The Kathaka Dancer

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With brilliance enshrining her face and entire form shining with gold's glow the young dancer is most likely in a posture of Kathaka. The Kathaka is one of India's main classical dances. Sage Bharata has defined this dance form in his Natyashashtra - the 3rd century B. C. and the earliest reported treatise on drama and dance, as the interpretive dance. Other forms of dance under his classification are ritual, abstract and secular. Not the dancer's posture alone, in the painting other features, too, co-relate the dance form with Kathaka. Large eyed and round faced dancer has been poised against a dark, almost abyssal, background symbolic of cosmic void, though the darkness does not completely enshroud the space. Its lower end is grayish symbolic of the earth. Significantly, the dancer has one of her feet firmly set on the earth and the other moving forward and at the same time her figure penetrates deep into the void. The dancer thus communicates between the two seeking to interpret the Unknown to the grass-root, the formless void symbolising one, while the earth, the other. Kathaka, essentially the dance of the earth, does not take the audience to the Divine but contrarily the Divine to the audience. The discreetly used green, not in much contrast to the background, makes her form merge with it, or emerge out of it as if the abyssal darkness is in the process of unfolding. Geometrical dimensions of the figure are as much significant. The gold-like glowing hands, stretched aligned covering the void in entirety, cleave it, and the upper hand, linked with the apex, aligns with the forward moving left leg. Symbolically, whatever is explored is infused into the forward moving pace.

Kathaka, which through its narratives reveals to the grass-root the Katha, legend of the Unknown, developed pursuing the ancient tradition of dramatics combined with the dance idiom of the north, Avadha, Brij and Rajasthan in particular, and the cult of yatra – teams of itinerant artists journeying from one place to other performing divine lilas – sports of Vaishnava gods, mainly Rama and Krishna, and other myths and legends. Kathaka is hence universally identified as the dance of the north. Kathaka is drama-like in the sense that it is narrative whereas other dance forms are at the most illustrative. In Kathaka discourse is its essence, though it reveals in body gestures, not through diction, as it does in a drama. In the course of its performance the Katha reveals step by step and with absolute coherence and greater clarity. Some scholars assert that medieval dancers, pursuing the dance form now identified as Kathaka, used to recite the Katha too. In folk dances like Pandawani of the Chhattisgarh region, the dancer still recites the Katha. However, in Kathaka's classical form a separate team of singers and musicians now recite the text-part, and along with the dancer transforms it into her dance. As the Katha has a progressive character and moves on time scale, and only rarely around, a forward thrust, as in the painting here, is the foremost move in the Kathaka. The dancer's face reveals the leading emotion of the Katha while gestures of hands seek to interpret it. Recitation by a standing figure is most effective. Accordingly, an upright stance with body held absolutely erect and knees not allowed to deflect, is another characteristic posture in Kathaka. Though emotional disposition, grace and beauty of form are its essentials, Kathaka is largely a masculine dance.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.

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