Kathak and Indian Cinema.

-Diya Natarajan

Bollywood movies have always been successful in creatingnew trends and also bringing back the most underrated trendstooOne such movie is Kalank, the song Ghar More Pardesiyahas again led to a desire to learn kathak, another song is Mohe Rang Do Laal from BajiRao Mastani has also created asimilar trendThe way Alia Bhatt and Deepika Padukoneelegantly spins in the video fascinated the audience, even myschoolmates were crazy about this, and some of them started going todance classesToday I am writing this because I thought ofsharing some facts about this particular dance formKathak is one of the major forms of Indian classical dance and Ithe classical dance form of Uttar PradeshKathak originatedwithin Hindu temples as a storytelling device for portrayingthe epic tale from Hindi scriptures Mahabharata andRamayanaThe name derived from the Sanskrit word Kathameaning story. The dance form narrates a story throughthe expressions and body movements are called KathakThereare three main Gharanas or schools of Kathak, the schools arenamed according to the geographical areas in which they developed, the areas are Jaipur, Lucknow and Banaras.Ghungarus are an inalienable part of Kathak dance which thethe performer wears while performing, the other musicalinstruments used are Bansuri, Tabla, Tanpura, Harmonium,Sitar and Sarangi are used.The performer wears Anarkali suitwhile performing the skirt part of Anarkali gives a wonderfulspinning effect when the movement is executed. The biggest influencer in recent times was the late Pandit Birju Maharaj was also the choreographer of Mohe Rang Do Laal.