Tradition · masked martial dance
Chhau, Seraikela and Mayurbhanj
Also known as Chhau, Chhau dance, Seraikella Chhau, Purulia Chhau, Chhau — Seraikela, Mayurbhanj, Purulia
Three related masked dances of the Jharkhand–Odisha–Bengal border, built on the movements of weapons drill, performed at the Chaitra Parva spring festival. Seraikela and Purulia use masks and Mayurbhanj does not; Seraikela was a princely court form, Purulia a village one.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 22.700, 85.930
Worth knowing
Seraikela Chhau was choreographed and danced by the ruling family themselves in the early twentieth century, and toured Europe in 1938 — a princely state exporting its own dance. Purulia Chhau, a few hundred kilometres away, remained a loud village form with enormous masks and acrobatic combat, and was only noticed by outsiders in the 1960s.
Connections (3)
- AnalogueSattriya, Majuli
Both are masked or semi-masked dance-dramas of the eastern belt that survived inside an institution rather than a market: Sattriya inside Majuli's monasteries, where Shankaradeva made performance part of the daily liturgy, and Seraikela Chhau inside a princely court that trained and danced it itself. Where the institution went, the form went with it — the sattras still teach Sattriya, and Seraikela's court dance has had to be maintained by the state since the princely order ended.
- AnalogueMahari and Odissi, Puri
Seraikela Chhau and the Mahari tradition at Puri are both eastern dance forms that lived inside an institution rather than a market — a princely court in one case and a temple establishment in the other — and both were nearly extinguished when the institution went. Odissi as now danced is a mid-twentieth-century reconstruction assembled from Mahari practice, Gotipua boys' dancing and temple sculpture, and Seraikela Chhau survives on state support.
- AnalogueJadopaṭiā scroll painting
Chhau and the Jadopatia scrolls are the two performance traditions of this plateau that cross community lines to do a job: a masked martial dance performed at the spring new year by castes who trained as soldiers, and a painted scroll narrated to a bereaved household by painters who are not of that household's community. Neither is a temple art and neither is on a classical list.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Chhau”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage nomination files where the practice is listed.
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