shadow of its original.

Padmabushan Guru Dr. Vempati Chinna Satyam was born (1929) during the refulgence of national fervor, when the traditional art forms were India were revived and brought again to the mainstream of the national art scenario, Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam breathed a new life into the form. Guru Vempati belongs to a pedigree of the 9th generation of the traditional Kuchipudi parampara.

A child of Varalakshmmamma and Chalamayya, Vempati had earlier training under the tutelage of Tadepally Perayya and Pasumarti Kondalarayudu. What sharpened his earlier talent and molded him into a prospective Natyacharya was the finer and subtler nuances he learned under the able guidance of one of the well-known celebrities of Kuchipudi dance, Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastry. As a performing artist, his contribution was though not of a very great significance, he did display his talent as a budding artiste in roles such as Satyabhama and Shiva.