Bhopal: Seven tribal children of Manthan Art and Education and Welfare, Itarsi, Madhya Pradesh (MP) will perform Gond tribal dance Danda at Dadra Nagar Haveli on January13 and 14. The troupe including Sonia Uike, Rupesh Sayam, Hemvati , Riya Saryam, Abhay Ebne, Suhani Tekam and Nikita Pal will leave for Dadra Nagar Haveli on January 12 to take part in a three-day event, organised by Adivasi Sanskritik Parishad to preserve tribal art and culture.
Over 18 teams across country will participate in the event. The children in the age group of 9-14 years will perform on song ‘mai pan ja re dama do…’ The dance is performed by Gond tribe community of Madhya Pradesh mainly Seoni and Balaghat. They are practising under the guidance of choreographer and MAEW secretary Ajay Mehra.
This is the fourth state where the children are going to performafter having performed in Delhi, Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh last year. They have performed in various events, held across the state like Bhopal and Panchmarhi. Mehra told Free Press, “We have been practicing the fest for last one week.
We have performed the same dance in other festivals too and got response from audience. We started practice for this event from April 26 last.” “It is very challenging for us to teach dance to the children. No doubt, the children are very talented and active and they want to learn. But their parents don’t want because they demand money. Sometimes they don’t allow their children to perform the festivals but on my request they permitted,” said the theatre actor
He further said, “We didn’t get any financial support neither from government nor private organisations. We have spend its all expenditures including train fare ourselves to participate in these festival. So, from where we should pay to children,” adding that “besides dance, we also taught painting and music. We have been teaching 60 children of two villages of free of cost for two years.”
