Kathak, born of the marriage of Hindu and Muslim cultures, flourished in North India under Mughal influence. Kathak dancers retain their 17th-century costumes but are steeped in Radha and Krishna love lore. Krishna, playing his flute in the Vrindavana woods on the bank of the Yamuna River, is surrounded by the gopis (“milkmaids”). Their play is the eternal game of the god and his devotees, the hide-and-seek of man and woman. This spiritual relationship is deeply passionate, with erotic love-play. Slowly the dance degenerated and found shelter in bawdy houses, where professional dancing girls practiced the art to make themselves more tantalizing. In the beginning of the 20th century it was reclaimed and revived, however, mainly through the efforts of Kalkaprasad Maharaj, whose three sons—Achchan, Lachchu, and Shambhu—perfected the art.

Because of its mixed lasya and tandava temperament, kathak is popular with both females and males. In bharata natyam, footwork is synchronized with hand gestures and eye movements, but kathak has no such rigid technique. It takes its movements from life, stylizes them, and adds complex rhythmic patterns. The mathematical precision in doubling and quadrupling the beat with quick transfers and shifts makes the onlookers dizzy.

A female kathak dancer generally wears a brocade blouse, a long, wide, shimmering silk skirt, a transparent tissue scarf of gold threads, and a heavy cluster of ankle bells. A musician, generally the guru, sits beside the drummer on the floor and vocalizes the complicated syllables of the drum that the dancer beats out with her feet. Kathak’s basic dance posture and some of the steps can be traced to the rasilla of Braj Bhoomi. The musical refrain, which is called lehra, provides the base on which the drummer and the dancer execute a rich tapestry of rhythmic patterns. Beats are called matras and the footwork tatkar. Important elements of the dance are chakkars, torahs, and tihais. Chakkar denotes whirling with great speed and stopping for a fraction of time after each whirl within the prescribed beat while at the same time maintaining the beauty of the form. Torah is a composition consisting of rhythmic syllables. Tihai is the repetition of a phrase of rhythmic syllables used to adorn the concluding part of a torah. There are two styles of kathak: Jaipur gharana and Lucknow gharana. While the Lucknow gharana excels in bhava, the Jaipur gharana specializes in brilliance of footwork.

In the 20th century the major performers of kathak included Shambhu Maharaj, who specialized in bhavapradarshan (“display of emotion”), and Sunder Prasad, who concentrated on the tala and layakari aspects of the dance. Birju Maharaj, Gopi Krishan, Sitara Devi, and Damayanti Joshi all have important reputations in India as well as abroad.

The manipuri school

Manipuri has survived in the sheltered valley of Manipur in the Assam Hills. It remained aloof not only from foreign influences but also from the main Indian trends. Its isolation was broken only in the 1920s, when Rabindranath Tagore visited the valley and invited a leading guru of the area, Atomba Singh, to teach at his school in Santiniketan. The supple movements of manipuri dance were suitable for Tagore’s lyrical dramas, and he therefore employed them in his plays and introduced the dance as a part of the curriculum at his institution.

The manipuri dancer wears a large, stiff skirt that is glittering with round mirror pieces and a shimmering gauze veil. Her hair is done up in a high rolled crown that is adorned with chains of white blossoms, and her luminous cheeks and forehead are decorated with dots of sandalwood paste.

Known for its femininity, manipuri is marked by a slow, swooning rhythm. The dancer, with her hips thrust back and head tilted on one side, turns and sways and glides as if in a dream. The immobility of her face, like that of a mask, is in sharp contrast with the other three schools of dance, in which the face and eyes are a major source of expression.

The manipuri drummer, his bare torso in a white dhoti with a red border tucked up above his knees, dances while he plays on the drum. He slaps and thumps; the drum rumbles and howls and chuckles. Drunk with its rhythm, the drummer dances in wild, frenzied leaps. His energetic and electric movements are a masculine counterpart to the slow, undulating patterns woven by the female dancer.

Chief 20th-century exponents of manipuri included Atomba Singh, who preserved the tradition of ras dancing, and Amubi Singh.

The kuchipudi school

Kuchipudi dance-dramas owe their origin to the small village of Kuchipudi (Kuchelapuram) in Andhra Pradesh. Their form was originated in the 17th century by Sidhyendra Yogi, creator of the superb dance-drama Bhama Kalapam, which is the story of charming Satyabhama, jealous wife of Lord Krishna. Sidhyendra Yogi taught the art to Brahman boys of Kuchipudi and gave a performance with them in 1675 for the nawab of Golconda, who was so pleased that he granted Kuchipudi to the Brahman Bhavathas for the preservation of this art. Even into the 20th century, every Brahman of Kuchipudi was expected to perform at least once in his life the role of Satyabhama as an offering to Lord Krishna.

The kuchipudi dance begins with worship rituals. A male dancer moves about sprinkling holy water, and then incense is burned. Indra-dhvaja (the flagstaff of the god Indra) is planted on the stage to guard the performance against outside interference. Women sing and dance with worship lamps, followed by the worship of Ganesha, the elephant god, who is traditionally petitioned for success before all enterprises. The bhagavatha (stage manager-singer) sings invocations to the goddesses Sarasvati (Learning), Lakshmi (Wealth), and Parashakti (Parent Energy), in between chanting drum syllables.

Two men hold up the traditional coloured curtain. A long gold-embroidered braid is hung on the curtain as a challenge to anyone among the spectators who dares to act and dance. If anyone should take up this braid, the hero playing the female character Satyabhama will cut off “her” hair. The principal characters are introduced from behind the curtain after each one has done a brisk dance, and at that time the bhagavatha sings out the background and function of each. All roles are traditionally played by men (but since the mid-20th century by women also), and all the four elements of abhinaya are used—dance, song, costume, and psychological resources. Thus, kuchipudi differs from other classical dances in which the performers do not sing.

Among the major kuchipudi dancers of the 20th century were Guru Chinta Krishnamurthi, Vedantam Satyanarayana, and Yamini Krishnamurthi.

The odissi tradition

Odissi, practiced in Orissa, claims to be over 2,000 years old and the true inheritor of the Natya-shastra tradition. It originated and was initially developed in the temples and later flourished in the courts as well. Many of the 108 basic dance units (karanas) mentioned in the Natya-shastra can be found only in odissi, and many of its dance poses are sculpted on the exterior of the temples of Bhubaneswar, Konarak, and Puri. Kelu Charan Mahapatra and Indrani Rehman were the principal 20th-century figures associated with odissi.

Other classical dance forms

Among other classical or semiclassical dance forms are bhagavatha mela, mohini attam, and kuravanchi. Performed at the annual Narasimha Jayanti festival in Melatur village in Tamil Nadu, the bhagavatha mela uses classical gesture language with densely textured Karnatak (South Indian classical) music. Its repertoire was enriched by the musician-poet Venkatarama Sastri (1759–1847), who composed important dance-dramas in the Telugu language. Mohini attam is based on the legend of the Hindu mythological seductress Mohini, who tempted Shiva. It is patterned on bharata natyam with elements of kathakali. It uses Malayalam songs with Karnatak music. Kuravanchi is a dance-drama of lyrical beauty prevalent in Tamil Nadu. It is performed by four to eight women, with a gypsy fortune-teller as initiator of the story of a lady pining for her lover. Formally, it is a mixture of the folk and classical types of Indian dance.