Mizoram Dances in to The Guinness

10736 dancers set up ‘longest & largest’ record

Mizo dancers perform cheraw at the Assam Rifles ground in Aizawl on Friday.

Aizawl, Mar 13 : Mizoram danced its way into the Guinness World Records this afternoon with a 10-minute performance of its famous bamboo dance, cheraw, featuring 10,736 participants in 671 groups at the Assam Rifles ground and the adjoining 2.5-km-long road in Aizawl.

A dam of ecstasy burst forth as Lucia Sinigaliesi, the adjudicator of Guinness World Records, announced that Mizo dancers had wrested the laurels for orchestrating the “largest and longest dance” event in the world.

The ground was packed with about 12,000 people when she made the announcement and handed over the certificate acknowledging this unprecedented feat to Mizoram art and culture minister, P.C. Zoramsangliana, at 4pm.

Subsequently, people took out a large procession in the state capital, kindling memories of the spontaneous euphoria witnessed on the evening of July 28, 1986, when the historic peace accord was signed between New Delhi and Mizo National front (MNF) supremo Laldenga.

The run-up to the final 10 minutes was equally frenzied. Hundreds of spectators made a beeline for the route from Treasury Square to Chandmari via Zarkawt locality to witness Mizoram’s tryst with destiny.

The large number of bamboo dancers, who had converged from all over the state, danced all along this 2.5km stretch and the Assam Rifles ground, to set up the world record for the “longest” (apart from the “largest”) dance.

By 2pm, when the final dance lasting 10 minutes was over, the state capital’s footpaths and roads turned into an impromptu dance stage.

Chief minister Lalthanhawla thanked the people of Mizoram for toiling hard to set up the record. The government and the state’s population of nine lakh had been praying for a place in the Guinness records. The government had even declared a holiday to enable the people to witness this historic moment.

Adjudicator Sinigaliesi also watched the two rounds of rehearsals from 12 noon and then the finals at 2pm.

Yesterday, the state celebrated the Chapchar Kut festival, which is a curtain raiser to the bamboo dances. It is one the three kuts (festivals) of Mizoram related to agricultural activities and is observed every year to mark the sowing of seeds after the customary burning down of jhum fields.

Lathanhawla was named the Father of the Kut while Zoramsangliana, credited with organising this mass dance, was named the Host of the Kut.

The women participants wore colourful traditional puans (skirts) of the Mizos — crimson and green being the prominent colours — and headgear festooned with colourful beads.

The men wore white puans (a rounded lungi type of apparel) and white and purple shirts.

The women spectators also came dressed in puans. Some youths brought gongs, cymbals and drums that lent a raucous note to the dance.

A few Asian and western tourists also savoured the frenzy surrounding the bamboo dance.

Wenchy Ong, a delegate from the team of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre, New Delhi, said he was mesmerised by this robust dance performed on such a wide scale. He said he had not seen anything like this before.

Lalthalmuani, a 19-year-old college student from Aizawl said, “Such devotion of the Mizos to their art and culture, as evidenced in their zeal for the bamboo dance, is remarkable. It helps to bring about oneness among the variegated Mizo tribals.”

The genesis of cheraw can be traced to the reign of Kawlni chiefs in the land of the Mizos in the mid-15th century. This dance celebrates bonhomie and camaraderie among Mizos and symbolises the spirit of excellence, skill, strength and aspiration.

The cheraw dance uses bamboo staves, which are kept on the ground in cross and horizontal formations. Men move these bamboo stilts against each other in rhythmic beats and the women dance in harmony, stepping in and out of the bamboo blocks.

Before Mizoram entered the pages of Guinness, the previous record for the largest dance gathering was held by the Phillippines' Cebu province where about 7,000 people had joined hands to dance together last year.