Folk Dances of India: State-wise List with Festivals

Folk dance is the dance of the harvest, the village fair and the festival night. It is learnt by watching an older dancer rather than from a written grammar, and it belongs to a community rather than to a soloist. For an aspirant it is one of the most rewarding corners of the Art and Culture section, because the question almost always takes the same shape: a dance is named and you give its state, or a state is named and you pick its dance. These notes fix those pairs, add the festival and the instrument that go with each form, and separate folk dance from the classical dance that paper setters slip into the options.

Folk dance, tribal dance and classical dance

A classical dance follows a written grammar, chiefly the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni, and is learnt from a guru in a fixed repertoire. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognises eight such forms: Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam and Sattriya. A folk dance has no written code. It is tied to a season, a harvest or a deity, it is danced in a group, and it survives because a village keeps dancing it. A tribal dance is the folk dance of one tribe, such as the Gaur dance of the Maria of Bastar. The commonest trap in the paper is a folk theatre form offered as a classical dance: Yakshagana of Karnataka, Bhavai of Gujarat and Rajasthan, Nautanki of Uttar Pradesh, Bidesia of Bihar and Tamasha of Maharashtra are all folk theatre, not classical dance. Chhau stands between the two and is usually called semi-classical.

State-wise folk dances you must memorise

The north-east and the Himalaya

The north-eastern states supply a set of questions of their own, and they repeat. Bihu is the dance of Assam, danced at Rongali Bihu in April to the dhol, the pepa made from a buffalo horn and the gogona. Cheraw of Mizoram is the bamboo dance, in which dancers step between long bamboo staves clapped together in rhythm. Hojagiri of Tripura is danced by Reang women who balance on an earthen pitcher with a bottle and a lamp on the head. Singhi Chham of Sikkim is the snow lion dance of the Kanchenjunga. Bardo Chham belongs to the Sherdukpen of Arunachal Pradesh, and Chang Lo, also called Sua Lua, to the Chang of Nagaland. In Meghalaya the Khasi hold the Ka Shad Nongkrem thanksgiving dance at Smit, while the Garo hold Wangala, the hundred drums festival that closes the harvest. Manipur adds the martial Thang-Ta and the drum dance Pung Cholom, with Lai Haraoba as its old ritual festival.

Folk forms inscribed by UNESCO

Several Indian folk traditions are on the UNESCO list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and the year is asked. Ramman, the religious festival and theatre of Chamoli in Uttarakhand, was inscribed in 2009. The year 2010 added three: Chhau, the masked dance of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha; Kalbeliya, the songs and dances of the Kalbeliya snake charmer community of Rajasthan; and Mudiyettu, the ritual theatre of Kerala. Sankirtana, the ritual singing and drumming of Manipur, followed in 2013, and Garba of Gujarat was added in 2023.

Festivals, instruments and communities

• Harvest and new year dances: Bhangra at Baisakhi, Bihu at Rongali Bihu, Wangala after the Garo harvest.
• Navratri dances: Garba and Dandiya Raas of Gujarat, danced round the garbo lamp.
• Balancing dances: Charkula of Braj, Matki of Malwa, Karagattam of Tamil Nadu, Bhavai and Chari of Rajasthan.
• Martial dances: Chholiya of Uttarakhand, Thang-Ta of Manipur, Paika of Odisha and Jharkhand.
• Ritual dances in which the performer becomes the deity: Theyyam and Mudiyettu of Kerala.
• Community-linked dances: Kalbeliya of the snake charmers, Dollu Kunitha of the Kuruba, Panthi of the Satnami, Hojagiri of the Reang.