KANNUR, India — What forms of dance or theater can compare to the extraordinarily vivid and strange characterizations of the Keralite genre of Kathakali in terms of the arrestingly picturesque? Its performers, employing exceptionally vivid and elaborate makeup, wear costumes that recall the farthingales of the Elizabethan court and the tonnelets (male tutus) of 18th-century ballet. Pictures of Kathakali have spread far beyond the dance world. You find them on the covers of guidebooks, used as general poster symbols of both the exotic and the ultra-theatrical, and sometimes as classic examples of India, the Ramayana or both.

Companies and soloists performing Kathakali have come to the West a number of times over the years — sometimes even performing their dance-dramas all night long. So far, however, I’ve been relatively unlucky in the quality and brevity of those I’ve seen in New York. The costumes and makeup are certainly amazing. As either dance or theater, however, the form has looked highly limited.

Two recent performances here in the southwestern state of Kerala, however, on consecutive nights, opened up the potential of the art form to me. Each was superb and amazing — while the vast difference between the two has suggested how much ground this genre can cover. And the excitement of watching this idiom in open air amid a Keralite audience — to feel how the Kathakali spell affects those for whom this form is far from rare — greatly deepens the pleasure.

The first of these two occurred in Changampuzha Park in Edappally, a suburb of the Keralite city of Kochi. Every seat was taken (several hundred), with many in standing room. The performance was of “Kuchelavrittam (Story of Kuchela, the Poor Brahmin)”; this, lasting 150 minutes, used only three performers (one of them 79 years old) and four musicians. Three of the musicians never left the stage; the dance-actor Kottakkal Kesavan Kundalayar, in the crucial role of Lord Krishna, stayed onstage for the final 120 minutes; the 79-year-old, Nelliyode Vasudevan Namboodiri, playing the aged hero Kuchela (also known as Sudama in Hindu mythology), was also onstage for most of the action.