Kathak is based on devotional Shri Krishna’s poetry of the medieval centuries and the highly cultivated court poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries which celebrated shringar, the sentiment of love. It is one of the eight forms of Indian classical dance. This dance form traces its origins to the nomadic bards of ancient northern India, known as Kathakars or storytellers. Its form today contains traces of temple and ritual dances, and the influence of the bhakti movement. From the 16th century onwards, it absorbed certain features of Persian dance and central Asian dance which were imported by the royal courts of the Mughal era.