A dance workshop in Mumbai to introduce children to Indian folk dance forms

It may be easy for your children to groove to some of the western or the latest Bollywood beats. But how many kids really know how to perform Indian folk dance? A six-day folk dance workshop is taking place for children in the city. Children between the age group of 8 to 14 years will be introduced to the basics of folk dances from Gujarat and Rajasthan. The workshop will be conducted by dancer Kalyanni Vrajesh. 

Kalyanni believes that she will be exposing children to something that they are not very used to. “Children are taught classical dance forms in schools but they rarely get the opportunity to know a regional folk dance. Not all western influences are bad. But we in India need to do more for preserving our culture and art forms,” she says. 

She believes that it’s very important for children to understand the nature of a folk dance before they start performing. “Folk dance is not a pretty number you can groove to. You have to understand the regional flavour of the dance to perform it,” she says. 

For example, a folk dance from the North-Eastern region makes use of bamboos because bomboos are abundant in the region. The meaning of the term Garba, the Gujarati folk dance, is actually matka, a water carrying vessel. It’s a symbolic representation of a baby and people from the region like to show reverence to the goddess by dancing with the matka.  

The Ghumar dance of Rajasthan was performed largely during the marriage seasons by the Rajwadi clan. It came to be called so because of the women who dance wearing the ghagaras. These ghagaras used to flare and attain a balloon-like state, when they twirled and went in circles. 

The workshop will be held till June 6 at Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA.