Ask most people to name an Indian classical dance form, and they will rattle off Bharatanatyam or Kathak without a pause. Ask them to name a folk theatre tradition from Kashmir or Chhattisgarh, and the room usually goes quiet. That gap says a lot about where our cultural attention goes, and where it does not.
India has hundreds of performing traditions, yet only a fraction get taught, filmed, or celebrated widely. The rest survive quietly, often through a handful of ageing artists, with no one lined up to take their place. These are the forgotten art forms of India, and many of them are closer to disappearing than most people realise.
This blog takes a closer look at these endangered art forms of India, why they are disappearing, and what it would take to keep them alive for the next generation.
Performing arts are creative expressions presented live, in front of an audience, using the human body, voice, and often music or props as the medium.
They typically include:
Unlike a painting or a sculpture, a performing art form exists only in the moment it is performed. Once the artist stops, the performance is gone, unless someone has learned it and can perform it again. This is exactly why so many traditional Indian performing arts are at risk. The art lives in people, not in objects, and when the people stop performing, the tradition can vanish within a single generation.
India has one of the richest and most diverse performing arts landscapes in the world. But it would be a mistake to think of these traditions as mere entertainment.
Most traditional Indian performances are not just one art form. They are layered experiences that combine:
A single Koodiyattam performance, for instance, brings together classical Sanskrit text, facial expression, percussion, and elaborate costume design, all in one act. This layering is part of what makes these forgotten art forms of India so intricate, and so difficult to fully document or teach.
Folk and regional performing arts are living archives. They preserve:
When a folk art form disappears, a community often loses more than a performance style. It loses a way of remembering who it was.
India's classical art forms such as Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Kuchipudi enjoy strong institutional support, academic study, and global recognition. Regional and folk traditions rarely get the same attention.
Many local art forms operate with:
This gap between classical prestige and regional neglect is one of the biggest reasons why so many traditional Indian performing arts remain under-documented and undervalued.
From Temples to Village Squares
Traditionally, these performances were not staged in auditoriums. They belonged to:
As these spaces have changed or disappeared, so has the natural occasion for many of these art forms to be performed.
Understanding why the forgotten art forms of India are fading helps explain why active preservation matters so much today.
Many folk and classical traditions once survived because of royal courts, temple institutions, or wealthy patrons who supported artists financially. As these systems weakened, artists were left with far fewer sources of steady support.
Audiences today have endless entertainment options, from streaming platforms to social media. Traditional performances, which often run for hours and demand patience, struggle to compete for attention.
Most of these art forms were passed down orally or through direct guru-shishya training, not written manuals. When a senior artist passes away without training a successor, decades of knowledge can disappear with them.
Performing artists in folk traditions often earn very little. Many are forced to take up other work to survive, leaving little time or incentive to practise or teach their art.
As rural communities migrate to cities in search of work, the social fabric that once supported these performances weakens. Festivals shrink, audiences scatter, and young people grow up disconnected from their local art forms.
Because many traditions are oral and performance-based, there is often no written script, notation, or recorded archive. Once the last practitioners are gone, the art form can be lost entirely.
As culture becomes more commercial and homogenised, distinct regional identities can get flattened into more generic, mass-market entertainment, leaving little space for niche, local traditions.
Few universities or colleges offer structured, credentialed training in folk and regional performing arts. Without institutional backing, these traditions rarely gain the legitimacy needed to attract new students.
Here is a closer look at some of India's most remarkable, and most endangered, performing traditions.
Origin and Region: Practised across Purulia (West Bengal), Seraikella (Jharkhand), and Mayurbhanj (Odisha).
What Makes It Unique: Chhau is a striking blend of martial arts, acrobatics, and dance. The Purulia and Seraikella styles use elaborate masks, while the Mayurbhanj style performs bare-faced.
Traditional Cultural Role: Chhau dramatises stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and local folklore, often performed during spring festivals.
Current Challenges: Fewer young performers are willing to undergo the rigorous physical training required.
Preservation Status: Chhau received UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition, which has helped bring renewed attention to the art form.
Origin and Region: Kerala, closely tied to temple theatre traditions.
What Makes It Unique: Considered one of the oldest surviving theatre traditions in the world, Koodiyattam uses Sanskrit texts, elaborate eye and facial expressions, and the traditional Mizhavu drum.
Traditional Cultural Role: Performed inside temple theatres known as koothambalams, often as a ritual offering.
Current Challenges: The demanding years-long training and highly specialised nature limit the number of new practitioners.
Preservation Status: Recognised by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, which has supported academic and cultural interest.
Origin and Region: Central Kerala, particularly around Bhagavati temples.
What Makes It Unique: This ritual dance-drama enacts the mythological battle between the goddess Kali and the demon Darika.
Traditional Cultural Role: Performed as an annual temple ritual, believed to protect the community and bring prosperity.
