Reproduction
I was never into music and dancing.
Watching this duo, Chithrasena and Viajra was a treat.
I hope somebody write a book on them and their family for posterity.
This is an adaptation by Samson Abeyagunawardena of an article by
Marianne Nuernberger, published in The Sri Lanka Journal of the
Humanities, Vol 40. Dr Nuernberger did field research for her doctoral
thesis (University of Vienna):Dance is the Language of the Gods:the
Chitrasena School and the Traditional Roots of Sri Lankan Stage Dance.
Vajira
celebrates her 85th birthday next Tuesday – 15 March. Her legacy to
the arts and culture of Sri Lanka is her astonishing family dedicated
to dance: Kandyan, Low-country, Sabaragamuwa. The family of three
generations comprises dancers, musicians, choreographers, dance
teachers, costume designers and dance administrators.
As a
dancer, Vajira was world class. In 1963 the Perth Festival of the Arts
director described her as "a dancer to treasure". The dance critic of
Australia’s prestigious national newspaper, The Australian, saw Vajira’s
grand-daughter Thajithangani, dance at the Sydney Festival in January
2015 and wrote: If there is a more immediately captivating dancer than
Thajithangani, I have yet to meet her/him.
The path to great heights has not been easy..
What
was it like in Sri Lanka 65 years ago for a young Sinhala woman,
English educated and of the highest caste -goyigama- to go on stage as a
professional Kandyan dancer? No other Sinhala woman had done it
before. There were hundreds of male ritual dancers performing in the
three indigenous styles: Kandyan, Low-country and Sabaragamuwa, but not
a single female professional dancer of any of these styles. In the
culture of that time, a woman who dared to dance in one of the
indigenous styles was believed to be ill, insane and possessed by
demons.
Vajira dared.
Vajira
was eighteen in 1950 when she married Chitrasena who had founded the
Chitrasena Dance Company in 1943. He was pioneering in adapting the
traditional dances of the Sinhalese to the modern stage so that
theatregoers in Sri Lanka and overseas could enjoy them as
sophisticated entertainment.
Chitrasena was handsome,
charismatic and on the path to achieving iconic status as a dancer. How
did Vajira adapt to be the spouse of such a man? How did she cope with
being a professional dancer in a culture where ritual dance was a
domain of males only.
After marriage, Vajira worked with
Chitrasena to become the "inventor" of a graceful female style– lasya -
of Kandyan dance, of modern stage dance training and of children’s
ballet. Together they raised the standard of virtuosity for the Kandyan
dance and added, with sympathetic understanding , new dimensions to
the classical repertoire of movement.
Vajira’s lasya
interpretation find its most effective expression in her adaptation of
the Gajaga Vannama, a traditional up-country dance of the royal court
of Kandy. Her modified choreography of this dance has even been
incorporated into the curriculum of the government art colleges. The
song texts of the older Vannams include descriptions of various birds
and animals, but no interpretations of the texts were originally shown
in the dance. The choreographies of the Vannams of the Chitrasena and
Vajira School introduced such interpretations. From that time onward,
Vajira was given the opportunity to develop her own choreographies at
the Chitrasena School; the female parts she created had the lasya
quality. All the major ballets of the Chitrasena-Vajira School from
1952 onward were the outcome of the collaboration between Chitrasena
and Vajira.
Vajira is an astonishing woman. Age has not
deprived her of her intensity, her vitality – an austerely restrained
form of tenacious energy – or of her extraordinary courage. Whenever I
remember Vajira, I see her as a teacher leading the dance in front of
the regular rows of her pupils. I remember her smile, her stringency,
the earnestness of her talk when speaking about her longing for a
peaceful time and a place to meditate. It was no surprise for me to
learn that Vajira’s extraordinary success in the role of the young and
beautiful Sisi in Chitrasena’s ballet Karadiya can be viewed as a
creation of her own identification with the oppressed and confused
state of that tragic character.
There is no suggestion here
that Vajira alone broke through the gender barrier to stage dance,
that she set the pace for the first Sinhalese female religious
specialists and ritualists. Numerous women came before her. Sinhalese
historians write about a lost tradition of female ritual dancers who
were similar to the devadasis of India. Then there were the female
ecstatic priestesses of the Tamil Hindu rituals in Sri Lanka who gained
importance through the rise of Kataragama as a religious centre also
for the Sinhalese. To a certain degree, women in Sri Lanka have always
had some kind of silent power and authority inside their homes. There
is no despising of widows, no killing of female babies after birth. A
further factor is that in recent times, the social order has opened up
to women opportunities to work outside the family.
