Kathak on the Brain - the Role of Memory in Kathak

About the Author: I am Shrishti Gandhi, a Neuroscience graduate and associate artist with Sonia Sabri Company (SSCo). I manage SSCO’s dedicated dance troupe, ‘Kathakaars’, finding regular performance opportunities and performing as part of the group. Recent professional credits include performing as a dance artist for SSCo, touring with their hit summer production, ‘Mughal Miniatures’, across the UK. I have a keen interest in writing and combining my knowledge of neuroscience from my degree with my passion for Kathak. As an associate artist, I therefore also research and write for Sonia Sabri Company’s blog about the science of dance and Kathak, creating scientific but accessible entries for audiences of all backgrounds.
Following on from the discussion of dance and cognition, I was inspired to understand the involvement of memory in dance, with relevance to Kathak.

Sonia Sabri Company held their most recent annual Kathak and Tabla Camp in the December of 2024. Attendees would agree it was a wonderful end to yet another successful year for the company, with their work transforming the landscape for South Asian music and dance in Britain.
The camp was a two-day intensive program where Kathak and Tabla students revisited the foundational elements of the art forms and were challenged with new compositions. Students in the Kathak Camp, with the able guidance of their Guruji, Sonia Sabri, were able to explore and develop an understanding of both Nritta (technical) and Nritya (expressive) in Kathak by immersing themselves in the experience.

Nritta and Nritya: what do they entail?
Nritta, also known as “pure dance”, consists of abstract and rhythmic movements depicting musical rhythms and phrases. This technical element focuses on detailed movements, identifying and attempting to embody the ideal form, and demonstrating speed. An example in Kathak is Tatkaar (footwork) which aims to mirror the sounds of the Tabla. During the camp, students practiced both khuli (“open”) and band (“closed”) tatkaar as part of a rigorous session focusing on improving understanding of whole-body dynamics involved in footwork. This included recognising the importance of ankle strength, ensuring constant engagement of the core, and most importantly, tuning into the live tabla and mirroring the timing of the instrument.

On the other hand, Nritya is the expressive component of Indian Classical dance with emphasis on abhinaya; a technique in Indian Classical dance which utilises body movements, facial expressions, and hand gestures to convey the meanings and emotions of a composition. To elevate students’ understanding of Nritya, they also explored the Navarasa, or nine emotions, which abhinaya heavily relies upon to connect the performer with audiences.

An interesting technique used to depict these different emotions was combining abhinaya with the recitation of rhythmic syllables, known as bol. This act of recitation is also referred to as Padhant. Students were tasked with assigning and remembering different emotions for the various bol sequences, allowing for exploration of emotion through Padhant – the language of Kathak.

Such activities highlighted the strong involvement of cognition, such as learning, thinking, memory, attention, and language in Kathak. However, these cognitive benefits of dance are not as extensively researched and reported compared to its physical benefits. Dance is known to improve various aspects of an individual, such as overall health and fitness, but its positive impact on memory, for example, is not as widely known. Kathak Camp acted as an inspiration to research more on this topic as the importance of memory quickly became apparent throughout the two-day intensive. For instance, during the recall of the various tatkaar (footwork), chakkar (spins), and bol (rhythmic syllable) sequences.

Memory and Kathak: how are they connected?
Consistent dance practice over a prolonged period results in positive structural and/or functional neuroplastic changes in the brain, such as enhancements in memory and attention.
Several forms of memory are implicated in dance and Kathak, including working-, spatial-, verbal-, episodic-, and explicit memory. This was demonstrated by substantial improvement observed in the working memory of participants in a dance intervention group, compared to controls, after a 6-month programme. Working memory is responsible for retaining information while performing a task and is essential in cognitive development, learning, remembering and following of instructions. In Kathak, this type of memory would be activated when learning and practicing new compositions.

Similar improvements were observed in spatial memory, compared to conventional fitness training, after 6 months of dance intervention, and verbal memory after participation in an 18-month long dance program. Spatial memory is crucial in Kathak when understanding spatial relationships among peers in group choreographies, necessary to enable proper execution and reflect what was envisaged. Verbal memory holds a similar importance. It is the ability to store, encode, and retrieve information presented verbally, such as instructions given during a Kathak class about specific movements or choreography. This subtype of memory is related to episodic and explicit memory, both also applied in Kathak. Episodic memory relies on recall of information in chronological order, and was likely used when recalling previous compositions during Kathak Camp. Similarly, explicit memory, responsible for handling of material purposefully memorised, was important when memorising the various bol (rhythmic syllable) sequences.

These findings all highlight how dancing uses several different forms of memory and improves memory function. Research generally focuses on dance as a broad category, though it is safe to assume these benefits would especially be observed with Kathak as a unique feature of Indian Classical dance is memorisation. The cognitive benefits of Kathak, however, extend far beyond memory alone as the artform requires constant engagement of the mind, and its various cognitive functions, with the body to tell stories through rhythms and intricate movements at various speeds. This is the essence of Kathak as only after letting it consume oneself completely, can one be described as a Kathakaar (storyteller, or the one who tells a story).

References:
1) Lavinia Teixeira-Machado, Ricardo Mario Arida, and Jair De Jesus Mari, ‘Dance for Neuroplasticity: A Descriptive Systematic Review’, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 96 (January 2019): 232–40, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.12.010.
2) Jan-Christoph Kattenstroth et al., ‘Six Months of Dance Intervention Enhances Postural, Sensorimotor, and Cognitive Performance in Elderly without Affecting Cardio-Respiratory Functions’, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 5 (2013), https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2013.00005; Patrick Müller et al., ‘Evolution of Neuroplasticity in Response to Physical Activity in Old Age: The Case for Dancing’, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 9 (14 March 2017): 56, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2017.00056; Kathrin Rehfeld et al., ‘Dance Training Is Superior to Repetitive Physical Exercise in Inducing Brain Plasticity in the Elderly’, ed. Maciej S. Buchowski, PLOS ONE 13, no. 7 (11 July 2018): e0196636, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196636.
3)Kattenstroth et al., ‘Six Months of Dance Intervention Enhances Postural, Sensorimotor, and Cognitive Performance in Elderly without Affecting Cardio-Respiratory Functions’.
4)Rehfeld et al., ‘Dance Training Is Superior to Repetitive Physical Exercise in Inducing Brain Plasticity in the Elderly’.
5)Müller et al., ‘Evolution of Neuroplasticity in Response to Physical Activity in Old Age’.
6)Surjani Chatterjee et al., ‘Cognitive Ability Improvement in Indian Classical Dancing: A Study in Bengalee Females’, in Ergonomics for Design and Innovation, ed. Debkumar Chakrabarti, Sougata Karmakar, and Urmi R. Salve, vol. 391, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022), 727–37, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94277-9_62.