Ram Gopal Biography In English Life Story 1912-2003

Ram Gopal Biography in English

• Bissano Ram Gopal was an Indian dancer and choreographer who performed mostly as a soloist and toured extensively throughout his long career.
• A modernist, he blended classical Indian dance with balletic choreography, and along with Udaya Shankar was one of the first to perform Indian classical dance in the West in the 1930s, with the Polish critic Tadeusz Zelenski calling him “Nijinsky”. of India”.
• As a choreographer, he is best known for his productions Legend of the Taj Mahal, Dance of the Setting Sun and Dance of India.
• He is also known for “Radha-Krishna”, his 1960 collaboration with British ballerina Dame Alicia Markova.

Birth Details –

Place- Bangalore, India

Date of Birth – 20 November 1912

Marital Status: Married

Nationality – Indian

Family –

Wife – Edith Alexander

Teachers – Kunju Kurup, Chandu Panicker, Guru Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai.

Early life –

• Gopal was born in Bangalore, India. Being born on 20 November, he was named Bissano.
• He had a Burmese mother and a Rajput father who was a barrister. They lived in a mansion called Torquay Castle.His grandmother was a well-known dancer. Drawn to dance early in his life, he learned Kathakali from gurus Kunju Kurup and Chandu Panicker.
• Once she danced at the annual garden party of the Maharaja of Mysore without her father’s permission, but the Maharaja convinced her father to allow her to receive further dance training.
• In this early forties, he discovered the Pandanallur style guru Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai, under whom he began learning Bharatanatyam, followed by Muthukumaran Pillai; She also learned Kathak from Sohanlal and Bauri Prasad and even Manipuri dance, all of which she absorbed.

Personal life

• He was briefly married to Edith Alexander during the 1960s, while living in Chelsea, London, although the marriage ended only a few years later with her death. The couple had no children.
• He died at Norbury Care Home in Croydon, South London, UK, where he spent the last three years of his life after a failed attempt to settle in his native Bangalore.
• Their stay was sponsored by the Lamouris family, Croydon Council and the Royal Ballet Benevolent Fund.
• After cremation his ashes were scattered on the grounds of the Lamorais family castle in the south of France, where he spent a decade as the house guest of Mrs. Claude Lamorais.

Career

• He was invited to the United States by La Merrie, an American dancer specializing in non-Western dance forms, to tour through Asia in the 1930s.
• He made his solo debut on 1 May 1938 at the 46th Street Theater in New York City.
• In 1939, he was invited to Paris, where he accompanied the Kathak dancer Sohanlal. And in the same year he made his debut at the Aldwych Theater in London and achieved instant fame and not only met Queen Mary, but also made friends with the leading figures of the ballet.
• He returned to India with the Ansa during World War II. After the war, he returned and in 1948 the noted dancer, Nijinsky, came to “watch over” him.
• He toured extensively as a solo artist and with his company before and after World War II, and soon became known for his costuming, staging, and lighting.
• He collaborated with ballerina Dame Alicia Markova in 1960 to form “Radha-Krishna”, a duet based on Hindu mythology, in which she danced as Radha while he danced as Krishna.
• The book is introduced by Ram Gopal in KA Ambrose’s book, “Classical Dance and Costumes of India”, published in 1950, includes 53 illustrations by Arnold Haskell and many by the author.
• This introduction includes a letter that Ram Gopal wrote to K. Ambrose in February 1942 from Bangalore, his birthplace. The book contains many photographs and illustrations of Ram Gopal performing these classical dances.
• He published Indian Dancing in 1951 and his autobiography Rhythms in the Heavens in 1957; She also briefly opened two dance schools, one in Bangalore and later the “Indian Academy of Dance and Music” in London before moving to England in 1962. In his later years he lived in London, Venice and the south of France.
• She received the Order of the British Empire for services to dance in 1999, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1990 by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India’s national academy of music, dance and drama.

Awards

• Sangeet natak academy
• Academy of Dance and Drama

Other information –

Date of Death – 12 October 2003

Question Related to Ram Gopal