ABSTRACT
Kathak, the classical dance of North India, is a twentieth-century dance with roots reaching back to at least the thirteenth century. It is a syncretic genre that emerged from the hybrid context of colonialism and achieved legitimacy as a national dance at the same time as India itself achieved independence. The rhythmic repertoire of hereditary male performers, expressive dance-songs of female courtesans, and various North Indian theatre and storytelling traditions were fused together through the national revival to become what we now call kathak dance. Before the twentieth century, there was no dance called kathak. There were communities of performing artists in the nineteenth century known either as Kathaks or by the surname Kathak, but there is not an identifiable dance specifically associated with them. There are a variety of performing arts, some of which are documented as far back as the thirteenth century, that seem to have some connection to today’s kathak, but they are neither homogeneous nor clearly connected to a single group of performers. Certain families from the birādarī or endogamous community of performing artists called the Kathaks, however, emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century as central culture bearers capable of performing and teaching a variety of music and dance repertoire from male, female, rural and court traditions. Certainly some of this material is Hindu and devotional, but there is no evidence that places it in temples as part of Hindu ritual. Yet, the connection of the Kathaks to Vaishnavite storytelling and theatrical practices like Rām Līlā and Rās Līlā allowed an Orientalist history to be constructed that legitimized the new tradition with an invented past linking it to ancient worship.
