Navratri.

Saturday marked the start of Navratri (nine nights), one of the largest and most anticipated festivals in the Hindu calendar. The festival celebrates the nine incarnations of Durga - the mother goddess. The festival is characterised by nine nights of colourful clothes, raucous rhythms, and of course high octane dancing. There are two broad types of dance performed at Navratri celebrations garba and dandiya raas. The former is a rhythmic multi-step dance usually performed in circles, depending on your comfort level there are usually multiple groups of people doing more simple steps and others doing more complex patterns. The music starts off slow and gets faster and faster as time goes on, each song lasts about thirty minutes! For raas you need to pair up! The dance is performed with two (usually wooden but sometimes metal) sticks called dandiya and involves hitting your partner’s sticks to the beat of the music, at the start everyone lines up opposite their partner and then everyone moves to the left after each bar of music. The easiest version involves five steps but more seasoned dancers can go up to 12 steps and often incorporate tricks like spinning their dandiya. 

Garba is the name of the clay pot containing a diva (lamp) which is placed at the centre of the dance hall and derives from ‘garbha’ the Sanskrit word for womb. Prayers are performed at the beginning of the festival to invoke Durga whose primordial energy (shakti) is then said to reside in the lit lamp. The flame represents the divine cosmic energy which resides in women and the constant and everchanging creative energy which is present in every person. 

The nine incarnations of Durga encompass a wide range of qualities: serenity, wisdom, beauty, creativity, endurance, boldness, bravery, and self-confidence.