Manipuri

Manipuri is a classical dance of Manipur in north-eastern India, recognised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Its centre is the Ras Lila, the dance-drama of Radha, Krishna and the gopis (cowherd women), in five forms: Maha Ras, Vasanta (Basanta) Ras, Kunja Ras, Nitya Ras and Diba Ras.

Dancers wear no ankle bells, so the footwork stays quiet. The style moves between lasya, the delicate mode linked with Radha and the gopis, and tandava, the vigorous mode linked with Krishna. Women in the Ras wear the potloi, with its stiff, mirror-worked skirt (kumin or kumil); Krishna wears a yellow dhoti and a peacock-feather crown. In Pung Cholom men dance while playing the pung, a barrel drum. It belongs to Sankirtana, the ritual singing, drumming and dancing that UNESCO has listed as intangible heritage since 2013.

Manipuri draws on Lai Haraoba, the older ritual festival of the Meitei people of the Manipur valley, which India's Centre for Cultural Resources and Training calls the basis of Manipur's stylised dances. Vaishnavism reached Manipur from the fifteenth century, and its Ras Lila took shape under King Bhagyachandra; most sources date the first Maha Ras to 1779. From 1919 Rabindranath Tagore brought Manipuri teachers to Santiniketan, and Bipin Singh (1918 to 2000) later trained the Jhaveri sisters.