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Assam to attempt world record for largest Bihu dance performance: Sarma
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said from next year, the state government will also organize a seven-day Bohag Bihu festival from April 14 to 20 at Guwahati and Sivasagar to popularise Bihu across the country and abroad.
GUWAHATI:The Assam government will next month organise a Bihu dance performance with 11,000 participants in an effort to create a world record as the largest dance performance at a single venue in the folk-dance category, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Tuesday
The event will be held at a stadium in Guwahati on April 14, the first day of the Assamese New Year and the start of the seven-day-long Bohag Bihu festivities, and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, governors and chief ministers of most states and representatives from G20 and South East Asian countries.
“Our attempt will be to organize the largest Bihu dance performance at a single venue and make it to the Guinness Book of World Records in the folk-dance category. The previous such record is held by a folk-dance performance by around 9,000 participants at Kullu in Himachal Pradesh,” Sarma said.
The state government has already got preliminary clearance for the event from Guinness officials and a 15-minute video of the performance approved by noted Bihu performers has been sent to them. Preparations including training of the master trainers for the event are underway at present in Guwahati.
“The event will have participants from all districts of the state. Once the participants, aged between 15 and 35 years, are selected by district authorities, the master trainers will train them at small workshops across the state. They would reach Guwahati on April 8 for the dress rehearsal and the final event,” said Sarma.
Each participant will be paid ₹10,500 and will have to arrange the traditional costume to take part in the event.
“This event was planned to popularize Bihu outside Assam. For a long time, there was a demand that we need to take Bihu to the international level. Apart from setting a world record, we want to take Bihu to the world stage,” said Sarma.
Sarma said that the state government will from next year organize a seven-day Bohag Bihu festival from April 14 to 20 at Guwahati and Sivasagar to popularise Bihu across the country and abroad. There are also plans to organize mass events for Bagrumba, a traditional dance of Bodos-Assam’s largest tribe, and Sattriya, a classical dance form of the state.
The chief minister asked Bihu celebration committees not to collect money from people to organize the events that take place between mid-April and mid-May across the state, adding that the state will provide ₹1.5 lakh to Bihu committees that are more than 10 years old.
Sarma added that the state government would launch a campaign against sale of traditional garments such as ‘gamocha’, ‘mekhela-chador’ and ‘aronai’ made in powerlooms to boost the income of 1.2 million traditional weavers of the state and asked traders not to buy such garments from outside Assam.
