AnandhaKondaattam

Dhunuchi Naach, also called Dhunuchi Nritya, literally “dance of the incense burner,” is a devotional folk dance of Bengali Hindus performed with a lit censer during the autumn worship of the goddess Durga, Durga Puja.

The dance is popularly explained through the legend of Durga’s battle with the demon Mahishasura, an episode drawn from the Devi Mahatmya, a Sanskrit text within the sixth-century Markandeya Purana. Some retellings hold that her devotees kept dhunuchis burning to fortify her through the fight, which she is said to have won on the tenth day after nine nights of combat. The Devi Mahatmya itself makes no mention of a dance or an incense burner, so this connection survives only in oral and popular retelling rather than in the text — and in practice the dance is not confined to that tenth day alone.

Fieldwork among priests in North Bengal situates the ritual within Bengali Shaktism, the worship of the goddess as Shakti, or divine power, recording the belief that the dhunuchi restores the goddess’s energy much as the gods are said to have once revived her with fire and fragrance, and that the rising smoke serves a purifying function for both the ground and the devotee.

Dhunuchis are traditionally thrown in clay, with a large flared cavity and one handle, two opposing handles, or none at all. Brass and silver versions, fitted with a longer handle to blunt the heat, are also common. Potters in districts such as Nadia and Bankura produce them at scale ahead of the festival.

The tradition covers at least three distinguishable forms:

• Dhunuchi Arati — the priest’s prescribed sequence before the idol, following a fixed pattern of passes, recorded in one village as four at the feet, two at the navel, three around the face, and seven around the whole body.
• Dhunuchi Naach — the freer, participatory dance performed by ordinary devotees and, at larger pujas, contested in organised competitions.
• Dhuno Pora (or Dhuno Porano) — a related household rite, generally performed by married women, in which three lit earthen plates of dhuno are balanced on wet clay pads, one on the head and one on each palm.

Both the arati and the naach are danced to the dhak, a large leather-strung drum played by hereditary drummers called dhaki, with the metal gong kasor, a bell, and ululation filling out the sound. Performers traditionally wear dhoti and kurta if male, or a garad saree — plain white silk bordered in red — if female, often with a thin cotton towel, gamcha, over the shoulder.

The dance is described in several sources as having been, for most of its history, performed chiefly by men before the idol, with women’s participation in the public, competitive form a comparatively recent development; one field study found women dancing freely within the household but largely absent from committee-run public pujas.

Skilled dancers may carry as many as three lit dhunuchis at once, one in each hand and a third gripped between the teeth. Since Indian independence in 1947, urban clubs are said to have begun holding formal competitions, typically on the evenings of Ashtami and Navami, judged on stamina, synchrony with the dhak, and inventiveness of movement. The dance recurs across several of the festival’s closing evenings rather than on the tenth day alone.

There are no official records as to when Dhunuchi Naach traditions began in Singapore.

Dhunuchi Naach remains one of the highlights of the evening programme at Singapore’s Durga Puja celebrations, performed today both at the Bengali Association Singapore’s pujo and at a separate celebration organised by the Singapore Indian Puja Association at the Singapore Sindhi Association, where it is likewise counted among the daily evening aarti’s central rites. As in Bengal, the dance continues to be carried forward as a living element of the pujo calendar, adjusted each year by the community that performs it.

According to a tradition recorded among Rajasthani communities, the Kachhwaha clan of Rajputs who ruled Jaipur once fought the Bhils for control of the region, and after the Bhils’ eventual defeat the two communities settled into a quiet coexistence. It is out of this reconciliation, according to the same tradition, that the Rajput aristocracy is said to have taken up Ghoomar from the Bhils, after which the dance passed into the hands of the women of the royal court and, over time, into wider Rajasthani society.

Ghoomar is closely tied to devotional and domestic ritual. It is said to have been performed originally in worship of the goddess Saraswati, and it continues to mark occasions such as Holi, the Gangaur festival dedicated to the goddess Gauri, and Teej, which welcomes the onset of the monsoon. In Rajput and allied households, a newly married bride is expected to perform Ghoomar on being welcomed into her husband’s home, joined in turn by the women of the household, both young and old, who continue dancing into the late hours of the night.

The dance is not uniform across Rajasthan. Its regional variants are distinguished chiefly by tempo and the intensity of limb movement:

• Udaipur Ghoomar — livelier and more musical, reflecting the influence of the neighbouring Garba of Gujarat.
• Jodhpur Ghoomar — characterised by jerkier, more intense movement of the limbs.
• Kota-Bundi Ghoomar — set to fast, catchy melodies and regarded as the liveliest of the regional forms.

In areas of neighbouring Haryana that border Rajasthan, the dance is performed by unmarried girls to the Kehrwa rhythmic cycle at festivals including Holi, the Gangor puja and Teej, often as two facing rows of dancers who sing verses addressed to a sister-in-law.

