A ranapa dance performance in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, March 30: The capital is all set to host thousands of folk artistes for the upcoming third state-level folk dance and music festival which was announced by the department of culture today. The festival will be hosted from April 2 to 4 at Utkal Mandap.

Over 2,000 artistes from all 30 districts of Odisha will be displaying various forms of folk dance and music on the occasion.

While the festival was conducted for only one day on the occasion of Utkal Divas in the previous two years, it will be hosted for three consecutive days from this year with a mission to promote these vanishing art forms.

“The festival has elicited great response in the last two years. We have observed that folk arts could reach urban connoisseurs easily through such programmes. Hence, we have extended it to a three-day event this time. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik will inaugurate the festival,” said director of Odisha’ government’s culture department Sushil Das. Artistes of 10 different districts will take part in 10 to 15-minute long performances every day. The first day will include folk arts such as conch blowing, gotipua, dhemsa, ektara, tribal nagra dance, laudi dance, paika akhada, lanjia saura, chhau and Ravanachhaya. The events on the following days will include puppetry, dandanacha, ghodanacha, rasarkeli and Mughal tamasa.

An officer of the culture department also said that folk artistes were being given support to preserve their art form and find livelihood through various Zilla Kala Sanskruti Sangha (ZKSS) and Block Kala Sanskruti Sangha (BKSS).

“Over seven crores have been spent to promote folk arts and artistes in the last two years. The 30 ZKSS have been given Rs 5 lakh each and the 314 BKSS have been given Rs 2 lakh each to preserve various folk art forms. Around 6,500 art troupes and more than 70,000 artistes have registered themselves with the various ZKSS and BKSS in the past two years,” said he.

“This festival is an effort of the culture department to give a boost to the fading art forms. We hope we will get a good response from the city audience this time too,” said Chitta Malia, secretary of the Odisha Sangeet Natak Akademi, which is also associated with the festival.