By Aashish Mishra
Kathmandu, Oct. 29: The famous Kartik Naach of Patan will be held after Tihar this year but in an abridged form.
The dance will not be staged for 12 consecutive days like it had been from 2014 to 2019. However, it will also not be shortened to two days like last year.

“We plan to hold the dance for eight days this year but nothing has been fixed yet,” said Kiran Chitrakar, chairman of Kartik Naach Preservation Committee. “We need to hold further discussions with the Lalitpur Metropolitan City and other stakeholders before we decide anything but what is certain is that the Naach will be held,” he added.
Kartik Naach was started by King Siddhi Narsingh Malla in 1640 and it has been performed every year since.

For the first 26 years of its existence, the dance-drama was five-days long. But in 1666, Siddhi Narsingh’s son Srinivas Malla added the Batha Pyakha, which is a folk drama, and made the Kartik Naach 12-days long, to which, Siddhi Narsingh’s grandson Yoga Narendra Malla again added the Maithili dances, Usha Haran and Madhavan Leela, and made the whole thing 27-days long.
It stayed in this 27-day format till 1949. But the Naach started suffering from 1950. The post-Rana government reduced state support for the dance and from 1950 to 1980, only the Baraha and Narsingha dances were performed.

In 1981, the Kartik Naach Management Committee was founded to revive the Naach which succeeded in re-introducing a few components and making it eight-days long. In 2014, this committee restyled itself as the Kartik Naach Preservation Committee and made the Naach 12-days long.
“However, due to the still-spreading coronavirus and a lack of budget, we might be able to stage it only for eight days this year,” her said, reiterating that the number of days would only be fixed after consultations with the metropolis.

Meanwhile, the Committee has begun training the performers. Chitrakar informed that the dancers train in Patan Museum every evening from 6 pm to 10 pm. “We used to train behind the Degu Taleju Temple in the Patan Durbar Square but since the temple is currently undergoing renovations, we have moved to the Museum,” he said.
Kartik Naach is an amalgamation of various religious and social stories enacted in the form of dances like the Baatha Dance, Usha Haran Leela, Jala Shayan, Baraha Dance, Narsingha Dance, Vastra Haran Leela and Dadhi Leela.