The dancers’ attire is central to the performance. Women wear a choli, a fitted blouse, and a full or knee-length ghagra or chaniya, a voluminous pleated skirt, traditionally in cotton and, on more prosperous or ceremonial occasions, silk or chiffon. A translucent or opaque veil worked with mirror-work or gota lace covers the head, and the outfit is completed with kundan jewellery, mirror-inlaid necklaces and silver ornaments. The quantity of zari embroidery and silverwork on a dancer’s outfit has traditionally signalled the wealth of her family. Red and green are considered particularly auspicious. By some accounts, achieving the ghagra’s characteristic volume and flare can call for as much as twenty metres of fabric.

The dance itself is built around the ghoomna, the pivoting spin from which it takes its name, performed by a circle of women moving in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions while clapping their hands and occasionally joining them together. There is traditionally no fixed time limit, and a performance may continue for hours or run through the night as the tempo builds. Contemporary staged performances are commonly presented with a group of between fifteen and twenty women, accompanied by Rajasthani folk instruments including the dhol, nagada, shehnai and harmonium.

There are no official records as to when Ghoomar traditions began in Singapore.

In India, Ghoomar has in recent years moved from a domestic and courtly practice into a matter of state cultural policy. On 19 November 2025, Rajasthan’s Department of Tourism, Art and Culture, staged the first Ghoomar Festival, held simultaneously at all seven of the state’s divisional headquarters — Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Ajmer, Udaipur, Kota and Bharatpur — with the state-level event centred on the football ground of Vidyadhar Nagar Stadium in Jaipur.

Free public workshops, including a six-day programme at Jaipur’s Jawahar Kala Kendra, were organised beforehand, and participants across all seven divisions performed to a specially composed, synchronised soundtrack. Official rules required participating groups to maintain circular formations and rhythmic synchrony throughout, on the grounds that these qualities symbolise the unity and continuity of the tradition. At the Jaipur leg, 6,100 women performed Ghoomar together in a single synchronised formation, a gathering subsequently recorded in the Asia Book of Records.

Jikkattam, increasingly rendered Sikkattam in present-day Pollachi speech, is considered by some to be a subsidiary form of the older drumming tradition of Thudumbattam. Regional press groups it among the Tamils’ traditional group dances alongside Kavadi Attam, Mayilattam and Karagattam.

The name is commonly traced to the sharp, repeated “jik jik” sound of the tholkaruvi, the dance’s principal drum. A further, unconfirmed account holds that the name may instead derive from sikkai, a musical form referenced in the Silappathikaram, though no independent textual reference naming Jikkattam by that term has been located.

The precise historical roots remain the subject of ongoing research. No textual reference to the dance has been located from the Sangam or epic periods of Tamil literature; what is documented instead comes from twentieth- and twenty-first-century ethnographic and press accounts.

By 2025, artists were calling on the Tamil Nadu government for formal recognition and support to sustain the tradition.

A Jikkattam troupe requires a minimum of fifteen performers to stage a full performance. It is led by a kuzhu thalaivar, or group leader, known in some accounts as the annavi, who directs the tempo and cues transitions with a whistle. Performers number at least ten to fifteen, are drawn almost exclusively from men, and are arranged in lines.

The ensemble’s core instrument is the thudumbu, known locally in Pollachi as the Pollachi Kumba, typically played alongside an uruttu, a barrel-shaped drum used in roughly equal proportion, and in some present-day troupes maracas. Wider accounts additionally list the kanjiru, nagari, jalra, tappu, kol (a stick), and the whistle used by the troupe leader. Performers wear brightly coloured costume with ankle bells and play their instruments positioned between the legs while dancing.

Jikkattam is danced at a fast tempo from beginning to end while remaining, by most accounts, graceful. Performances are not bound to a fixed length and can run for more than two hours. The form comprises several distinct routines, described in one 2025 news report as four in number:

• Jigur Attam — performers hold a pagalai and a handkerchief, and wear a khol, or varisai.
• Oyilattam — a related dance of grace performed in rows to handkerchiefs and ankle bells, native to southern Tamil Nadu and especially prevalent in Kongu Nadu.
• Themmangu — a further routine sharing steps in common with Jikkattam’s broader repertoire.

Several colleges in the Coimbatore region now offer instruction in Jikkattam.

There are no official records as to when Jikkattam traditions began in Singapore.

In Singapore, many present-day stagings of Jikkattam now pair the traditional instruments with recorded drum tracks, even as dancers continue to move in sync with the troupe leader’s whistle cues.

Back in the Pollachi region from which the art form originates, its practitioners describe an uncertain future, sustaining the tradition on a part-time basis alongside daily-wage work, and appealing publicly for government recognition to help it survive into the next generation.

Kalaripayattu is native to Kerala and combines armed and unarmed combat, ritual and traditional healing.

By legend, the sage-warrior Parashurama, revered as the founder of Kerala, established the first of 108 kalaris across the land and trained twenty-one gurus in the destruction of enemies. The word kalari also surfaces independently in Tamil Sangam literature of roughly the third century BCE to the second century CE — in the Purananuru (verses 225, 237, 245 and 356) and the Akananuru (verses 34, 231 and 293) — but there it describes a battlefield or combat arena rather than a distinct art.