Current Challenges: Its strong ritual context makes it difficult to adapt for wider audiences without diluting its meaning.
Preservation Status: Listed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage, encouraging local preservation efforts.
Origin and Region: Popular across Bengal, Odisha, and Bihar.
What Makes It Unique: Jatra is a form of open-air travelling theatre, known for its loud music, dramatic dialogue delivery, and larger-than-life performances.
Traditional Cultural Role: Historically used to narrate mythological, social, and even political stories to rural audiences.
Current Challenges: Cinema and television have significantly reduced audience interest in travelling theatre troupes.
Preservation Status: Some Jatra troupes continue to perform during festival seasons, though numbers have dropped sharply over the decades.
Origin and Region: The Konkan belt, spanning parts of Maharashtra and Goa.
What Makes It Unique: This folk theatre form portrays the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu through vivid costumes, masks, and overnight performances.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally performed during village festivals, often continuing through the night into early morning.
Current Challenges: The overnight format makes it difficult to fit into modern audience schedules and lifestyles.
Preservation Status: Local troupes in coastal Konkan villages continue to keep the tradition alive, largely through community effort.
Origin and Region: Kashmir Valley.
What Makes It Unique: A distinctive folk theatre form that blends satire, music, and dance, traditionally performed by the Bhand community.
Traditional Cultural Role: Used to comment on social issues through humour and performance, often during local festivals.
Current Challenges: Decades of regional conflict and instability have disrupted performance opportunities and training.
Preservation Status: A small number of Bhand families continue to preserve the tradition, though active performances have become rare.
Origin and Region: Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan.
What Makes It Unique: Also known as Sang, this folk theatre form combines singing, dialogue, and dramatic storytelling based on folklore and mythology.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally performed at village fairs and community celebrations as both entertainment and moral instruction.
Current Challenges: Changing rural entertainment habits have reduced demand for traditional Swang performances.
Preservation Status: A few dedicated folk troupes continue performing, largely at cultural festivals rather than village gatherings.
Origin and Region: Chhattisgarh.
What Makes It Unique: A powerful oral storytelling tradition centred on episodes from the Mahabharata, particularly the lives of the Pandavas, performed with a tambura.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally performed by folk singers narrating epic tales to rural communities.
Current Challenges: Very few performers achieve the vocal training and narrative mastery this art form demands.
Preservation Status: Renowned artist Teejan Bai brought national and international attention to Pandavani, helping sustain interest in the form.
Origin and Region: Telangana and parts of Andhra Pradesh.
What Makes It Unique: An oral narrative tradition performed by the Oggu community, often dedicated to regional deities.
Traditional Cultural Role: Performed during religious festivals as a form of devotional storytelling.
Current Challenges: The tradition is closely tied to a specific community, limiting the pool of practitioners passing it forward.
Preservation Status: Practised mainly within its home communities, with limited exposure beyond the region.
Origin and Region: Bengal.
What Makes It Unique: Baul music is a mystic minstrel tradition blending Sufi, Vaishnav, and folk philosophies, expressed through soulful songs about the divine within.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally performed by wandering singer-mystics who carried spiritual messages through music.
Current Challenges: The wandering, community-based lifestyle that sustained Baul singers has become harder to maintain in a modern economy.
Preservation Status: Recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage, which has helped increase cultural and academic interest.
Origin and Region: Tamil Nadu.
What Makes It Unique: A vibrant street theatre form performed with loud drumming, bold makeup, and elaborate costumes, often during temple festivals.
Traditional Cultural Role: Frequently performed during Draupadi Amman festivals, narrating episodes from the Mahabharata.
Current Challenges: Physically demanding performances and declining festival budgets have reduced opportunities for troupes.
Preservation Status: Continues in select temple towns, sustained largely through local festival traditions.
Origin and Region: Kerala.
What Makes It Unique: A solo storytelling and theatre tradition performed by the Chakyar community, blending Sanskrit narration with sharp social satire and humour.
Traditional Cultural Role: Performed inside temple theatre structures as a form of both entertainment and social commentary.
Current Challenges: Requires years of specialised training in Sanskrit and performance technique, limiting new entrants.
Preservation Status: A small number of practitioners continue to perform, mostly within temple settings.
Origin and Region: Gujarat and parts of Rajasthan.
What Makes It Unique: A lively folk theatre form combining dance, drama, music, and humour, traditionally performed in the open air.
Traditional Cultural Role: Historically performed by the Nayak community, often addressing social themes through comic storytelling.
Current Challenges: Urban audiences have limited exposure to this open-air performance style.
Preservation Status: Occasional performances continue at cultural festivals, though regular village-level shows have declined.
Origin and Region: Found across India, including Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Kerala, and Bengal.
What Makes It Unique: India has several distinct puppetry styles, including string puppetry, shadow puppetry, rod puppetry, and glove puppetry, each with its own regional character.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally used to narrate mythological and folk stories in an accessible, visually engaging format.
