Kathak is the classical dance of north India, traced to the kathakar (storyteller) bards of Uttar Pradesh who narrated Krishna and Ram episodes in temple courtyards. Sangeet Natak Akademi recognises it as one of the eight classical dance forms of India. Modern Kathak is organised into three principal gharanas (lineages): Lucknow, Jaipur and Banaras, each tracing its own teaching line to specific 18th and 19th century gurus. The form combines fast rhythmic footwork (tatkar), multiple spins (chakkars) on the heel, and expressive storytelling sequences (bhava) accompanied by tabla and lehera. Kathak Kendra, the principal training institution, became part of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1964.
From temple storytellers to court dance
The word kathak comes from the Sanskrit kathā, “story”. The earliest performers were itinerant Brahmin storytellers in north India who used recitation, song and gesture to retell Puranic stories. The shift from temple courtyard to royal court came under the Mughal and later Awadhi nawabi patronage in the 17th and 18th centuries. Persian and Central Asian dance vocabularies entered the form during this period: the spin (originating in part from Sufi sema influence), the heavy use of the ghungroo bell on the ankle, and the alignment of footwork to tabla bols.
The decisive patron of the Lucknow gharana was Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh (reigned 1847–1856), who was himself a trained dancer and choreographer and refined the abhinaya-heavy Lucknow style at the Qaiserbagh court. The British annexation of Awadh in 1856 and the partition of patronage networks moved dancers and gurus from courts to private patronage and, later, to public institutions.
The three gharanas and what each emphasises
- Lucknow gharana: grace, lyrical line, abhinaya (expressive interpretation). Founded by Ishwari Prasad of Handia (around the early 18th century) and developed through the line of Thakur Prasad and his sons Binda Din and Kalka Prasad, who served the court of Wajid Ali Shah. Pandit Birju Maharaj (1937–2022), grandson of Kalka Prasad, was the most widely known modern exponent.
- Jaipur gharana: technical precision, long pure-dance compositions, rapid footwork and chakkars. Traced to Bhanuji, a Shiva Tandava dancer from Jaipur in the 17th century, and developed through his grandsons Laluji and Kanhuji. The Jaipur style favours nritta (pure dance) over abhinaya and has produced strong technicians like Kundanlal Sisodia, Sundar Prasad and Kumudini Lakhia.
- Banaras gharana: Krishna-centred storytelling and a distinctive footwork pattern. Started by Janakiprasad in the 19th century, a dancer from a village near Jaipur who settled in Varanasi. The Banaras style holds the thaat (the standing first pose) for longer and emphasises symmetry in chakkars.
A fourth lineage, the Raigarh gharana, took shape in the early 20th century in the princely state of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh under Maharaja Chakradhar Singh (1905–1947), drawing dancers from both Jaipur and Lucknow and producing a distinct repertoire of compositions.
The structure of a Kathak recital
A full Kathak recital opens with a vandana (invocation, often Saraswati or Ganesh), proceeds through the technical sequence, and closes on a thumri or bhajan abhinaya piece. The standard items in the technical section:
- Thaat: the opening still pose, holding rhythmic anticipation against the lehera melody.
- Aamad: the entrance, slower compositions setting the tabla rhythm.
- Tukra and Toda: short composed footwork phrases, each ending on a sam (the first beat of the cycle).
- Tatkar: pure footwork demonstration, performed at three speeds (vilambit, madhya, drut), with the dancer reciting bols simultaneously.
- Paran: heavy composition using pakhawaj bols, often Shiva-themed.
- Gat-bhava or Gat-nikas: walking sequence depicting a character or episode (Radha veiling herself, Krishna stealing butter).
- Thumri or Bhajan: the closing abhinaya item, usually in raga Khamaj or Kafi, on a Krishna-Radha theme.
The dancer recites bols (rhythmic syllables like ta thei thei tat, aa thei thei tat) before executing them in footwork; this layer of vocal-then-physical performance is distinctive to Kathak among the eight classical forms.
Costume and accompaniment
The female Kathak costume comes in two variants: the older Hindu temple-style lehenga-choli with dupatta, and the Mughal-era anarkali-style frock-pyjama with shorter dupatta tied at the waist. Male dancers wear a kurta over churidar pyjama with a sash. Both wear heavy ghungroos, often between 100 and 200 bells per ankle (roughly 1 to 1.5 kg per leg). The musical ensemble is built around tabla (the rhythmic anchor), sarangi or harmonium playing the lehera melody, vocalist, and sometimes pakhawaj for paran sections.
For what it’s worth, on choosing a gharana
For what it’s worth, students new to Kathak benefit from training in one gharana for the first several years rather than sampling across lineages, because the body grammar (the angle of the foot in tatkar, the rotation in a chakkar, the holding of the dupatta) differs in subtle ways that compete for muscle memory. Cross-training comes more naturally after the first solo recital. The choice of gharana usually reflects who the available teacher is rather than an abstract preference.
Where to study and where to watch
- Kathak Kendra, New Delhi: the national institution under Sangeet Natak Akademi, offering a diploma course and post-diploma programmes. It hosts annual student and faculty recitals at its campus on Bahawalpur House, Bhagwan Das Road.
- Khajuraho Dance Festival (Madhya Pradesh): held annually in February against the backdrop of the Khajuraho temples, programming Kathak alongside other classical forms.
- Kalka Bindadin Mahotsav, Lucknow: the annual Lucknow gharana festival honouring its founding gurus.
Common questions
How is Kathak different from Bharatanatyam?
Kathak is performed standing tall with the legs straight; Bharatanatyam holds the half-sit aramandi throughout. Kathak’s vocabulary leans on spins, fast footwork at three speeds, and the dancer’s vocal recitation of bols. Bharatanatyam is built on stamped adavus, mudras drawn from Natya Shastra, and a fixed seven-item margam. Both are devotional in origin but Kathak picked up Mughal court vocabulary that Bharatanatyam did not.
Why so many spins?
The chakkar is the signature movement and serves three purposes: technical display (a dancer may execute 30 to 100 spins consecutively in a Jaipur gharana piece), rhythmic resolution (the spins land cleanly on the sam), and narrative effect (a spin can suggest Krishna’s whirling, a storm, the cycle of time). Advanced students train on neck-spotting and gradual speed-up to avoid vertigo.
Is Kathak only a Hindu dance?
The repertoire is overwhelmingly drawn from Krishna and Shiva narratives, but the form’s history under Mughal and Awadhi patronage produced a rich Persian-Urdu thumri repertoire as well, and Muslim gurus and dancers have been central to all three gharanas. The Awadhi court tradition kept the Krishna-centred bhakti repertoire alongside ghazals and Urdu compositions; this dual texture is part of the form’s history.
A limitation worth noting
This article works with the conventional Lucknow-Jaipur-Banaras-Raigarh framing because that is the framework most institutions teach to. Several scholars (including Pallabi Chakravorty and Margaret Walker) have argued that the colonial-era reconstruction of Kathak as a Hindu temple-derived form was partly a 20th century invention, and that the older history is more entangled with court culture than the gharana narrative implies. The deeper history is contested in academic literature and a serious student should read across both the traditional and the revisionist accounts.
For further reading, the Kathak entry on Wikipedia compiles the textual references. The Sangeet Natak Akademi maintains the Kathak Kendra and a public list of award recipients at sangeetnatak.gov.in.
