Hence, these folk dances do not represent individual talents but mirror the social patterns and rural culture. There are hundreds of thousand of villages in our country. The life and work of the villagers are the life blood and vitality of our country. In these villages, there are people of different faiths and religions. In fact, the characteristics of the villagers vary from village to village , from district to district, from State to State. But, there is always a close relationship between all

these villagers and their day-to-day work, their romance with the Earth. If the classical dances require constant training and are the forte of a few cultured people, folk dances are the property of all the villagers and the tribal people – young and old – of men, women and children. They do not dance for anything of anybody but out of spontaneous reaction of their mental make-up. In joy or sorrow or in festive moods, groups of people join together and dance expressing their emotions. Although there are differences in their practice or depiction or environment, the main aim of their music and dance is the same. If the classical dances depict intelligence and grasping power, folk dances depict the rustic soul of our Motherland. The patterns of these dances are handed down from father to son, mother to daughter. If the tribal people live  

on hunting and war-like pursuits, their dances are virile, powerful and full of vigorous, rigorous jumps and leaps suggesting a hunt or a war. These can be mostly seen in tribal dances of Gond-s, Bhil-s and Naga-s. Similarly the people living near the sea reflect the vagaries of the sea. Quite often, those people who believe in ghosts and local deities dance to appease and foster their superhuman entities. Thus, in India, there are innumerable varieties of folk dances.