The Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth (SPIC MACAY) is organising a series of Kathakali performances by Kalamandalam Amaljith at various educational institutions in Dehradun from today.
The artiste is the recipient of the Ustaad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar, the highest award given to young artistes by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. On Monday he will perform at the Graphic Era Uiversity and ONGC Academy, at Summer Valley School and Dehradun Institute of Technology. On Tuesday, at Scholar’s Home School and Kasiga School on Wednesday, at KV ITBP and Doon Business School on Thursday, John Martin Memorial School and lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration on Friday before concluding with performances at Unison World School and Himalaya Institute Medical College on Saturday.
Born in 1974 at Alleppey, Kerala in to a traditional family of Kathakali dancers, Amaljith started learning Kathakali at the age of 12 years under his grandfather Guru Champakulam Pachu Pillai and later later learnt the dance form in detail under various gurus. He joined the International Centre for Kathakali, New Delhi as a teacher-cum-artiste in 2000 and has been teaching students at the centre and performed extensively in India and countries including USA, Thailand, Netherlands, Spain, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, France and Italy among others.
During this tenure with the centre, he has performed various characters of Ramanaya and Mahabharata apart from characters of William Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth, a Nigerian play Sakara and Kalevala- a folklore from Finland etc.
He has also extended his services for lecture demonstrations in Delhi and Hyderabad; workshop in Spain and teaching for various institutions like the National School of Drama in Delhi. He was awarded the ‘Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar’ 2010 by Sangeet Natak Akademi, ‘Natana Praveena’ award by Dr Guru Gopinath Trust, Kottayam in the year 2011 and the ‘KPS Menon Award’ for the best student in the year 1992-93 at Kerala Kalamandalam.