Some historians connect the crystallisation of Kalaripayattu as a discipline to the prolonged eleventh-century wars between the Chera and Chola kingdoms.

The tradition suffered a severe setback in 1804, when the British banned its practice in Kerala after the Cotiote War, a rebellion led by the Keralite ruler Pazhassi Raja. Several Gurukkals, or masters, are credited with preserving the art in secret through the ban, and a public revival began in Thalassery in the 1920s.

Instruction traditionally proceeds through four stages:

• Meythari (or Meipayattu) — exaggerated body-conditioning exercises intended to make “the body an eye.”
• Kolthari — wooden weapons, such as the kettukari, a long staff roughly the height of the practitioner, and the curved otta.
• Ankathari — metal weapons: the valum parichayum (sword and shield), the kuntham (a spear tipped with a metal head around one to one and a half feet long), and the urumi, a flexible double-edged sword worn coiled at the waist like a belt and considered one of the most dangerous weapons in the system.
• Verumkai — unarmed combat.

Practitioners train in a loincloth called the kachakettal, red-and-white or red-and-black, five to six feet long and about a foot wide, wound tightly around the hips. Sessions are preceded by uzhichil, a therapeutic oil massage administered by the gurukkal, sometimes in a trough called the dhaarathoni, using medicated oil believed to counter the heat generated by training and to aid recovery from injury.

Because a well-placed strike to the marma, the vital points of the body, can maim or kill, knowledge of those points — drawn from Ayurvedic and Siddha medicine — is taught alongside the corresponding treatments, marma chikitsa.

The art divides into named regional styles:

• Vadakkan Kalari — the Northern style, practised chiefly in Malabar, emphasising flexibility, evasive footwork and jumps.
• Thekkan Kalari — the Southern style, near Kanyakumari, favouring hard, impact-based techniques and pressure-point strikes.
• Madhya Kalari — the Central style, a composite of the two with its own distinctive footwork.
• Tulunadan Kalari — a smaller style referenced in the ballad tradition, largely confined to Tulu Nadu.

The martial art travelled beyond Kerala through Master Marama Assan Ebenezer Dharmaraj Nadar, who established a Kalari-Payat training club in Ipoh, Malaysia, in 1938, introducing the tradition to Malaya.

His son, Master Elenasiar (Eddie) Edward, went on to found the Kalari-Payat Silambam Centre in Singapore during the 1970s, formally registered under the Singapore Martial Arts Association in 1988, drawing Indian practitioners across the island to train in the traditional weaponry of both Kalaripayattu and Silambam.

Vedagiri Govindasamy, first enrolled by his father into Eddie Edward’s school in the early 1980s, went on to found Kalari Academy in Singapore in 2015 together with Reuben, establishing what has since become the island’s dedicated home for the two forms.

Kalaripayattu has transcended its historical function as a feudal battlefield system, evolving into a discipline encompassing performative art and holistic fitness. Training has been adapted to modern urban life: the Kalari Academy of Singapore offers specialised cohorts, including ladies-only fitness classes that blend traditional martial arts with modern wellness goals.

Its performative dimensions have flourished through cross-cultural theatre. The Academy’s creative wing, K A Kreative, has pioneered original martial-arts stage plays. In February 2024 they staged Saptamaatrika at the Asian Civilisations Museum as part of the Light to Night Festival, fusing choreographed Silambam sequences with the mythological battle of the seven Mother Goddesses. In September 2024 they debuted Immortal at the Stamford Arts Centre, exploring the life of Parashurama and his mastery of Kalaripayattu.

Efforts have also been made to bring Singapore’s wider multicultural community into shared training, and increasingly into collaboration with the island’s Chinese and Malay martial art traditions.

Kambathattam is a compound of kambam (கம்பம்), a wooden pole or post, and aattam (ஆட்டம்), dance. It is a Tamil ritual performance tradition built around a ceremonial pole that is honoured and danced around as an offering, tied to village deity worship in rural Tamil Nadu.

The word kambam is understood in everyday Tamil usage to denote a post or pillar — a meaning also carried in the rural custom, recorded in some accounts of Tamil agrarian life, of farmers raising a plain wooden post in the field and worshipping it before the start of the planting season.

The specific written history of Kambathattam as a performance form remains scarce. Its practice today is sustained chiefly through the oral and practical knowledge of its practitioners rather than through textual record.

The kambam at the centre of the dance is fashioned to one of two customary lengths, fifteen saatru or seven saatru — saatru being a traditional linear measure used by its makers — with the choice reportedly depending on the specific round or occasion of performance.

