I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the European Research Council, the Pandit Jasraj Endowment Fund, the University of Toronto and Queen’s University for generous support of my doctoral, post-doctoral and more current research contributing to this book. I also thank the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Sangeet Natak Akademi, and New York Public Library for access to images, and am particularly appreciative of the help I received from their imaging and permissions departments. I am immensely grateful to the Kathak Kendras in New Delhi and Lucknow, the Sangeet Natak Akademi in New Delhi and the Archive for Research in Ethnomusicology in Gurgaon for aiding me in my research and even more so to the many dancers and musicians in India and beyond who have allowed me to visit their classes and talk to them and their students. This list is long and certainly prestigious: Rohini Bhati, Manjushri Chatterjee, Lalita Devi, Sitara Devi, Chitresh Das, Rajendra Gangani, Rita Ganguli, Geetanjali Lal, Birju Maharaj, Jai Kishan Maharaj, Tripurari Maharaj, Krishan Mohan Misra, Ram Mohan Misra, Viswanath Misra, Urmila Nagar, Munna Shukla, Bandana Sen, Saswati Sen, Uma Sharma, Veena Singh, Rina Singha and Ashok Tripathi all found time to meet with me. Maya Rao, Kumudini Lakhia and the late Reba Vidyarthi were particularly kind and generous and I have warm memories of my visits to their homes. A particular thank you needs to go to my own kathak dance teachers, Joanna da Souza, Deepti Gupta, Ashok Chakravorty and Saveeta Sharma, each of whom gave me important skills that contributed to my development as dancer and scholar. I am also grateful for my contact and conversations with scholars around the world, and thank Matthew Allan, Carol Babiracki, Joep Bor, Mandakranta Bose, Pallabi Chakravorty, Joan Erdman, Bharat Gupt, Philip Lutgendorf, Lowell Lybarger, Peter Manuel, Allyn Miner, Lalita du Perron, Regula Qureshi, Purnima Shah, Davesh Soneji and Richard Widdess for their input and encouragement. Finally, special recognition needs to go to James Kippen, who has remained an inspiration long after ceasing to be my supervisor, Probir Kumar Mittra for his indefatigable help during my trips to Delhi, Katherine Schofield for her unwavering faith in my work, and my husband, Stephen Robinson, whose love and friendship sustain me.