The 50th Khajuraho Dance Festival

A Indian Classical Dance festival with the backdrop of the Khajuraho Kandarya Mahadeva Temple – was a long wish-list. Not that I was a big fan of Indian Classical dance, but the whole concept seemed very appealing to me.

Khajuraho is not easy to reach from South India. There are no direct trains or flights. So going to Khajuraho has been an elusive dream since long. This time when we made up our minds to go, the main question we tried to answer was which days of the festival do we attend? This year the festival was from 20th to 26th February, 2024.

The dates were announced, but the day wise scheduled was no where to be found. When I posed my conundrum to Moumita, she gave a simple answer – Let’s attend all days. Attending dance festival for 7 days? I bogged down by multiple questions – Will it be worth it? Won’t it be boring? Oh! and what about leaves?

Moumita said – We are going all this way from Bangalore, why to have regrets? What will disaster will happen if you take 2-3 days more leave? It all made sense.

As per our plan, we would were scheduled to reach on 20th but a bit late in the evening. And our return train tickets to Bhopal was on 26th Night. I assumed, that first day usually would be speech and all. What’s the point of attending that.

Little did I know that Guinness World Record setting Kathak dance performance where 1500 dancers would dance, would be held on the first day of the festival 😦 Missed it.

Anyways, no regrets… Those 5 days of the dance festival was truly memorable.

Hats off to the Madhya Pradesh Government for conducting this festival every year… They are doing an extraordinary job in preserving Indian Classical Dance and Music tradition.

The schedule:

Few photos from the performances:

Us:

Layshala:

Another awesome arrangement. Layshala was a setup where up close, dance exponents explained and demonstrated different nuances of their respective dance forms. We were not able to attend all of them. These were in the afternoons.

We had to come back to hotel in the afternoons for giving our 5 year old some rest, and sleep. But the days we attended Layshala, it gave me goosebumps. I understood one thing, Indian Classical Dance should be seen like this – up close.