Accompaniment is traditionally provided by the moda melam, an ensemble named for the moda (மொடா), or pot, at its core, together with the aligi satti, the kombu, and the kai thaalam (hand cymbals). The moda melam is built around clay pots, or paanai, whose two faces are stretched with thol (leather) and tied to the waist of the player:

• Thondi mathalam — a clay pot drum forming one half of the moda melam pairing.
• Paanai mathalam — the companion clay pot drum, played alongside the thondi mathalam.
• Aligi / Ara chatti — a smaller pot, a lighter-toned counterpart to the main moda drums.
• Thamukku — a kettle drum braced and tuned with leather straps, elsewhere documented as a fixture of the naiyandi melam ensembles that accompany Tamil folk dance more broadly.
• Kombu — a curved horn, historically fashioned from buffalo horn and today more often cast in bronze, brass or copper, blown while standing with the instrument held in line with the body.

Kambathattam was traditionally performed by men, though women have increasingly taken up the art in recent years. The adi, the pattern of strikes performed around the kambam, changes from round to round rather than repeating a single fixed sequence. Each performance opens with a virutham, an unmetered devotional verse form used elsewhere in Tamil temple and concert traditions to precede a song, sung here in praise of the presiding deity. A fresh virutham is sung again at the start of every subsequent round, marking the transition between rounds rather than being confined to the opening.

There are no official records establishing when Kambathattam traditions began among the Tamil community in Singapore.

One resonance is worth noting, though its bearing on the dance itself remains speculative. Early Singapore Tamils used kambam not only for a pole but also for a settlement: the area around today’s Little India was known as Soonambu Kambam, the “village of lime,” after the lime kilns once worked there by Tamil labourers, and the area’s Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple was accordingly called Soonambu Kambam Kovil, the “temple at the lime village.” The same usage appears in the Tamil naming of other early settlements in colonial Singapore, such as Chulia Kambam for the Chulia enclave along what is now Chulia Street, with kambam there glossed directly as the Malay kampong.

The same usage appears in the Tamil naming of other early settlements in colonial Singapore, such as Chulia Kambam for the Chulia enclave along what is now Chulia Street, with kambam there glossed directly as the Malay kampong. Whether it shares any real root with the kambam of Kambathattam, the pole, is not established.

Kambam selection for a performance is entrusted to a pathiyakarar (பாத்தியக்காரர்), a custodian appointed to each temple, whose specific role and manner of selection varies according to the oor (ஊர்), or home village, associated with that temple.

As with related Tamil folk traditions, the participation of women in a practice once dominated by men continues to grow, and it is through this same round-by-round structure of virutham and adi that younger practitioners continue to learn the dance today.

Youth performing the art form today are commonly seen in denim trousers, white button-down shirts, a head scarf and ankle bells, or salangai.

Apart from festive seasons, villagers are noted to have frequently danced Kambathattam after work in the fields or as labourers, as a mode of relaxation.

Silambam, the wider stick-fighting system within which the maankombu is trained, is well attested in Sangam-era Tamil sources. Scholars point to the Tolkappiyam and other early works as evidence that structured staff-fighting instruction, and dedicated training grounds resembling gymnasiums, existed in Tamil Nadu before 300 BCE. By a legend recorded by Singapore’s heritage authorities, the sage Agastya encountered Lord Murugan and learned meditative practices from him, afterward conceiving the texts and disciplines said to underlie Silambam.

The maankombu itself is far more sparsely documented than the bamboo staff at the centre of the art. Its history before the colonial period rests largely on oral transmission among practitioner lineages.

The weapon takes its name from the pair of curved horns, traditionally sourced from the Indian blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra), from which it was originally fashioned.

The maduvu typically consists of two blackbuck horns joined at the centre by a pair of crossbars, with later variants tipped in steel or fitted with a small guard plate. A nineteenth-century example, formerly part of the Haggerty Museum of Art, measures 61 centimetres by 16 and combines juvenile blackbuck horns with brass caps and a discoid brass shield. Modern training replicas are commonly listed at roughly one kilogram apiece.

In combat the maduvu is chiefly defensive. The wielder favours a low stance, staying beneath the opponent’s centre of gravity to close off openings to the body’s vital points, before parrying an incoming strike and countering with a thrust, choke, lock or disarm. Training draws on animal-inspired stances — frog, snake, mouse, tiger, elephant and eagle — echoing the animal vocabulary found elsewhere in Silambam’s unarmed footwork. A bout traditionally opens with a mutual salutation.

Among the weapon’s principal variants:

• Maduvu / Madu — the standard Tamil Nadu form, a pair of blackbuck horns joined by crossbars, often tipped with steel points.
• Maru — a later regional variant associated with Punjab, forged entirely from steel rather than horn.
• Jogi crutch-staff — a related single-horn implement carried as a walking aid and concealed defence by ascetics barred from conventional weaponry.

Advancement to maankombu training is not offered to beginners. Instructors reserve the weapon — described in some schools as an advanced pattern called Maan Kombu Sala-Varisai — for practitioners who have already progressed through footwork and unarmed forms, with instruction sometimes preceded by a graduation ritual, arangetram, conducted within a temple.

