Dhaka, Sept. 28 -- Long before language settled into words, there was movement. That, at least, is the theory behind one of the oldest and most quietly compelling ideas in dance scholarship: when human speech was still finding its footing, people spoke first with their bodies. Out of that primal vocabulary, one of the eight great classical dance traditions of the Indian subcontinent eventually took shape -- Kathak, a form whose very name means "the one who tells a story".

The etymological roots of Kathak lie in the Sanskrit word katha, meaning "story". It is a narrative performance tradition from northern India. A distinctive feature of this dance form is that, unlike other classical dance traditions, Kathak has passed through many cultu...