berhampur several forms of ancient and dying folk music and dance forms of the state came alive as artistes from villages in ganjam district performed at sugar town aska about 40 km from here on sunday evening the artistes performed several dance forms like dhumpa oshakothi krushna leela rama leela bharat leela at the spring festival 2013 organized by all india radio air berhampur the artistes also blew the jodi shankha a popular musical instrument the festival was aimed at popularizing the ancient folk dances among the younger generations and provide a common platform to the famous folk artistes of the district said hrusikesh panigrahi the programme head of air berhampur he said all the folk dance and music which was performed during the festival would be preserved in the audio format in the air berhampur archive as many as 70 folk artistes including awardwinners performed for over four hours in the open pandal with had a packed audience the main attraction of the cultural evening was the performances of the folk dances and music by some of the awardwinning folk artistes from badakushasthali burupada bada pankalabadi buguda pratapgiri patapur mahanalla digapahandi ambagaon chudangapur and digaphandi we have taken only one portion of the lengthy folk dance to perform here because the time was short said a rama leela artist pointing out that the dance form in its entirety takes up to a few days to be completed the artistes said they were happy to see the big crowd gather to see the programme if you take into account the large number of people who gathered to see the programme you have to admit that the folk dance forms are still alive i dont think the popularity of folk dance forms is on the wane after such a response said the managing director aska sugar industries limited asil trilochan majhi deputy directorgeneral air cuttack sudha mishra also attended in the programme