Dharohar folk dance

When I reached Udaipur, almost everyone in the hostel was talking about tickets to a program called Dharohar folk dance and how they had to wait for 3 days to get a ticket. It was conducted in a place called Bagore Ki Haveli. It was performed daily between 7pm to 8pm. I did not have a lot of issues booking it as I was staying in Udaipur for more than a week and was not constrained on time. 😃

It program was structured to cover various dance forms from all over Rajasthan. Each dance form was performed for 5-10 mins. It gave a glimpse into the dance forms and it was enjoyable.

The first dance was with metallic fire pots on the heads. It is called Chari dance and it’s performed in northern Rajasthan. They did some acts of sitting down, bending forward etc with the pots in the head.

The next one was a Gorbandh dance. It’s a dance with camels decorated. Camels are decorated elaborately during the Gorbandh festival. There are many specific songs for the Gorbandh festival too. See the decorated camel behind the dancers. 😄

Next was a stage play depicting the fight b/w Amba and Mahisasur. It’s only performed by men, like Shakespeare plays 😃. It’s performed during the monsoon season. In the play, the man playing Amba took burning coal from the fire with his mouth and threw it down. It was a little crazy.

Next was a Terah thali dance. It is a dance performed sitting. They never stand up. It’s performed with sounds from vessels and and percussions.

While I have heard about puppet shows and seen it on TV I have never seen it in real. I really liked the puppet show. It combined with background songs and dialogues made it very funny. It’s the olden days cartoons.

Next was the most popular Ghoomar dance. It has gotten popular after Padmavat movie. The dance is only performed by royal people. However now, everyone is special and everyone is royal. 😬

The last one was Bhavai dance which is a dance with many pots on the head. It is said that since people used to travel long distances in getting water on their heads, a dance form evolved from there. It was fantastic.

She walked on broken glass with so many pots on the head. Dangerous stuff. It was strange that the audience did not cheer or clap but expressed disgust and wanted her to stop. It made me feel that the modern audience (including me) do not like these walking on fire glass stuff. They want non-torturous acts.

It was a good experience overall. A little longer would have been boring. A little shorter would be incomplete. It was all the dance forms (obviously not in its best shape) given to the audience in a capsule format. If someone is really interested it will pique their interest to learn and know further. For others it is an hour well spent. I wish other states in India also had such programs in their important centres where people can experience their heritage in a modern way.