Maankombu is sparsely documented in Singapore’s historical record, never having been described separately from the wider Silambam tradition it forms part of. It is understood to have arrived, as Silambam generally did, through early contact between South Indian and Southeast Asian communities.

The weapon continues to be taught in Singapore only within established Silambam academies, such as the Kalari Academy, as an advanced component of their weapons curriculum. Practised now largely as a self-defence and fitness discipline rather than a battlefield skill, the maankombu remains one part of a living, still-evolving Silambam curriculum rather than an independently preserved art form.

The origins of Mayilattam are intertwined with the mythology of Lord Murugan, whose mount is the peacock, symbolising majesty, purity and spiritual victory. The stylised imitation of the peacock’s movements — graceful, bold, vibrant — mirrors Murugan’s qualities and the animal’s significance in Tamil iconography. Devotees perform it believing it pleases the deity and invites divine blessings.

The art form has been depicted in the Ramayana and in Sangam literature.

Dancers wear elaborate costumes with peacock feathers and headdresses, often mounted on tall wooden stilts. The replica of the peacock adds to the dramatic and religious significance of the performance. Its body and head are typically hand-made from papier mâché and clay, painted in hues of green and blue, while the feathers are formed from paper. The structure covers the performer from the ankles to around the chest, with the feathers fitted behind the shoulders.

Performers may hold a vel, the weapon carried by Lord Murugan, and wear an elaborately decorated headgear with a flower garland. They are usually male, their faces made up with sandal paste and dramatic features resembling Murugan. Naiyandi Melam forms the musical accompaniment, as it does for Poikkaal Kuthirai Aattam and Karagattam.

There are no official records as to when Mayilattam traditions began in Singapore. The earliest record appears to be 1950, when Mayilattam was staged at the Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society’s concert. Today, workshops coordinated and conducted by multiple arts groups are commonplace.

The full peacock structure is rarely used in Singapore. Instead the detachable, movable feathers have become the essential component, and the shaking of those feathers from side to side by hand is the current defining feature of the art form, performed primarily by women. More recently, Bharatanatyam dancers have been seen using the feathers in Mayilattam-inspired segments of their repertoires.

Oyilattam originates in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, and is danced at village festivals, including the Mulaippaari rituals held in prayer for rain.

It is also known as Oyil Kummi, which suggests it may once have been the male counterpart to Kummiattam, a form performed mainly by women.

In early practice men danced in one or two rows, a coloured scarf in each hand and salangai tied at the ankles, accompanied by thavil and jalra. The scarf, shaken through a range of movements, is the form's most recognisable feature. Dancers wear a mundasu headscarf and a flower garland. In temple performances the men dance bare-chested, marked with santhanam and viboothi, with minimal makeup.

There are no age limits, and a group of ten to twelve is preferred. The guru dances ahead and the others follow his movement and his singing. Oyilattam and silambam share movement patterns closely enough that practitioners say learning silambam first makes the dance easier to pick up, since both demand disciplined control of the body.

No official record marks when Oyilattam took root in Singapore. Workshops run by arts groups are common, and the form appears regularly at community festivals. A mass Oyilattam event in 2023 entered the Singapore Book of Records. It was showcased at Anandha Kondaattam 2024, the Indian Heritage Arts Fiesta 2024, and Anandha Kondaattam 2025, all organised by ATAM.

Women are increasingly seen performing Oyilattam, and varied formations now stand in for the single row. Alongside devotional and historical songs, pieces carrying social messages have become common, and the karagam appears in some performances.

In the United States, the New Jersey Tamil Peravai recently set a Guinness World Record for the largest Tamil folk art performance, teaching Oyilattam to 459 participants.

The dance is thought to have its roots in Marakkaal Aattam, the wooden-legged dance referenced in the Silappathikaram, estimated to the fifth century BCE.

The custom of madal eruthal — whereby a man whose wish to marry a woman is opposed by her parents fashions a horse figure from palm leaf, carries it on his body, and parades through the streets in protest and desperation to proclaim his desire — seems to have been prevalent in the Sangam era. It appears in the Tholkappiyam:

ஏறிய மடல்திறம் இளமை தீர்திறம்
தேறுதல் ஒழிந்த காமத்து மிகுதிறம்

The practice of madal eruthal;
love that blossoms beyond age divides;
the declaration of desire during long separation;
extreme acts driven by overwhelming lust.

Tholkappiyam · பொருளதிகாரம், 56

The horse figure was made from leaves and embellished with silk-cotton, milkweed and avaram senna flowers. There is no historical evidence that this ever took the form of a dance using false legs to imitate riding a horse.

The addition of the defining horse replica is believed to have occurred during the Maratha rule of Thanjavur, seventeenth to nineteenth century CE. The Marathi equivalent still practised today is Ghode Modni in Goa, which emerged as a processional dance celebrating the victorious return of rulers and warriors. It is also seen in Rajasthan as Kachchi Ghodi, and in Andhra Pradesh as Keelu Guralu.

