Krishna Kaur Khalsa
 | This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. (August 2017) |
Krishna Kaur Khalsa | |
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| Born | Thelma Oliver May 16, 1939 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Film actress, yoga instructor |
| Years active | 1958–1970 |
Krishna Kaur Khalsa (born Thelma Oliver, May 16 1939) is an American teacher of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. She started her career as an actress in film and theater. In 1970, she shifted her focus to the practice of yoga.[1]
Early years
[edit]Khalsa, formerly known as Thelma Oliver, was born on May 6, 1939, in Los Angeles, California. Her father, Cappy Oliver, played the trumpet with Lionel Hampton's band. Khalsa studied dance at a school run by Jeni Le Gon, then later majored in Drama and Theatre Arts at University of California, Los Angeles.[2]
Performing career
[edit]Oliver left school in 1961 and moved east. Her off-Broadway stage debut was in the play The Blacks by French dramatist Jean Genet, where she performed the role of Virtue alongside Louis Gossett Jr. Oliver also performed in the musicals Fly Blackbird and Cindy and the revue The Living Premise, where she replaced Diana Sands for two months in 1963.[2]
Oliver also took several film roles beginning in 1958 with a part as a "Negro woman" in the hit South Pacific. Her contribution to the 1961 swashbuckler Pirates of Tortuga is not credited. In Black Like Me, released in 1964, Oliver played the role of Georgie. She performed the role of "Ortiz's girl" in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker. The cast included Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Brock Peters.[3] Oliver's key scene with Rod Steiger near the film's end drew controversy when Oliver exposed her breasts. The film was among the first American movies to feature nudity[4] while the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced. It was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. Although it was officially presented as a special exception, the controversy marked one of the first significant challenges to the Code, which eventually contributed to its discontinuation.
Thelma Oliver landed the role of "Helene" in the Broadway musical Sweet Charity with Gwen Verdon. Sweet Charity played at the Palace Theatre from January 1966 to July 1967, with 608 performances, garnering twelve Tony Award nominations, including an award for its choreography.[5]
Turn to Yoga
[edit]While a 1966 Ebony magazine profile mentions Oliver's study of "yoga philosophy and breathing," [6] yoga became a central focus of her life four years later when she met Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan renamed her "Krishna Kaur," meaning Divine Princess. Under his direction, she became a yoga teacher with a special dispensation to serve the Black community. Krishna Kaur established a yoga community in the Watts, Los Angeles neighborhood, including a live-in center, a children's school, daycare, a twice weekly free kitchen, and "Sat Nam Street Players" who aimed to bring music and inspiration to marginalized communities in the area.[7]
Krishna Kaur described her philosophy regarding her yoga mission: "The revolution is really one of the mind. Blacks have got to realize where the power really is. The struggle is not on a physical level. It is on the level of the mind."[8]
Krishna Kaur traveled to the spiritual capital of Amritsar and the "Golden Temple" or Harimandir Sahib in December 1970. In August 1980, she became the first woman recorded singing Sikh hymns within the precincts of the Golden Temple.[9]
In the 1990s, Krishna Kaur was involved in founding the International Black Yoga Teachers Association. She also started Yoga for Youth, which aims to serve young people in the U.S. criminal justice system. Krishna Kaur is currently the chairman of the Yoga for Youth board.[10]
Krishna Kaur has continued performing musically. In the 1970s, she toured and recorded with a group called "Sat Nam West."[11] In 2014, she released an album, One Creator.[12]
Filmography
[edit]- South Pacific (1958)
- Pirates of Tortuga (1961)
- Black Like Me (1964)
- The Pawnbroker (1964)
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Minister in the Spotlight: MSS Krishna Kaur Khalsa | Sikh Dharma Ministry". Retrieved 2025-05-20.
- ^ a b Ebony. Johnson Publishing Company.
- ^ Internet Movie Database https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0647014
- ^ "How The Pawnbroker changed film censorship". BFI. 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2025-03-12.
- ^ Green, Stanley, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 1980, p. 409.
- ^ "New Girl on Broadway," Ebony magazine, October 1966, p. 57.
- ^ Shanti Kaur Khalsa (1995), The History of Sikh Dharma in the Western Hemisphere, Espanola, NM: Sikh Dharma International, p. 29. ISBN 0-8263-1576-3
- ^ "Yoga: Something for Everyone, Ebony magazine, September 1975, p. 102. https://books.google.com/books?id=iVx7JXZQWgEC&dq=thelma+oliver+krishna+kaur+kundalini+yoga+Ramdas&pg=PA102
- ^ Shanti Kaur Khalsa, The History of Sikh Dharma in the Western Hemisphere, Espanola, NM: Sikh Dharma International, pp. 13–15, 38. ISBN 0-8263-1576-3
- ^ Stephanie Renfrow Hamilton, "Yoga in Black and White," Yoga Journal, September–October 2000, pp. 104–105.
- ^ Gurubanda Singh Khalsa, (1979). "Music the Companion That Soothes Us and Moves Us," in Khalsa, Sardarni Premka Kaur; Khalsa, Sat Kirpal Kaur. The Man Called Siri Singh Sahib. Los Angeles: Sikh Dharma.
- ^ "Krishna Kaur".
External links
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