A Sankirtana performance centers on two men playing the pung, joined by a small group of singer-dancers, traditionally all male, performing in a temple hall or a domestic courtyard encircled by seated devotees who receive the performance as worship rather than entertainment. Pung Cholom, the drum dance, and Kartal Cholom, the cymbal dance, are its most physically demanding elements, combining vigorous acrobatic movement with unbroken rhythmic and melodic control, skills transmitted the way most of the tradition is, from a mentor to a disciple over years of apprenticeship rather than through any written curriculum. The repertoire, known as Nata Sankirtana, narrates the life and deeds of Krishna in song, and the practice marks not only annual festivals but the major turning points of an individual life, the naming of a child, marriage, and the final rites at death, so Sankirtana runs through a Manipuri Vaishnava's calendar and biography alike rather than belonging to festival time only.
UNESCO inscribed the tradition on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013, under the title Sankirtana, ritual singing, drumming and dancing of Manipur, on India's nomination. The inscription is worth reading precisely: it names and covers Sankirtana itself, not the related Manipuri Raslila, the dance drama staging Krishna's circle dance with the gopis that developed alongside it and shaped Manipuri classical dance in turn. The two traditions share a religious world and a royal history but are staged, and were inscribed, separately.