Current Challenges: Modern animation and digital entertainment have reduced audience interest in traditional puppetry.
Preservation Status: A few dedicated puppeteer families and cultural organisations continue to keep individual styles alive.
Origin and Region: Assam.
What Makes It Unique: Introduced by the saint-reformer Srimanta Sankardev, Bhaona combines dance, music, and drama around devotional themes.
Traditional Cultural Role: Traditionally performed in Namghars, community prayer halls that remain central to Assamese cultural and religious life.
Current Challenges: Fewer young performers are trained in its specific movement and musical vocabulary.
Preservation Status: Continues to be performed as part of the Sattriya cultural tradition, largely sustained through religious institutions.
These traditions are not simply old customs. They carry:
Losing even one of these forgotten art forms of India means losing an entire way of understanding a region's history, values, and worldview.
Think about what a single tradition like Pandavani carries within it. It is not just a performance style; it is a specific way of narrating the Mahabharata, shaped by Chhattisgarhi language, local musical instruments, and generations of oral memory. Once that chain of transmission breaks, no book or recording can fully recreate what was passed live from teacher to student.
This is also why traditional Indian performing arts matter beyond cultural nostalgia. They represent alternative ways of thinking about performance itself, ones that do not separate the sacred from the artistic, or the individual performer from the community watching. Studying them offers something classical training alone cannot always provide: a grounded sense of how art has historically lived within everyday Indian life.
Preservation is not only the responsibility of governments or institutions. There is space for individuals to contribute too.
Several art forms discussed here, including Chhau, Koodiyattam, Mudiyettu, and Baul traditions, have received UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition. This kind of recognition brings visibility, research interest, and renewed pride within practising communities.
Educational institutions also play a crucial role. REVA University's School of Performing Arts and Indic Studies offers a BA in Performing Arts with Dual Minors, a six-semester undergraduate programme covering disciplines such as Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Mohiniyattam, Kathak, Carnatic Music, Hindustani Music, and Theatre. The curriculum includes dedicated folklore studies in dance, music, and theatre, alongside subjects like Natya Sastra, world theatre history, and traditions and innovations in performing arts, helping students understand both classical technique and regional cultural roots.
For those seeking advanced training, REVA University also offers a Master of Performing Arts (MPA), a two-year postgraduate programme designed for artist-scholars. The programme emphasises research, critical inquiry, and creative exploration, with coursework covering dance history, regional music, traditional theatres of India, and dedicated study of desi traditions. Graduates are prepared for roles as researchers, academicians, choreographers, and even artpreneurs who go on to build their own dance schools and creative ventures.
By combining rigorous practical training with historical and cultural study, structured performing arts education helps ensure that both celebrated classical forms and lesser-known regional traditions continue to be studied, respected, and passed on.
What makes this kind of academic pathway valuable is the interdisciplinary structure behind it. REVA's BA in Performing Arts, for instance, pairs performance training with minors in subjects like Psychology, English, or Integrated Marketing Communication, giving students the tools to become not just performers but also educators, arts administrators, and cultural entrepreneurs. Similarly, the MPA programme's focus on research methodology and dissertation work encourages graduates to actively document and study traditions that might otherwise remain undocumented, directly addressing one of the biggest challenges facing endangered art forms of India today.
Education structured this way does more than train individual artists. It builds a generation of informed cultural advocates who understand why these traditions matter and have the practical skills to keep them relevant.
The forgotten art forms of India are far more than historical footnotes. They are living traditions that carry language, memory, ritual, and identity within every performance. From the masked drama of Chhau to the mystic songs of the Bauls, each tradition tells us something about the community that created it.
Protecting these traditional Indian performing arts requires more than nostalgia. It requires active learning, genuine appreciation, and institutional support that treats folk and regional traditions with the same seriousness as classical ones. Programmes like REVA University's BA in Performing Arts with Dual Minors and Master of Performing Arts are steps in that direction, nurturing artists and scholars who can carry these endangered art forms of India confidently into the future.
Classical art forms like Bharatanatyam and Kathak follow codified techniques, structured training systems, and enjoy strong institutional recognition. Folk art forms are usually community-based, passed down orally, and closely tied to local rituals, festivals, and everyday life rather than formal academic structures.
Kerala, Bengal, Odisha, and the wider eastern and southern belts are known for exceptional diversity, home to traditions like Koodiyattam, Mudiyettu, Chhau, Jatra, and Baul music, each shaped by distinct regional history and language.
Festivals provide the natural occasion and audience that many traditional art forms were originally created for. They offer performers a platform, sustain community interest, and often remain the primary setting where these traditions continue to be performed today.
When an art form disappears, a community can lose access to its own historical narratives, local dialect expressions, and shared rituals. It also weakens the sense of collective identity that these performances traditionally helped reinforce across generations.
