Celebrating Navratri: Pune steeped in tradition with a hint of fusion

Dance studios are merging bollywood and western dance steps with traditional dance forms

Navratri, the nine-day festival dedicated to worship goddess Durga, is one of the most important festivals for various communities. Garba is considered not just as a dance form, but also a prayer by these communities. The word ‘Garba’ comes from the word ‘Garbha’ (the womb), which is a form of dance where people dance in circles. Ras Garba comes from worship of lord Krishna and his dance with gopikas.

Hearing impaired children play Garba with a mascot of Mickey Mouse during an event organised by Niranjan Sevabhavi Sanstha on marking the beginning of the Navratri festival in Pune on Wednesday. (Pratham Gokhale/HT PHOTO)

The nine nights are also divided into three sections - the first section is for Durga, the goddess who destroyed an evil force represented by the demon Mahishasura; the second is for Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and the third is for Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and art.

Hetal Bharakhda, who runs a garba dance studio named Rangeela Raas Garba in Chinchwad for the last five years siad, “Earlier garba was played in traditional ways. However, now the youngsters wanted something different so I started teaching them new styles. Nowadays people don’t just go for basic garba or dandiya, there is a lot of influence of bollywood and western styles like in sanedo is the fusion of garba and bollywood steps.”

But there are others who feel that the essence of Garba is by sticking only to traditional styles. Taruna Rathod who has been teaching garba for the last ten years in Aundh said, “I learnt it from my grandmother and my mother and have been dancing ever since.” The idea of dancing garba is to offer prayer and evoke the goddess and inviting her to be part of your family, she said.

The Garba Studio also believes in re-establishing traditional Garba folk dance in fusion with a touch of modern dance. Founded in 2016 by a Software Engineer Kunal Shah and Architect Rajvi Mehta, the idea behind it's inception is to promote genuine traditional "Garba" folk dance of Gujarat. Both Kunal and Rajvi, being young and passionate about dance, starting from 30 students in August 2016, this studio taught more than 200 students in its first year and won many prizes in Pune's navratri events.

Due to the increasing demand, the studio has opened four branches in its second year at Kothrud, Pune Satara road, Kalyani Nagar and Vishtranwadi.This year, people were very much interested in learning fusion-garba which consists of salsa-garba fusion, bollywood garba, hip hop-garba, jazz-garba, disco dandiya. These forms of garba were experimental yet exciting, new and never seen before thus was the main attraction specially for kids and youths.