Dancers enthral audience with folk performance during international summer festival in Shimla

Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) [India], June 18 : The four-day international summer festival in Shimla proved to be a visual delight for the audience.
Dressed in traditional attire, over 500 rural women performed a traditional folk dance as part of the international summer festival.

A significant number of tourists have assembled to see the closing day of the Summer Festival.
Rural women were delighted to be part of the celebration. Pawna Kumari, a participant shared, "We have performed this Mahanati (a group folk dance) here it is important for tourists also this is important to save our dying tradition and culture. This is providing a platform to promote the traditional culture and draw tourists. Women from Mashobra block and other parts of rural areas have gathered here over 500 women participated here. This is empowering the women as all women performed here without any fear and care."
The young artists are willing to preserve the tradition of the country. "As nowadays, people are getting attracted towards the Western culture, these kinds of performances are important for us to preserve and promote our tradition and culture. We are feeling very happy, the youth need to make a balance between modernization and tradition," said, Yachana Sharma, a local girl and dancer.
The tourists also enjoyed the performance. One of the tourists Rohit Agarwal, who came from Rajasthan shared his experience, saying, " We are coming from Rajasthan to enjoy the cold weather here as it's very hot there at our place. We are enjoying this folk and traditional dance with family."
The district administration has organised this festival with an objective to provide a platform for artists and showcasing rich cultural heritage to the outside world.
"This summer festival is an introduction to the cultural heritage of Shimla, we bring in and showcase our culture to the tourists here. We have artists from other states too, apart from this there have been performances from the artists from Mumbai so that people get an amalgamation of culture and art," said Anupam Kashyap, organiser and Deputy commissioner of Shimla district administration.
"People and artists from the outstate are taking part in it. Shimla is a historic name and we want this hill state to lead in the field of tourism," added Kashyap.
Sanjiv Kumar Gandhi, Superintendent of Shimla District Police talked about the arrangements and said, "We have tried to execute the Sumer festival peacefully. As already said the Shimla summer festival is a benchmark of colour, culture and tradition. Police are trying to work as a facilitator in it. As per our data available with us from all directions till date in this month we have data of 825000 vehicles which have entered Shimla and it includes nearly 300000 tourist vehicles."
"You can assume that a huge number of tourists have entered Shimla city. We have challenges but our commitment is always to play an important role as a good facilitator. We welcome all tourists; we expect cooperation from them as well. I appeal to everyone to be within the limits of Law," shared Sanjiv Kumar Gandhi.
The four-day international summer festival kicked off in the North Indian hill town of Shimla on Saturday night.
With the beginning of the traditional and cultural folk night, the governor of Himachal Pradesh, Shiv Pratap Shukla, inaugurated the festival here at the historic Ridge Maidan.
This year the festival, usually organised in the first week of June was delayed by two weeks due to elections. The festival concludes tonight.