Dhunuchi naach
A trance dance with a burning dhunuchi to the beat of the dhak.
The dhunuchi is an earthen censer filled with burning coconut husk, camphor and dhuno, the fragrant resin. Held aloft, sometimes gripped in the teeth, it is danced before the goddess as an offering.
The dance rises with the rhythm of the dhak, the body swaying as smoke fills the pandal. It is performed most of all at the evening aarti of Ashtami and Navami.
Traditionally it is danced by men, though today women and children take the floor too, sometimes balancing two or three dhunuchis at once, one in each hand and one gripped in the teeth. Many paras hold a dhunuchi naach competition on Navami, and a good dancer can hold a circle spellbound.
It is hard, hot work. The censer throws real heat and thick smoke, and the dance is all in the waist and the shoulders, the body dipping and turning without spilling a coal. Done well it tips into a kind of trance, the dancer lost to the rhythm; it is understood not as a performance but as an offering of the whole body to the goddess.
The smell of dhuno is one of the deepest memories of the pujas, and for many it is inseparable from the sound of the dhak and the last light of the sandhi aarti. The dance belongs to the pandal and the household shrine alike, and it needs no stage, only a clay censer, a fire and the will to give the goddess everything you have for a few minutes.
