Dance has been a function of man's life,
even from the primitive to the most cultured community.
Perhaps before man began to speak and to paint,
he began to dance. While the primitive man combined
reality with deity, the cultured dance for pleasure
and for the expression of art.
India, with its vast variety of races and conditions
has been a veritable treasure house of dance
forms for untold centuries. Most of the prevailing
systems of Indian classical dancing which are
governed by elaborate techniques and shown high
degree of refinement, have had their origin
in the dances of the common people, which still
survive in as virile state as ever in tribal
hamlets and peasant huts.
The Indian folk dance is simple without being
naive, for behind its simplicity lie both profundity
of conception and a directness of expression
which are of great artistic value. The concept
of portraying emotion is generally speaking
foreign to folk dance and what is expressed
is natural and original. What is important here
is not the grace of the individual dancer or
the virtuosity of the isolated prose, but the
total effect of the overwhelming buoyancy of
spirit, and the eloquent, effortless ease with
which it is expressed.
The Folk, tribal and ritual dance in India
is a world which found its own roots, moorings,
nourishment, growth, flowering and maturity.
It has yielded generation after generation of
performers. Much of what represents the Indian
folk, tribal and ritual dance tradition can
be said to belong not to today, but to yesterday.
It has intimate relationship with functions
of daily life; food-gathering, harvesting, rites,
rituals and beliefs. It has the capacity for
ever renewing and rejuvenating themselves while
maintaining a continuity with antiquity and
tradition.
The staggering multiplicity of races, of linguistic
and ethnic groups, of religions, and of social
organization and structuring in India, account
for an incomparable richness of folk music and
dance forms. Here forms have survived, whose
origins can be traced back to pre-historic times;
new forms have grown up in other places and
have continued in spite of many historical and
sociological changes.
The tribal belt, which runs through all parts
of India, are creators of the Tribal Dances
of India. Dance is an integral part of their
life, daily and annual, historical and contemporary.
Secondly, there is peasant or village India
and these agricultural communities are the creators
of the Folk dances, ritualistic, agricultural
and seasonal. A third special group, who are
part of the village community, but also close
to the townships, served as craftsmen, entertainers,
musicians and dancers, have been the chief repositories
of the oral tradition. Thus folk comprises the
common people, both inhabiting in the urban
and the rural areas, and the folk art is common
man's art.
So they dance, the folk and the tribals; in
the villages and forests. They are everywhere.
The rhythm of the dance brings them together.
Not trained and not professional, and not dancers
by design, they continue to dance, as they have
done for centuries.
Generally people nourish a wrong notion as
to the word 'folk' and mean folk art is village
art. But folk comprises the common people, both
inhabiting in the urban and the rural areas,
and so folk art is common man's art.