A hollow horse-shaped frame, crafted from light materials such as jute, paper, cardboard and glass, forms the core of the costume, with side panels that sway and hide the performer’s legs. The replica weighs around twenty-five to thirty kilograms and is usually hung from the shoulders, fitting around the waist. Decoration differs by region: in Tamil Nadu the horse’s neck and head are white, its body draped in two or three layers of colourful bordered cloth; in Rajasthan the replica features hues of red, mirrorwork and cloth tassels.

To mimic the sound of galloping, dancers attach wooden stilts or blocks of around 1.25 to 1.5 feet to their legs, producing hoof-like sounds with each step. The blocks are usually made of banyan tree roots. Practitioners note that mastering the form requires at least forty-eight days of training on wooden stilts to develop proper balance.

During the performance the dancer may wield a sword or whip. A pair of male and female dancers usually perform together as King and Queen, their attire reflecting those characters — elaborate, glittery jippa or kurta with a crown or colourful turban for men, and lehenga-like skirted costumes with a tiara-like headgear, sometimes connected to a veil, for women.

Naiyandi Melam usually forms the accompaniment. A double-faced percussion instrument called the kunthalam is essential: two cowhide faces side by side, each struck by a bamboo stick. It is referenced in the Silappathikaram as one of the thirty-three instruments used in Madhavi’s dance recital, and is believed to be the modern version of the kinai parai, referenced in the Tholkappiyam.

There are no official records as to when Poikkaal Kuthirai Aattam traditions began in Singapore. Community festivals today feature Poi Kuthirai Aattam, and the use of wooden stilts is rarely seen.

Separately, it must be noted that Kuda Kepang or Kuda Lumping, a visually and performatively similar art form originating in Java, Indonesia, is often practised in many Southeast Asian countries including Singapore, and is believed to have been introduced here in 1948. That dance also involves mounting a dummy horse made of paper and cardboard, although the making of the structure, the performative elements and the costumes all differ from Poikkaal Kuthirai Aattam.

Attaching the wooden stilts is increasingly rare, with many performers merely using the hollow horse structure and dancing on their own legs, to which anklet bells are attached. This is referred to as Poi Kuthirai Aattam. In the past, male dancers enacted both the King and Queen parts; the participation of women has increased since.

Originating in Tamil Nadu, Sakkai Kuchi Aattam is believed to have been born out of war training. There is no apparent record of when it was first practised. It is believed to have become a sport in the colonial era and thereafter a dance form, possibly initiated by low-wage coolie workers from plantain godowns as a pastime.

Presently there are only about fifty trained Sakkai Kuchi Aattam artistes left in India.

The form combines the sakkai and the kuchi as props. Four short teakwood sticks, usually 16 centimetres long and 2 centimetres wide, are tied together by a string to form the sakkai, held in one hand to raise a rhythmic sound with each stick between two fingers. The sakkai is employed in a hand movement that mimics the rapid scooping of water, creating a sharp snapping sound.

Each chedi kuchi, a long wooden stick roughly two and a half feet in length, is used in pairs. Every dancer holds two sticks, one in each hand. Dancers are always arranged in pairs, striking each other’s sticks in coordinated, rhythmic patterns, varying between one or both hands. It is usually performed in parallel or circular formations in an even-numbered group of at least six, accompanied by the thavil and pambai. There are generally no lyrical songs. Performers are typically male, wearing simple kurta-like tops with a dhoti draped like pants.

Three foundational adavus are employed in circular formations:

• Anjadi adavu — the sticks are struck five times between pairs as they move around.
• Yezhadi adavu — adds two further strikes with the dancer behind.
• Onbathadi adavu — nine strikes in total, including two more with the initial pair.

Each adavu is performed in a sequence of repetitions that returns performers to their starting position.

There are no official records as to when Sakkai Kuchi Aattam traditions began in Singapore. ATAM’s Nam Marabu Series in 2025 included a workshop on the form, and it was featured in Anandha Kondaattam 2024.

Initially male-dominated, women are increasingly found performing the art form.

Salangai Kittiyattam is a rare folk form rooted in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu. It is celebrated today for its rhythmic complexity and communal spirit, but its history is bound up with martial preparedness and the physical conditioning of the general public. It originated as a method of preparing the population, including women and aspiring soldiers, for combat or rigorous physical activity, serving as a bridge between sport and military training. Traditional lore names Lord Murugan as the progenitor of the practice.

It is fundamentally related to Silambattam and shares the same adavus, the fundamental footwork and sequences. Where Silambattam focused on the staff, Kittiyattam used specific wooden instruments to simulate weapon handling. The word kitti refers to that instrument, the name historically derived from the sound of two sticks struck together. It evolved along lines of martial skill into Sinna Kitti for swordplay, Periya Kitti for spear or vel handling, and Salangai Kitti, a specialised version with bells developed for festivals to produce a sharp, resonant sound.

The choice of wood for the kitti traditionally depended on local flora. Tamarind wood was preferred in coastal regions and the thorny Kaarai Mullu shrub inland, though many modern performers use eucalyptus.

