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Music & Dance

Classical, folk, and modern performance traditions.

The arts of the sattra

The devotional performing arts that took shape within the monastic movement and were kept for centuries in its monasteries.

A solo performer in white-and-gold costume and a pointed crown raises both hands in a graceful gesture under a shaft of stage light against a dark background
Music & dance

Sattriya

The classical dance of the Vaishnava sattras, founded by Sankardev, and one of India's recognised classical dance forms.

Four men in white dhotis and white turbans playing two-headed khol drums mid-stride across the floor of a sattra prayer hall in Majuli, devotional paintings of deities mounted on the blue rear wall behind them
Music & dance

Borgeet

The 'great songs' composed by Sankardev and Madhavdev, the devotional lyric core of the neo-Vaishnava musical tradition.

A bhaona stage scene at night: costumed actors in elaborate jewelled armour, crowns and painted faces clash mid-fight, one warrior raising a club, others grappling, all in spangled silver-and-gold dress with mirror-work, garlands and headdresses
Music & dance

Bhaona

The devotional theatre of the neo-Vaishnava sattras: the staging of Sankardev's Ankia Naat one-act plays.

The art of the open ground

Against the sacred stands the secular: the exuberant folk dance of the spring festival, the most public and best-loved art of the land.

A posed group under a tree: two young men in cream kurtas and red-bordered gamosa each carrying a dhol slung at the waist, flanking two women in cream-and-red Bihu dress with hands raised to their hair, while a third man kneeling in front blows a buffalo-horn pepa
Music & dance

Bihu Dance

The exuberant spring folk dance of the Bihu festival, performed to the dhol, pepa, and the Bihu song repertoire.

Music & Dance · Storied Assam