Bhopal: The seven-day 47th Khajuraho dance festival will begin with performance of Bharatanatyam danseuse Geeta Chandran and her troupe and kathak exponent Deepak Maharaj on Saturday.
The festival will be organised in Khajuraho temple complex after a gap of 44 years. The event was first organised in 1975 in the temple complex. The culture department was asked to move the festival outside the temple complex. After refusal of permission, the venue of the festival was moved to space outside the temple complex and a replica of the façade of a temple formed the background of the stage.
The culture department continued to pursue its request for permission to hold the event in temple complex. The permission was granted this year. Aishwarya Warrier, Satriya couple, Aligunjan Kalita Mudliar, Chandrani Kalit Ojha, Aruna Mohanty, Sulagna, Rajdeep Banerjee, Vinod Kevin Bachchan ,Vrinda Chadda, Saurabh- Gaurav Mishra, Piyal Bhattacharya, Anita Sharma, Priya Shrivastava, Purnashree Raut, Avijit Das, Bharati Shivaji, Maitreyi Pahadi, Satyanarayan Raju and Ayana Mukherjee will present dance from February 21-25.
Manipuri group dance by Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Akademi and Odissi and Bharatnatyam dance by Arya Nande and Poornima Ashok and troupe will be presented on concluding day of fest.
Besides dance recitals, art mart (a fair of fine arts), Hunar (a fair of indigenous art), Kalavarta (discussion on various dimension culture), Chalchitra (films on artistes and art tradition) and Samishti (workshop and exhibition on terracotta and ceramics) will also be part of the event.
The state tourism department will collaborate with Ustad Allauddin Khan Sangeet Evam Kala Academy, which is organising the fest to introduce the tourists attending the fest to culture, heritage, traditions and food of the Bundelkhand region. The tourism department will organise heritage walks, e-biking and camping events and visits to villages for the tourists.
