Manipuri dancers inspire audiences with a glimpse of Manipur's Vaishnava culture, and during the early 1970's, Srila Prabhupada expressed to Bhakti Svarupa Damodara Swami that the Manipuri traditions of music and dance, such as rasa-lila and sankirtana, are so infused with the Vaishnava culture that they are cultural representations of Krishna consciousness.



If it was properly presented, then these cultural expressions could be extremely powerful not to mention inspirational. By listening to the words of Prabhupada, Bhakti Svarupa Damodara Swami formed Ranganiketan in 1987. Ranganiketan, which means the house of colors, began its very first international tour during the 90s. It had engagements in Europe and North America.

Since then the troupe has put on nearly four hundred performances for more than a quarter of a million people on four continents. It has even appeared at the University of California in Berkeley, at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Ranganiketan is the most extensively booked performing arts company of its kind from all of India.

The troupe even gives special emphasis to educational programs. More than half of Ranganiketan's performances take place before young audiences. They are also carefully to be sure they create instructional materials that are prepared for the students for the performance. They also give a number of lectures and demonstrations, which will help them to further understand what they have seen much better.

The cultural activities of Ranganiketan do not stop at the stage door, because troupe members are also adept in various offstage arts. They are especially adept to the creation of Manipuri prasadam, which is the traditional cuisine that has delighted people wherever the troupe goes. Ranganiketan performances give samples of the music, the dance, and the martial arts of northeastern India. Thang-ta is a weapons- oriented form of martial arts that dates from the time of the Mahabharata.

Both men and women learn these arts from an early age. With the precision and the strength that Ranganiketan artists demonstrate in the various forms of Thang-ta, using various instruments as swords, shields, scimitars, and occasionally their bare hands. The acrobatic drum dances are very powerful demonstrations of the sankirtana with its blend of complex beats with the devotional mood of Narottama Dasa Thakura. They are performed with the pung, known as the Manipuri mridanga, these drum dances serve as an auspicious invocation before the performance of the rasa lila.

The classical version of the rasa lila is the most important of the various types of Manipuri devotional dance, because it expresses the quintessence of the Vaishnava culture and philosophy. This is a yearning of the individual soul to surrender to the supreme soul, Lord Sri Krishna. Through that surrender, the soul attains transcendent happiness and the highest fulfillment of spiritual desire. In Manipur, rasa lila performances can feature over one hundred dancers and can last up to twelve hours. On tour, of course, the dances are shorter and the dancers are much fewer, but they still give an authentic taste.