Baredi Dance

Understand

Where Baredi Dance comes from

Baredi dance is a folk dance of Madhya Pradesh, performed by children and young dancers of the Sahariya and Gond tribal communities. The dance has been featured on the national stage as a children's item at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi — a Baredi performance by the South Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur was awarded the best school-children's item at Republic Day Parade 2018 by the then Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The form is one of the distinctive children's traditions of central India and is performed at village-level cultural programmes across the Sahariya and Gond heartland of Madhya Pradesh.

How it's practiced

Baredi dance is performed by groups of school-age children in colourful tribal dress, dancing in a circle or in rows to the rhythm of the dhol and the dholak. The movements are simple and repeatable, designed to be accessible to young dancers. Music is provided by percussion and the children's own singing. Costume is the colourful traditional dress of the Sahariya / Gond community — ghagra-choli for the girls, dhoti and turban for the boys — ornamented with traditional jewellery and beadwork. The dance is performed at Republic Day, at school cultural events and at community festivals.