A comparative study on waist to hip ratio of Chhau dancers

Abstract

Dance is one the medium to maintain the health and fitness. Chhau dance is one of the popular traditional dances in India. The Chhau dancers wearing a heavy mask and costumes dance vigorously in an open stage or ground. Therefore, fitness and the body structure are the key factors of the good chhau dancers. Waist to hip ratio can be a determinant for graceful chhau dance performers. The objective of the study was to compare the waist to hip ratio of the Chhau dancers of different age groups. 600 Chhau dancers were purposively selected from Purulia, West Bengal, India as the subject for the study. They were also purposively divided into three age groups- Group-1: 19 to 24 years (n-200), Group-2: 25 to 30 years (n-200) and Group-3: 31 to 36 years (n-200). The variable selected for the study was waist to hip ratio which was measured by standard measuring tape. Descriptive statistics was done and normality of the data was checked. Thereafter, parametric statistic like Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and LSD post-hoc-test were used. The result revealed that there was significant difference (F-12.303) among the three selected Chhau dancer groups on waist to hip ratio and Group-1 and Group-2 were better than Group-3.