Melacheruvu (Vempati) Kameshwari

Melacheruvu (Vempati) Kameshwari, eldest daughter of Guru Padma Bhushan Vempati Chinna Satyam, started learning dance from the age of nine, from Vempati Chinna Satyam’s assistant Pasumarthi Sheshu. Later after the family moved to T.Nagar, Chennai, she continued her dance lessons from Durga and Sita, senior students of Vempati Chinna Satyam.

She had taken part in a few dance programs mostly in groups when she was in school and college in Chennai. She was not overtly encouraged to pursue more seriously the art form being a girl born into a very orthodox family.

However, her inner quest to learn dance continued and she kept learning even after marriage whenever she visited her parents. She has Masters in Telugu and diploma in fine arts from JNTU.

Kameshwari (left) as a nattuvangist.

In the year 1984, one of the close family friend a Homeopath Doctor on hearing that Kameshwari is not involved in dance in a major way, goaded to start teaching being a daughter of such big doyen of the art form.

It was then that Kameshwari started imparting training to students in schools the Kuchipudi art form and continued her efforts, and in 2005 she started her own institute, Satyam Academy in Hyderabad.

She is happy more in the role of a Guru then as a performer, which can be seen from her sincere efforts to make her students reach greater heights.

Students of Satyam Academy performing.

Being a close witness to the efforts taken by her father the legendary Vempati Chinna Satyam to propagate the art form Kuchipudi to International level, never an easy journey, she sensed the fact that her father had taken it up as an Yagna. Kameshwari is clear in her approach as put in her own words. “I saw the efforts of my father as an Yagna and being his daughter, I felt an inner urge to atleast bring one piece of wood (metaphorically some work) to be part of his Yagna’.

Her daughter, Harita also continues in her mother’s footsteps by learning the art form.

Mellacheruvu (Vempati) Kameshwari

SATYAM ACADEMY KUCHIPUDI DANCE SCHOOL

Flat # 205, Vasundhra Apartments,

6-3-776 / 777, Punjagutta colony,

HYDERABAD 500 081

Ph: (91) 99667 28157

(040) 2340 0903.