The technique of Kathak today is characterized by fast rhythmic footsteps, accompanied by music, where the dance movements include numerous pirouettes executed at lightning speed and ending in statuesque poses. The interpretative portion, based on tales of Radha and Krishna and other mythological tradition, contain subtle gestures and facial expressions. Here the torso movements are used frequently; only the shoulder line changes its angle, which appears to be the manipulation of the upper torso. This treatment gives the dance style its peculiar fluidity and some its characteristic torso postures. The shoulder line and its deflection (with one shoulder depressed and the other raised) are used at its best in the execution of movements known as the Kasak masak.

The movements of the arms are definite but they do not make any single geometrical pattern. In the basic stance, the dancer holds a variation of the hamsasya hasta above the head, the second arm is extended side-ways or in front and is slightly rounded at the waist level again in the hamsasya hasta. In this basic stance with swastika foot (crossing at the back), the right hand and the holdings of Radha on his left side represent the mukuta of Krishna by the other. There are many hastas known to this dance style, where the mushti, sikhara, hamsasya, chandrakala and the alapadma hastas are the common ones.

The characteristic feature of the dance style is its jumps and pirouettes. There is only a release from gravity, usually in place and there is not attempt on the part of the dancer to cover space forward or backward through the process of the jump. In the bhramaris, the Kathak dancer maintains the axis of the body by using one foot as a centre and the other foot to make a circle. The static foot represents the centre and the dynamic foot is the arm of a compass drawing swiftly the circumference of a circle. Face movements are limited but great emphasis is placed on the movements of the eyebrows. The use of the eyebrows for the lasyanga is a characteristic feature of this dance style. The horizontal, side-to-side movement of the neck is used most frequently in Kathak.

Kathak is two-dimensional in character. In the dance, there is only a front-back treatment of space. Even when pirouettes are executed, it is long a central vertical median from which, no shifts or deflections take place. The weight of the body in the initial stances of the dance is equally and the knees are not flexed. The feet, in this position, are invariably in the Sama pada and the complex footwork can be executed precisely only through a delicate balance of weight on the flat foot. When the Kathak dancer moves in front, she does not place the anchita foot forward (hell on the ground) or the kunchita foot (toe on the ground) she places the flat foot forward lightly, carrying the weight of the body along rather than shifting the weight shortly.

The Kathak dancers alphabet and vocabulary of dance movements are not built on the principle of either foot contacts or leg extensions or knee flexions. Nor is the rhythm built on the principle of weaving patterns in circles, semi-circles or figures of 8 of the entire body. The flow is directly conditioned by the metrical cycles (talas) on which rhythmic variations can be executed. Tattakara in Kathak is the ability of the dancer to execute a variety of rhythmic patterns (jatis) on a basic metrical cycle (tala).