As the practice shifted from the training ground to the festival stage it took on rich musical and lyrical traditions, including Kavadi Sindhu style singing, Kummi Paattu, and songs centred on agriculture and social messages. It is characterised by specific rhythmic cycles such as the moonu nadai, a three-beat cycle, and accompanied by traditional instruments including the Nadhaswaram and the Pambai.

In Singapore, Prabanja Aatral Kudil has been actively promoting the art form in recent years. It has been showcased at cultural events, and regular classes are conducted to train aspiring practitioners.

While the core of the tradition remains in Thanjavur, variations exist elsewhere: Kazhiyal Attam is practised in Nagapattinam in a slightly different regional style. It remains a vibrant practice, involving groups of eighty to a hundred people during festivals.

The knowledge passes down through generations by intensive and disciplined training. Students often begin as early as five years old, working through specialised twenty-day training blocks to master the coordination of the kitti with complex footwork.

Sambalpuri, meaning “of Sambalpur,” is an umbrella term for a family of folk dances practised by the tribal and rural communities of western Odisha. It is believed to take its name from the city of Sambalpur, itself named for the goddess Samaleswari, the presiding deity of the region.

The most widespread of the Sambalpuri dances, Dalkhai, is said to take its name from a folk deity, Dalkhai Devi, worshipped by communities such as the Mirdha, Kondh, Kuda, Gond and Binjhal as a physical manifestation of the goddess Durga and venerated as a goddess of fertility. An alternative account traces the name instead to dal — the branches, leaves and flowers of trees such as mango, banyan, peepal, gooseberry and hibiscus that are gathered and offered to the deity during her worship. A third and frequently repeated explanation holds that it derives from the refrain “Dalkhai bo!”, an address to a girlfriend called out at the beginning and end of every stanza — a pattern shared by the related dances Rasarkeli and Jaiphula.

Dalkhai is performed on the occasion of Bhai Jiuntia, observed on the eighth day of the bright lunar fortnight of the Odia month of Aswina, when sisters worship Durga for their brothers’ wellbeing, in the districts of Bargarh, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Deogarh, Bolangir, Sonepur and Boudh.

No early or medieval textual references to Sambalpuri dance forms comparable to those documented for other regional Odia traditions have been located. The dance appears to survive chiefly through oral transmission, sustained and later documented by twentieth- and twenty-first-century ethnographic scholarship.

Dancers of Dalkhai, Rasarkeli and Jaiphula are typically young unmarried women, dressed in the Sambalpuri saree — a handwoven bandha, or tie-dye, textile in which both the warp and weft threads are resist-dyed before weaving, producing a pattern that reads identically on both faces of the cloth — together with bangles, the katria and bandriya arm ornaments, a nose stud, and a colour scarf draped over the shoulders. The saree and its weaving technique, associated with the Bargarh, Sambalpur, Bolangir and Sonepur districts, were granted Geographical Indication protection by the Government of India in 2012 under the name Sambalpuri Bandha Saree and Fabrics.

The dances are accompanied by a folk orchestra including the dhol, tasha, nishan, tamki and mahuri, sometimes gathered under the name Dulduli, a term also used for an ensemble combining the jhanj, dandua dhol, mandal and mahuri in addition to those above. The songs are sung in the Kosli dialect of Odia, on themes including the love story of Radha and Krishna, episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and descriptions of the natural landscape.

Beyond the dances performed by young women, the tradition includes:

• Dalkhai — a ritual dance in honour of Dalkhai Devi, its stanzas opening and closing with the refrain “Dalkhai bo.”
• Rasarkeli — a similarly paced, romantically themed dance, its stanzas opening with “Rasarkeli bo.”
• Jaiphula — a dance of courtship and love, its stanzas opening with “Jai phula bo.”
• Bajnia — a fast-tempo dance performed by the drummers themselves, incorporating acrobatic movement and a combination of punched-together rhythms.

These are danced across the western Odisha festival calendar, including Dussehra, Bhai Jiuntia, Phagun Puni, and Nuakhai, the harvest festival observed on the fifth day of the bright lunar fortnight of Bhadrapada.

There are no official records of when Sambalpuri traditions began in Singapore. Their preservation is spearheaded by diaspora organisations such as the Odia Society of Singapore (SingOdia), which continues the practice through community festivals including Utkal Divas.

Within Odisha, Dalkhai has moved beyond its village-ritual origins into staged and competitive performance, judged at school, college and state-level cultural festivals on synchronisation, choreography and vocal quality — even as its practice among the Binjhal, Kondh, Mirdha and other tribal communities continues alongside that newer, more public life.

The Sambalpuri saree remains a living handloom craft under active state and central government promotion following its 2012 Geographical Indication registration, sustaining the weaving communities on which the dance’s costume depends.

Among the Odia diaspora, including in Singapore, the dance and its music continue to surface at community gatherings marking the calendar of Odisha’s own festivals, carried forward by performers trained in both the folk and classical branches of Odisha’s dance heritage.

