Kathak

Andre Yew · **Posted:** Fri Jun 27, 2003 7:50 pm

Quote:

A life of graceful improvisation
Victoria Looseleaf, LA Times

Amid the increasing popularity of Bollywood films, the fashions of India and fiction from the subcontinent, local audiences have a chance this week to see a man widely regarded as the supreme practitioner of a more rarefied mode of Indian artistic expression, the dance form known as kathak.

Birju Maharaj, now making a monthlong, seven-city U.S. tour, will bring his company of seven dancers and musicians to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Tuesday.

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Jul 15, 2003 1:36 am

Spirit of dance
Indian dance expresses range of emotions
By Rima Shah for The Alameda Times Star

ON a warm San Francisco afternoon dancers move as if they are the Hindu God Krishna, their bodies dipping sideways as they pretend to put flutes to their lips and play with a ball, as the deity may have done as a child.

The room is filled with the thuds of 15 pairs of feet stamping on the ground. Sweat dribbles down the faces of the students at the Chhandam School, where Kathak, a classical dance from northern India, is taught.

"Don't play like a girl, play like a boy," says teacher Chitresh Das to the all-female troupe, as he watches them play with the imaginary ball. "How many of you watch women's soccer on television?"

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Azlan · **Posted:** Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:11 pm

An article on Shakti Bhatnagar Roberts:

Quote:

MAKING WAVES
In step with kathak

Aditi Tandon
The Tribune

HER missions as a practitioner of kathak have been accomplished and her knowledge of the dance form disseminated across the globe. <a href=http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050123/society.htm#1 target=_blank>more</a>

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Oct 12, 2005 3:21 pm

Dance on the radio ain't easy, but Kathak has the bonus of those wonderful rhythmic patterns sung in distinctive style.

A masterclass in Kathak dance
On BBC Radio 4, Kirsty Lang talks to the dancer and choreographer Gauri Sharma Tripathi about Kathak, the classical Indian dance form she learned from her mother who was also her guru. Why is it becoming increasingly popular with young people in the west?

'Ish Mir - Theatre of the Gods' by Gauri Sharma Tripathi is at The Purcell Room on London's Southbank tomorrow and Friday at eight o'clock. It then travels to the Lowry Centre in Salford on October 22nd.

Click here for the page with the radio link for Wednesday (look on the right). The Kathak piece is the third or fourth item, but the others, "Wallace and Grommit" and Jim Jarmusch, are good too.

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ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

From Siddhartha Mitter in the Boston Globe:

Quote:

Master’s love for Indian kathak dance is in his eyes
....
To many, the Delhi-based [Birju] Maharaj, who performs at the Somerville Theatre on Sunday, embodies kathak, the main classical dance of North India. Having evolved from Hindu temple to Muslim court to the modern stage, kathak is a dance equivalent of Indo-Persian miniature paintings, with which it shares elegance and extreme precision.

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ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

From Megan Tench in the Boston Globe:

Quote:

Anchored
After an adventurous youth as the daughter of a Hollywood star, Gretchen Hayden has found her grounding passion in Indian dance
[Gretchen Hayden,] a senior disciple of the renowned dancer Chitresh Das, .... has two local concerts coming up: one tonight, an East-meets-West fusion performance with the world-jazz ensemble Natraj, and one on Dec. 15. Hayden is also the artistic director of Chhandika, a Boston-based nonprofit Kathak organization, and teaches Kathak at Tufts University and Wellesley College.

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LMCtech · **Posted:** Fri May 30, 2008 1:38 pm

From the SF Chronicle.

Quote:

Birju Maharaj to perform Indian Kathak dance
Rachel Howard

Thursday, May 29, 2008

With 15 pounds of bells on his ankles and sweat in his silver hair, Birju Maharaj stamps out ever more complex rhythms. Sometimes they sound uncannily like birds singing or rain falling. But always, just when you think you've lost the pattern, Maharaj brings it together on the first beat of the new cycle. When that happens, it's like suddenly seeing an image in a constellation of stars, or glimpsing divine design in the veins of a leaf: a spiritual experience.

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