Books on performing arts in India have either been of the coffee table variety or dense and too theoretical. Books on classical dance in particular have often reiterated the existing primers and treatises like the Natya Shastra or the Abhinaya Darpana. Dance photography of course is a visual delight and some books on classical dance try to get by with a profusion of glamorous images. For too long, not much was written about the performing arts, for the tradition was sceptical of the written word and relied mostly on oral narrative accounts.
Kathakali is one of the most celebrated forms of dance-theatre with a fairly recent history and tremendous international exposure. David Bolland, Phillip Zarelli and Sadanam Balakrishnan among many others have penned authoritative and informative books on this dance theatre tradition. (Bolland was quick to establish Shakespeare as contemporary of the four hundred years old Kathakali dance-theatre.) There is the very useful A Dictionary of Kathakali by K.P.S. Menon.