Udupi Jayaram (28 November 1929 – 13 October 2004) was an Indian choreographer known for his work in Kannada cinema.
[1] Jayaram was born on 28 November 1929 in Balekudru, a village in the erstwhile South Canara region of Madras Presidency in British India (in present-day Udupi district of India's Karnataka State), to Ananda Bhat and Jalajamma.
Alongside music, he learnt most forms of Indian classical dances as a child which included Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Kathak, Manipuri, Kuchipudi and Bhangra.
[3] Aged 17, he left for Madras (now Chennai) and got his first appointment on the sets of the Tamil-language film, Chandralekha (1948), where he worked as a bandmaster.
He went on to choreograph dance sequences for popular Tamil actors such as Sivaji Ganesan and M. G. Ramachandran in Karnan (1964) and Naalai Namadhe (1975) respectively.