With the dance form attaining perfection by the time of Golconda king Abdul Hassan Tanesha, Kuchipudi brahmins are said to have received 600 acres (2.4 km˛) of land as an endowment from Tanesha for the great presentation before him.

Siddhendra Yogi is said to be the first scholar to give it the current form of dance drama. Bhamakalapam is one of his celebrated compositions. He also reserved the art to males by teaching it to young brahmin boys of the village. However, in modern times, the art has been dominated by women.

The performance usually begins with some stage rites, after which each of the character comes on to the stage and introduces him/herself with a daru (a small composition of both song and dance) to introduce the identity, set the mood, of the character in the drama. The drama then begins. The dance is accompanied by song which is typically carnatic music. The singer is accompanied by mridangam (a classical South Indian percussion instrument), violin, flute and the tambura (a drone instrument with strings which are plucked). Ornaments worn by the artists are generally made of a light weight wood called Boorugu.

Some of the well known people in this tradition are Dr.Vempati China Satyam, Vedantam Lakshminarayana, Tadepalli Perayya, Chinta Krishna Murthy, Padma Sri Vedantam Sathya Narayana Sarma, Pasumarthi Venu Gopala Krishna Sarma,Raja Reddy and Radha Reddy, and Anuradha Nehru.

The Kuchipudi Arts Academy, was established in Chennai by Dr. Vempati Chinna Satyam specifically for kuchipudi training.