Ahead of the Konark Festival-2019, a high-level meeting was held under chairmanship of Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy on Thursday wherein Secretary Tourism and Sports and Youth Affairs Vishal Kumar Dev outlined the issues for discussion.
The matters relating to sequence of the programmes, selection of items and troops were discussed in the meeting.
The Chief Secretary directed to lay focus on quality of the programmes and participating troops for escalating the festival to a world class tourism and cultural show.
It was decided in the meeting that a cultural troupe from Indonesia would present their performance in the festival. The troops having national and international reckon from different parts of India would present their programmes. The Chief Secretary directed to give place to various classical dances and songs of India along with the Odishi dance and music.
The festival would be held from December 1 to 5 which is the peak tourist season in Odisha. Each day there would be an Odishi programme followed by other classical dances. Dances like Kuchipudi, Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Mohiniattam and Manipuri, etc., would be presented by the troupes from various States.
Tourism Secretary Dev appraised that Konark Festival would be followed by other great cultural events like Mukteswar Festival from January 14 to 16, Rajarani Festival from 18 to 20 January and Dhauli Utsav from February 6 to 8.