Kathak by Pratap Pawar, Guru Puja Seminar, Gmunden, Austria 06/07/1986 Today we had a very nice session of puja in the morning, and to celebrate that session in an artistic way, we have arranged this beautiful program of Kathak dancing for you. Now Kathak word, as you know, comes from the word Katha. Katha means the story. It means the story. My God bless you. And the story is to be told, and this is a very, very ancient style of dancing, which was practiced in the northern part of India, and then part of it also went to the south, and they used it in a different way. Now Kathak is so ancient and so traditional, that it has gone various changes and various aspects, have been expressed in this style of dancing. To begin with, it was originally done to express the stories about the gods and goddesses, and their different way of dealing with human beings. Then gradually it became subtler and subtler. Then they started performing also the dances about the Parabrahma Shakti and all those things. Later on when the Muslims came to north India, they introduced their delicate style to this style of dancing, and one of the Nawabs of Lucknow was very much fond of Kathak dancing, and he himself introduced so many ideas in this. So also the romanticism, not the variety of western style, but the last is the relationship between the power and its deity, and all those were performed Read More …