Popular Folk Dances of India

Category :- All India Travel Tourism > Culture > Dance > Folk

The Jhumeila, the Chaunfla of Garhwal and the Hurkia Baul of Kumaon are seasonal dances. The Hurka Baul is performed during paddy and maize cultivation. On a fixed day, after preliminary ritual, the dance is performed in different fields by turns. The name of the dance is derived from hurka, the drum which constitutes the only musical accompaniment, and baul, the song. The singer narrates the story of battles and heroic deeds, the players enter from two opposite sides and enact the stories in a series of crisp movements. The farmers form two rows and move backwards in unison, while responding to the tunes of the song and the rhythm of the players.

A famous dance of Kumaon, Uttar Pradesh, is the Chholiya, performed during marriages. As the procession proceeds to the bride's house, men dancers, armed with swords and shields, dance spiritedly.

Amongst the occupational groups, the most enthusiastic dancers are the dhobis, the chamars and the ahirs. The dhobis dance to celebrate any significant occasion. They sing and dance on the occasion of a birth or marriage, and during Holi or Dussehra. There are Rasa Dances that revolve around the early life of Krishna.

The most interesting group of dances are the dances of the agricultural community which revolve round the annual seasons and which have a ritualistic and a functional dimension.

The Dalkhai dance is performed by women of some of the tribes in Sambalpur district in Orissa at the time of seasonal festivals. The dance is quite vigorous, and is accompanied by a set of particular musical instruments, played by men, of which the drummers often join the dance.

A dummy horse version is the Chaiti Ghorha, danced by a community of fisherfolk. The performers are all men. Apart from dancing, the performers sing, deliver homilies of sorts, and offer brief dramatic enactments peppered with wit and humour.

Dancing on stilts is fairly common among Gond children of Madhya Pradesh. The dance is popular in the Vindhyas and the Satpura ranges. This is danced in the rainy season; from June to August. The dancer, who has the balance on the stilts(Gendi) perform it even in water or on marshy surface. The dance is brisk, and ends with a dance in pyramid formation.

This is generally confined only to children and the attraction consists in balancing and clever footwork. In the villages where the wheat seedlings festival, Bhujalia, is celebrated, children prance on their gendis, collect near the village pond or the river in which bhujalias are to be immersed. Other frolicsome children, dancing to the accompaniment of musical instrument join the group and they dance together. Sometimes, womenfolk also join them, but they do not use stilts.

The Gendi season begins on the day of Bak Bandhi festival in the month of June and concludes after the Pola dance celebrations in the month of August.