Art & Culture · Topic 9 of 16
Regional folk dance, folk/Sanskrit theatre and the main Indian puppetry traditions
The Basics
Classical dance, as the previous note left it, had moved from temple and court into modern proscenium theatres. Texts and academies had codified it. Folk dance tells a different story. It grew in villages, tribal settlements and pastoral communities. No single text governs it. No central academy certifies it.
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Punjab has two main harvest seasons, rabi and kharif. The rabi crop, mainly wheat, is harvested in spring. This wheat harvest is celebrated at Baisakhi, in mid-April. Baisakhi has traditionally been Punjab's biggest rural festival. A good harvest meant security and plenty for the year ahead.
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In Gujarat, autumn brings the nine nights of Navratri, a festival honouring the goddess Durga in her nine forms. Villages and towns mark these nights with group dancing around a central object, turning worship into a shared community dance.
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Chhau is a masked martial dance performed in the eastern belt of India, across Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The word Chhau is believed to come from "Chhaya", meaning shadow. It uses vigorous, combat-like movements derived from martial arts. These movements narrate stories from mythology, especially episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Some performances also depict natural themes. These include Sarpa Nritya, the serpent dance, and Mayur Nritya, the peacock dance.
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Bihu is a popular folk dance of Assam.
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Lavani is a vigorous dance-song form of Maharashtra, traditionally performed by women.
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Ghoomar is a women's folk dance of Rajasthan, especially the Marwar region.
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The north-eastern hills are home to many tribal communities. Each has its own language, festival calendar and dance tradition. These were shaped by hill terrain, shifting cultivation and clan life, rather than by royal courts.
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By the time classical Sanskrit drama flourished, Indian courts and festivals already combined music, dance and recitation in performance. This combination needed a rulebook.
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Nautanki is a North Indian folk theatre form, mentioned in Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari.
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Ramlila is a folk theatre of Uttar Pradesh.
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Parsi theatre flourished in western India from the 1850s to the 1920s.
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Indian puppetry has four broad types: string, shadow, rod and glove.
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Kathputli is the string puppet tradition of Rajasthan; the puppets have no legs.
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Ravanchhaya is the shadow puppetry tradition of Odisha.
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Pavakoothu is the traditional glove puppet show of Kerala.
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