bhopal the weeklong kala utsav concluded here on saturday the participants of kala utsav have set an example on how to make the best of available resources by using their creativitychildren at the regional institute of education where the event is being held could be seen readying their costumes and props for their performances the team from kanpur who showcased the folk dances of nagaland like sumi dance war dance and zilong dance had designed their costumes with the help of their teacher and choreographer poonam vermaayush tiwari a student of class 9 told toi that their dresses were all handmade the boys had to specially learn hemming and stitching for this he said adding our teacher gave us some innovative ideas to make dresses like those worn by the natives of nagaland during the dance we learnt stitching crafts and painting specially for the eventusing colourful plastic brooms for the headgear the students mad the best possible use of everyday items to make their costume a plastic vegetable basket was set atop a small wicker basket which was covered with cloth pieces in red and black the brush of the broom was attached on top to give the headgear the final finish the students also used dinner mats and sections of white drawstrings to make the skirt accessories and used gardenhose for necklaces similarly the schoolkids from chandigarh wore gunny bags and leafy headbands while performing tarpa and dhol dance of dadar and nagar havelisukhjinder kaur who choreographed the dances said it was difficult to get the original material so i looked for some ideas and after some research i asked the children to decorate their gunnybag dresses with paint and use ashoktree leaves for the bandsroshan verma leading the patna team said we had to do alot of research to get the costumes and dancemoves right and we learned a lot about the culture of tripura in the process after coming here we felt closer to the students hailing from northeast as we understood the challenges they face and also got to know about their traditionsthe event aims at facilitating a cultural exchange between the students from different parts of the countryvisual art from different states folk theatre and music performances also encouraged children to interact with each other and try and understand the varied customs and traditions of the country students from nagaland puducherry sikkim tamil nadu talangana tripura meghalaya and west bengal presented their music forms of their respective states in the festival while those form maharashtra andhra pradesh arunachal pradesh chhattisgarh dadra nagar haveli daman and diu goa jammu kashmir karnataka and mizoram showcased their dramatic talent