Bagurumba

Understand

Where Bagurumba comes from

Bagurumba (or Bagrumba) is the main traditional dance of the indigenous Bodo people of the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam and the surrounding areas of North East India. The dance is also called the 'butterfly dance' because its movements imitate the flight and flutter of butterflies and birds — a defining quality of the form. The dance has been practised by the Boro for over a thousand years, with its origins in the worship of nature and the celebration of the Boro cultural identity. Bagurumba is performed at the Bodo festivals (particularly the Baisagu and the harvest Magh or Bwisagu) and at cultural programmes of the Boro community.

How it's practiced

Bagurumba is performed exclusively by Bodo women in their distinctive dokhna dress (the colourful woven wrap-around cloth), with the jwmgra or fasra earring and the aronai head-cloth. The women dance in a line or circle, swinging their arms in time to the song, with the movements light and graceful, imitating the flight of butterflies and the sway of the surrounding vegetation. The accompanying instruments are the kham (a long cylindrical drum of wood and goat-skin), the sifung (a bamboo flute), the serja (a bowed string instrument of wood and animal-skin), the tharkha (a piece of split bamboo struck as a clapper) and the jota (an iron clapper). Costume is the colourful dokhna (the women wear it with the cholo-blouse-style top, the men in the dhoti-kurta).