A total of 17 qualified groups, with over 170 dancers participated.
The Vande Bharatam, Nritya Utsav is an All India Dance competition being held for the first time to select the best talent from across the country who will get an opportunity to perform during the Republic Day Parade 2022 in New Delhi.
Vande Bhartaam is a unique initiative of the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Culture to commemorate the 75th year of India's Independence, celebrated as Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. After district and state-level competitions, the selection process has now reached Zonal levels.
The first zonal level event competition was held on December 9th, 2021, at Space Theatre, Science City in Kolkata. A total of 17 qualified groups, with over 170 dancers, from the State Level Competitions, participated in the event from various States and UT's of the Eastern Zone-like West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chattisgarh.
The participants were full of excitement at having got an opportunity to take part in the competition to showcase their talent and hoped to make it to the finals.
The events were judged by renowned personalities in the field of performing arts, namely Smt. Paramita Maitra, Smt. Susmita Chatterjee and Smt. Piyal Bhattacharya. The judges interacted with the groups and also provided enriching feedback to all group members for improvement at further stages.
The Vande Bharatam competition, which began at the District level on November 17th, 2021, saw the participation of more than 3,870 contestants in 323 groups. Those who cleared the screening at the district level took part in State level competition from November 30th, 2021. More than 20 virtual events were conducted for the State-level competition over a span of 5 days till December 4th 2021.
Over 300 groups were selected for the state-level comprising of over 3,000 dancers/participants. Thus, over a period of one month, the event gave an opportunity to all aspirants to showcase their talent to win a slot at the National level.
Likewise, the Zonal level events will be held in Mumbai on December 10th, in Bengaluru on December 11th, 2021 and in New Delhi on December 12th, 2021.
The Zonal Level competitions are being broadcast LIVE on the official Facebook page & YouTube channel of Vande Bharatam along with the website (vandebharatamnrityautsav.in) and mobile application. More than 2400 participants from 200 plus teams have been short-listed for the zonal level competition. Selected teams from this round will progress to the Grand Finale, which will be held in New Delhi. Top 480 dancers declared as winners will perform on the Republic Day Parade held at Rajpath, New Delhi, on January 26th 2022.
Courtesy: PIB
