Bangalore: When Kalamandalam Geethanandan, who revived the 18th-century dance form Ottanthullal, knelt down and bowed low hardly thirty minutes into the show, no one, not even his accompanists, suspected anything. He had, after all, been a master of improvisation.

It was the artiste's final act. Geethanandan had suffered a massive cardiac arrest while playing Bheema during a show on Sunday at a temple in Thrissur, central Kerala.

The 58-year-old was rushed to hospital where he was declared dead.

"I have seen ' aasaan' (master) going for brilliant improvisations on stage and I thought it was yet another one," Kalamandalam Nayanan, one of Geethanandan's students, told The Telegraph on Tuesday. "Nobody suspected anything until he crashed face down on the stage. That was when we stopped playing and rushed to him," the singer added.

It was also the first time in the state that a performer had died on stage during a show.

Geethanandan, who retired in 2017 as the head of the department of Ottanthullal in the Kerala Kalamandalam Deemed University of Art and Culture in Thrissur, had undergone an angioplasty two years ago. He had returned to the stage after a six-month break, although his performances were less frequent.

"He always said he wanted to perform till his last breath, and that's what really happened," Nayanan, 26, said.

In a state where artistes from Kalamandalam are among the most sought-after, there was no dearth of shows for Geethanandan who had breathed new life into the art form that the 18th-century Malayalam poet-performer Kunchan Nambiar had created, blending dance with poetry based on Hindu mythological characters.

Thullal - as Ottanthullal is abbreviated - was an also-ran at temple festivals where Kathakali, Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam used to get prime-time slots. Geethanandan had changed that.

He created the form Thullal Padha Kacheri, using a blend of different Carnatic ragas as in a music concert to make Thullal more attractive. He was also a familiar face to Malayalam film lovers, having done small roles in some 30 movies.

Geethanandan would often tell the media how his father, Kesavan Nambeesan, had struggled to earn even a rupee although he too was a well-known Thullal artiste. Those days of unrewarding toil, he explained, had driven him to make it big one day.

After early lessons from a teacher in school, he learnt the art under his father and then at the Kalamandalam.

His elder brother, mridangam exponent Kalamandalam Vasudevan, recalled Geethanandan's dedication to Thullal. "I later focused on mridangam, but Geethanandan was steadfast in his determination to take Thullal across the seas, which he did," Vasudevan said, speaking on his brother's first overseas trip to Paris in 1992 and the many that followed.

Among the nearly 1,000 students Geethanandan taught, there were some from Japan, China, Germany and France. "He has travelled to many countries inspiring people to learn Thullal. No one has had such an impact on the art form in the modern era," said Kalamandalam Mohanakrishnan, one of Geethanandan's oldest students and successor at the Kalamandalam institute.

The most touching tribute, perhaps, came from Nayanan.

"When he closed his eyes for the last time after we gave him water, what we students lost is a great artiste and an amazing human being who treated us as his own children," Nayanan said.

Geethanandan is survived by his wife and two children, both of them based in the Gulf.