Dandiya Raas

Understand

Where Dandiya Raas comes from

Dandiya Raas (also simply Raas) is the socio-religious folk dance that traditionally closes each night of the Navaratri festival in Gujarat. The word raas comes from the Sanskrit rasa, the aesthetic Indian concept of emotion and feeling — Kapila Vatsyayan argued that rasa theory gives Indian arts their underlying unity. The dance is rooted in the Vaishnava mythology of Krishna's raas leela with the gopis of Vrindavan, though in Gujarat it is performed in a partnered-stick form rather than as the Manipuri-style circular raas leela. Dandiya Raas is also performed in the Marwar region of Rajasthan, and has since the 1990s been taken up by the Gujarati diaspora as a competitive, collegiate dance form.

How it's practiced

Men and women traditionally play dandiya raas in pairs, with the group arranged in two facing lines that move clockwise: each person steps forward to tap sticks with their partner, then moves on to the next partner down the line. The rhythm is an eight-beat time cycle called kaherva — own sticks, partner's right, partner's left, own sticks, partner's right — repeated as dancers progress down the line and turn back at the end. Sticks (dandiyas) are 40-50 cm long, painted and decorated; music is provided by dhol, dholak and sometimes shehnai. Costume is the same chaniya choli / kediyu as for garba.