Jat Jatin is the dance of women of the Mithila region of Bihar and is supposed to be performed on moonlit nights during the monsoons. Grown-up girls and young housewives assemble in the courtyard and, accompanied by a drum, dance from midnight to dawn.
Performance—girls as they dance, they enact in gestures the epic story of the love of Jat and Jatin. The most dramatic episode of the dance concerns a wicked boatman who breaks through the dancing ring and kidnaps the beautiful Jatin. The lovers undergo many trials and tribulations but all ends well and, as happens in most folk tales, they live happily ever after.