City - Chorida, Purulia State - WEST BENGAL Country - India
About
The Chhau dance, a folk dance form of Bengal,is epical in content, and is based on various episodes of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata the Puranas. It is performed with beautiful decorated mask of the concerned character. CHORIDA, a small village of Purulia district is famous for this art form. This village has produced many national and international award winners.
The masks are made of clay and paper and are produced by a particular group of people who have been engaged in this business for generations (Sutradhara). As it is impossible for the artists to show mood variations through facial expressions , the expression in the mask's face is very important to illustrate different moods. So it needs extremely high artistic perfection and knowledge of the epic and mythology for the artist to make the right mask which depicting perfect mood.
I took this photo during my recent trip to Purulia when I have tried to capture decoration process of a mask of Goddess Durga.
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{K:78768} 12/30/2008