The Rice Dance

Nepali culture is as diverse as its landscapes, but this complex society seems to revolve around a single commodity: rice. In various forms it is eaten 2-4 times a day for breakfast, snacks, and dinner. During monsoon season, rice planting dominates daily life in the villages. All the schools are closed for summer break so kids can help with the planting, young adults come home from Kathmandu, families travel from the town over, neighbors lend a hand, and a random foreigner name Nadi learns the age-old practice. 

The phrase rice planting doesn’t justly describe the intricate and ancient Rice Dance that has been handed down through generations. The Rice Dance begins with men and women on opposite sides of the floor; the women in the rice nursery bed, bundling and preparing the sprouts to be replanted.

 Behind a team of oxen, the men prepare the dance floor by first plowing and then smoothing out the muddy paddies. Using a small slapping stick, big voices, and body weight the men direct the oxen and command the pace of the dance. 

Only after the men have moved on to ready another paddy do we women take the dance floor. Calf-deep in mud, we line up shoulder-to-shoulder, and the Rice Dance really begins. Every other woman grabs a bundle of rice seedlings, splits it in half, and hands it to her neighbor. As a unit we double over and slowly wade backwards as we slip the green shoots into the mud a hand’s width apart. All day, we bow over the mud and sow a bright green grid. 

Nepali women dance the Rice Dance as a single constantly morphing unit. When a neighbor slows her pace, we simultaneously shift to fill the gaps in the green grid. Arms cross as we plant in an open space someone didn’t see. Legs cross as we change spaces and the fastest planter moves to the outside. Someone is always singing. Our Rice Dance reflects village life here. This is a ‘borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor’ village society. Family and friends fill in the gaps for each other and our lives are not private but woven with rice as our common thread. And, someone is always singing.