The word thudumbu is believed to have originated from the Thudumbars, an indigenous tribal community living in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu — modern-day Coimbatore, Erode and Salem. It was used to ward off wild animals when descending the hilly regions in which they generally lived, and played when sending villagers off on animal hunts. It is also believed that the instrument is played before opening the sanctum doors of Lord Shiva, to ward off any snakes or other animals that may have entered, and to awaken the divine spirit. The instrument has also become part of Thambolam Melam performances in Kerala.

The thudumbu may also be related to the murasu, a relatively larger traditional drum used on battlefields to signal attacks and for royal announcements from the palace, and a popular symbol of valour. The murasu is referenced in the Purananuru and the Silappathikaram. Three types are well known:

• Veera murasu — used to announce battle.
• Niyaya murasu — used in court to beckon the plaintiff, defendant or witnesses.
• Thiyaga murasu — used when giving gifts or inviting the poor.

Of these it is the veera murasu that is said to be most closely related to the thudumbu.

The thudumbu is the main element of the art form: a bowl-shaped single-headed membranophone made of mud, its single face covered with buffalo hide. It is usually hung over the performer’s waist or held between the legs, and played mostly by men. Two sticks, one in each hand, strike the face to produce a bass sound; they are typically made from arali (oleander) bark.

The thudumbu is commonplace during temple festivities and deity processions, almost ubiquitous in the Kovai region. It also accompanies Jikkattam, and features in Jamab, another Kongu region dance in which performers stand in rows and wave coloured scarves.

Men wear anklets on both feet and the traditional vetti, a long white bordered cloth usually bunched at the knees to allow placement of the drum. Alongside the thudumbu the ensemble carries the uruttu, a smaller single-headed instrument made of calf hide, and the thalava, a pair of small metal cymbals used traditionally as a metronome. The nagari, a larger, heavier drum similar to the thudumbu, is played along with them. It is performed with little to no lyrics, sometimes punctuated by shouts.

There are no official records as to when Thudumbattam traditions began in Singapore. It was featured in ATAM’s Anandha Kondaattam 2024 and introduced as a workshop in the Nam Marabu Series 2025.

Initially male-dominated, more women are seen picking up the art form. Along with the traditional percussion, maracas are sometimes featured in the ensemble.

The urumi is a membranophone with two faces that produces a growl-like sound. By one mythology it was created by the celestial architect Viswakarma.

The earliest official record of the instrument appears to be sixteenth- to seventeenth-century CE: a stone statue of a man playing the urumi drum, recovered from the Karur archaeological dig.

The urumi is traditionally believed to possess sacred and celestial powers, especially when played during temple processions and ritual ceremonies. Its sound is often associated with inducing spiritual possession or trance states. It is commonly found in Tamil-speaking villages and along the Tamil Nadu–Kerala border.

Two main ensembles involve the urumi:

• Urumi Melam — typically performed at funerals and sombre occasions. One to three urumi drums, accompanied by two pambai drums and the nadaswaram. It often accompanies the funeral lament, or Oppaari.
• Naiyandi Melam — played at ritual celebrations and dance performances. Two nadaswarams, a thavil, pambai and urumi, creating a richer and more festive soundscape.

Its two faces are cowhide, on a jackwood body shaped like an hourglass. It is slung from the player on a leather, nylon or cloth strap, and often played standing or walking in procession.

Compositions typically draw on two of five foundational Tamil folk rhythmic patterns:

• Kuthirai adi — “horse beat,” duple, a gentle sway mimicking a horse’s gallop.
• Rettai adi — also duple, more dynamic and vigorous, with a stronger swinging pulse.
• Classic adi — duple, influenced by Tamil popular and film music.
• Moonu adi — triple, comparable to 6/8 in Western music, though its driving momentum can read as duple.
• Othai adi — emphasises every beat individually, lacking the swing of the others.

Ensembles usually begin with a Ganesha song before moving on to devotional songs about other deities such as Murugan and Hanuman. It is a male-dominated art form.

The urumi is said to have appeared in Ipoh in the 1980s and become popular in Singapore in the early twenty-first century. It is commonly played during Thaipusam, Vesak Day, Panguni and Pongal festivities, and at temple chariot processions.

CDs and DVDs of popular olden-day Tamil folk songs serve as a source of learning for some groups here. There are more than forty urumi groups in Singapore.

Customised urumis with elaborate drawings, paintings or carvings on the body can be seen today. Construction has evolved to improve sound: goat hide is now preferred over cowhide for a more refined tone, and balloon sticks sometimes replace traditional rattan, offering greater flexibility and control.

Groups sometimes borrow rhythmic patterns from other cultures — the Chinese lion dance, or Bhangra — when collaborating with those communities. There is also a practice of converting non-religious songs into devotional hymns, preserving the tune and changing the lyrics. The terms urumi melam and naiyandi melam have become more interchangeable.

Urumi has found a strong footing in Singapore through its association with religious and ritual practice such as Kavadi, and because it continues to evolve.