Dhananjayans


Vannadil Pudiyaveettil Dhananjayan and Shanta Dhananjayan, also known as the Dhananjayans, are a dancing couple of India and were awarded Padma Bhushan in 2009. They have featured in multiple Vodafone ads as Asha & Bala.

Personal life

V.P Dhananjayan was born into a Malayali Poduval family on 17 April 1939 in Payyanur, Kannur District, Kerala, India. He was born into a family with eight children struggling to make ends meet, when a chance meeting with Kathakali Master Guru Chandu Panicker of Kalakshetra made his father decide purely on instinct to send his son and V.Balagopalan to Kalakshetra under his tutelage. Dhananjayan joined Kalakshetra on 5 October 1953 and was a leading male dance under Rukmini Devi from 1955–1967. He graduated from Kalakshetra with a Post Graduate Diploma in Dance with distinction, and also holds a B.A in Economics and Politics.
Shanta Dhananjayan was born on 12 August 1943 into a Malayali Nair family in Malaysia and traces her ancestry back to Kerala from where her family migrated to Malaysia. She was a child prodigy and by the time she was 3, her parents were convinced that Shanta would be a dancer. They found in her an inborn response to dance and joy of movement and decided to send her to India for her education. They sent her at age eight to Kalakshetra in June 1952, a year before Dhananjayan, where she later graduated with a Post-Graduate Diploma with distinction in Bharatanatyam and also learned Kathakali and Carnatic music. She was a leading female dancer at Kalakshetra from 1955–1968.
The couple have two sons. The elder, Sanjay, lives in the USA and their younger son, Satyajit, is an accomplished automobile photographer and dancer who lives with his wife and son in Chennai, India.

In Kalakshetra

Were it not for providence in the form of Guru Chandu Panicker, Dhananjayan would have been working in some monotonous job in Kerala. Dhananjayan received a scholarship at Kalakshetra to study Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Mridangam and music. Shanta trained in Bharatanatyam and music apart from other subjects for nearly a decade. They believe that whatever they have been able to achieve today is due to the painstaking mentoring of their Gurus Rukmini Devi Arundale and Chandu Panicker and various other faculty members of Kalakshetra such as NS Jayalakshmi and Sarada Hoffman.
While at Kalakshetra, it was love at first sight for Dhananjayan. Shanta was the first girl he met as he was being escorted into the portals of Kalakshetra by Guru Panicker. Though Shanta was a serious student completely devoted to her dance and music, she had secretly made up her mind, at the age of 12, to partner Dhananjayan in life. Dhananjayan expressed his desire to marry Shanta when she was 18, but she left for Malaysia after graduation and did not let him know of her consent till after returning to India 4 years later. They married in 1966 at the Guruvayoor Temple in Kerala.

Career – Dancing Duo

The Dhananjayans left Kalakshetra in the late 1960s to build a career on their own. During that time, only the wealthy and aristocrats who could spend to have their own children perform, dominated the dance scene in Chennai. However, the calibre of the Dhananjayans was such that they stole the thunder with their novel ideas that they brought to their presentations through a unique repertoire that they developed. The vitality of dance, their costumes, the attraction of merging of the male and female dance principles in specially conceived duets were all part of the charisma of their performances. They started to receive invitations from both within the country and from abroad. They have travelled all over the world to major cultural centres to present their art.
Some of their major performances/productions include:
The Dhananjayans place particular emphasis on imparting Indian tradition and culture to their bharata natyam students. Some details about which they are particular are:
The Dhananjayans started their own dance school Bharata Kalanjali in 1968 in Adyar, Chennai. It began with a handful of students, and is today a premier academy of dance and music with several hundreds of students and a repertory fashioned out of its own students and graduates.

Bhaaskara

The couple has established an academy of arts at Dhananjayan's birthplace Payyanur in Kerala. They conducted an annual summer Naatya Gurukulam camp which is no longer in operation.

Yogaville

The Dhananjayans have been conducting an annual summer gurukulam camp at the Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville, Virginia, USA, since 1988. Developed by the Natya Adyayana Gurukulam, the camp is an intensive, full-time residential course devoted entirely to the fine arts. Situated in the Virginia countryside, it is attended by Indian-American and international students. The teachers endeavour through it to spread awareness to their students of Indian culture, values, and explicate the philosophy underlying Hinduism.

Honours

Some of the major awards and accolades conferred on the Dhananjayans:
Dhananjayan has the reputation of voicing his views and is very forthright in speaking out about social and political issues. His recent publication Beyond performing art and culture, discusses various social and political issues concerning present day India or Bhaaratam, the way he urges everyone to call the country.

Publications

V.P Dhananjayan is a prolific writer and writes not only on dance but also on social and political issues. His publications include: