Rabijita Gogoi will showcase colourful folk dances of Assam in front of an international audience when she represents the country at the prestigious theatre festival ‘Asia meets Asia’ in Japan. Rabijita, along with Chennai based choreographer Archana Kumar have been invited by the organizers to from India to join participants from 13 select countries for this biennial event. Robijita’s forte is actually drama. She is an alumnus of National School of Drama (NSD). But at the same time she is also an expert dancer. She will perform dances like Bihu, Bagrumba of the Bodos and Ninsokareen of the Karbis. Besides her on-stage performance, Rabijita will also screen a video film depicting the history of performing arts in Assam through various dance forms.

The Tokyo festival is organized by Pan Theatre of Tokyo in every two years. The 10-day festival will have a five-day workshop when artists from different countries will develop collaborative works. As a pre cursor to the festival, theatre personalities from all the selected countries shared their views and interacted via e-mail. Financed by Japan Foundation, Japan Arts Fund and Tokyo Metropoliton government, the festival provides the participants with a platform to meet fellow artists from different parts of Asia.

The festival authority selected Rabijita for her pioneering work in introducing theatre culture in tribal communities of the North_Eastern region. Rabijita’s own theatre troupe Jirsong formed in Karbi Anglong in 1994, has the record of producing the first major play in that language Rampharpi Rangbe, based on a Karbi rebellious woman. Some of her directorial ventures have won rave reviews at several national and international festivals. She was also the director of first ever Naga modern play Nisheli in 1999.

Rabijita is basically a perfectionist. She has accepted this invitation as a huge responsibility to represent and showcase her native land. Recently she visited some Bodo and Karbi villages and interacted with the folk artists to sharpen finer details.

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