Since the
beginning of the 1980s Sinhalese female ritual dancers could for the
first time be seen to practice as exorcists and dance priestesses. In
the same way that men of groups other than the traditional Berava caste
took over the ritualistic dance-art, women now appeared on the scene to
get their share of the activities of the new ritualist.
There
is no suggestion here that Vajira’s modern dance-art solely caused
this change. Rather, I believe that as the traditional dance-art had
socio-religious significance, modern stage-dance and school-dance gave
considerable impetus to the opening-up of religious and ritual functions
to women. Modern non-ritual dance has astoundingly managed to close
the gap between castes and sexes on the terrain
of its
rituals. It has become a social bridge to the new ritual forms. It has
also contributed to new female professions in this field. And Vajira
was the first Sinhala woman who made dance in the Kandyan style her
full-time profession. Is it too much then to say that her life’s
contribution reaches far beyond the sphere of stage dance?
Vajira
is no ritual dancer. She was a stage dancer for 50 years. Now she is
principal of the Chitrasena-Vajira Dance School, where she also
teaches. It is difficult even today for a Sri Lankan woman to become a
professional dancer and stay on for the rest of her working life. Most
women who learn to dance go on to teach and do not devote themselves to
dancing on stage. However, Vajira’s pioneering work has ensured that a
number of teachers and stage dancers earn a steady income. She is an
artist who has spent months perfecting the choreographies of the
Ballets of Chitrasena. She is a pedagogue who has researched dance
teaching methods in India, Russia, the US and Europe. And she is a
mother, grandmother and great grand-mother.
Vajira
has choreographed 26 productions, of which eleven are children’s
ballets and the rest adult’s ballets. Her numerous performances in Sri
Lanka include several one-and two-week festivals celebrated every year
from 1965 on. During the celebrations at the Lionel Wendt Theatre in
1996 commemorating her 50 years of dancing, she announced her last
appearance on stage. Alas, there have been no more Chitrasena-Vajira
Dance Festivals since then.
The third generation has now
taken over management of the Chitrasena-Vajira School of Dance and of
the Dance Company. Vajira’s mantle as principal dancer of the
Chitrasena-Vajira Dance Company passed on to her elder daughter, Upeka
and then in 2011 on to her grand-daughter Thajithangani.
Grand-daughters Heshma and Umadanthi, are the company’s artistic
director and administration manager respectively. The company does not
have a principal male dancer. It has been unsuccessful in attracting
personable young males to go through the six years of rigorous training
required before they can come into serious contention for selection as
principal male dancer.
What of the future?
The Chitrasena-Vajira Dance Foundation (CVDF) aspires to create a self-sustaining Centre for the dance that includes:
- a healthy pool of new talent drawn from all parts of Sri Lanka;
- a growing base of trained teachers across the country;
- a professional dance company that provides opportunities for artists to meet, collaborate and commit to the dance;
-
and a program of outreach, education and marketing to increase the
base of knowledgeable and discerning audience at national and
international level.
The CVDF has an approved plan for the
construction of a cultural centre, designed by a renowned architect,
on the site of its present temporary premises at Elvitigala Mawatha,
Colombo -5.The plan includes a hall for teaching classes, a studio in
which to conduct rehearsals, a studio for creative work, an apartment
for the resident principal, a library, dormitories for males and
females, toilets, kitchen, dining room and storage room.
-The dormitories are for students who travel from distant outstations and have to stay overnight.
lArun
Abey, a Sri Lankan expatriate long settled in Australia, is patron of
the CVDF. At a Kalayathanaya event in February 2014 he, on behalf of
the three generations of the Samson and Annapurni Abeyagunawardena
family settled in Australia, pledged $(A) 100,000 (about eleven million
Sri Lanka rupees) to the CVDC Endowment Fund and invited others to
chip-in.
Vajira hopes, more than anything else, that many
Sri Lankans, expatriates and well-wishers would chip-in so that the
Chitrasena-Vajira Cultural Centre she dreams of would be built in her
lifetime. Please chip-in when you wish Vajira a happy birthday next
Tuesday – 15 March.
