To celebrate the 100 th birth anniversary of iconic traditional dance guru and pioneer Chitasena, we publish This one-on -one interview with the Maestro published in the Sunday Observer on May 28, 2000. and will be continued next week.
Adored by the public he is a nation icon, for Chitrasena is the indisputable pioneer creator of contemporary dance theatre and the Sri Lankan ballet. After a career span of six and a half decades, it is compelling to turn back the pages.
A fitting point of reference is the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya in Kollupitiya. The building was razed to the ground, but the memories persist. Fifty five years ago it was a nucleus of vital activity. Today when art lovers speak of the cultural resurgence that was to influence people’s attitude to the traditional dance, that was to shatter the delushions of the urban intelligentsia, their thoughts turn first to Chitrasena and the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya.
The cultural climate was very down to earth and very traditional, going back (say) , to 1936 Chitrasena says. I mention 1936 because that was the year my father produced the first , I would call it a ballet, in the sense that he wanted to express a story through the dance. I played the leading role in his story ‘Siri Sangabo’.
I played the role of Sangabo and I was then at Lorensz College and we had a group called the Lorensz College Players. We took this show right round the island and in Colombo we played at the Regal Theatre. At that time the Regal Theatre was not given out for shows, it was a cinema, but the Lorensz College Players, they got the theatre for playing.
My father
My father was a Shakespearean actor-producer. He was a great lover of Shakespeare and may be in 1916- he created the first drama club in Colombo. It was known as the Colombo Dramatic Club. When I was a small boy he used to take me there when they had rehearsals, somewhere opposite the Fort Railway Station, a large upstair building with boarded floors I remember. They did Shakespeare most of the time like As You like it. Romeo and Juliet. Winter’s Tale, Othello and Merchant of Venice.
I was exposed to all these things they were doing and later my father exposed me to the dance and the dance rituals. We have three main dance forms called Sabaragamuwa, the Kandyan and Low Country. He used to speak about them with his friends and I’d listen quietly and when he sees me he’d say small children should not come here sort of business.
I can still see my father standing up and enacting some character from a Shakespeare play. He often did this, he was so fully, so much ‘in’ with the drama and Shakespeare.
His friends were very knowledgable people such as lawyers and doctors literate men. They were the middle and the upper middle class and they met regularly at home. My father entertained a great deal and they discussed drama and theatre.
Then suddenly I decided I must dance. I was determined. It was in 1939. My father had friends in the hill country. Hercules Meedeniya, the Delgodas, the Ekneligodas and it was from Ekneliyagoda that he got down a Kandyan dancer and he was kept in the house. That was the time a Kandyan dancer could not enter the house. They were supposed to be low caste so they were not admitted to the house, into a govigama house. But my father was very liberal, being an artiste. He was the one person who gave a seat to these dancers.
The dancer who came to teach me was Algama Kiriganitha. He taught me for nearly two years. When I started the dandi harambaya – the basic dandi or barre exercises – I got fever I remember. Because all my muscles started moving differently. My gurunnanse said to me that is alright, to go on dancing. It will disappear. So I danced and danced and danced.
My father always said you have to learn the dance that is here before you go to India. That is why he got down all these people and I learnt sufficiently enough to master the intricate technique of the Kandyan dance. My other gurus were Muddanawe Appuwa from Kadigamuwa, who was a veteran dancer and Bevilgamuwa Lapaya gurunnanse for whom I have the highest regard and love.
Lapaya gurunnanse came to my dance studio once a week and taught me for over 30 years. Even after I left Colpetty he came unfailingly until his death. He was a great inspiration and he taught me everything there is to know in the Kohomba Kankariya. What they imparted to me was the solid foundation. Or rather, it was this rootedness in tradition that enabled me to free myself for creative work.
And in 1940, I went to India to Sri Gopinath’s in Travancore. He was the palace dancer and a great exponent of the Kathakali dance Chandralekha also went at this time to Gopinath’s. It was the British colonial period. There was the Maharajah of Travencore and the Prime Minister or Dewan was Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyer who was a great friend of my uncle, my maternal uncle, Sir D.B.Jayatilake.
India
They were both scholars. My uncle was a Buddhist and Pali scholar and Sir C.P. was an internationally recognised orientalist. My uncle gave me a letter to a Dewan and I was looked after very well. I had small house and I used to go to Gopinath’s every day starting early in the morning at five o’clock. It is the time we do facial expressions, eye movements, all those exercises and we stop at 7.00 a.m. for breakfast. After breakfast we start the regular classes. In the afternoon there is a break and again in the evening there are classes. We went on like that for a long time.
I have been to India so many times. I stay for two or three years, come back and go again. When I came back after my South Indian experience, my father’s good friend Sir E.P.A. Fernando, who was a great philanthropist and a lover of the arts – he has done a lot to help artistes – he took over my early study period and when I went to Shantiniketan he spent on me.
I started my dance school in 1944. The house was given by Sir E.P.A. Fernando for a nominal rent. It was a huge mansion, a colonial period mansion. It was known as New Cross. After my studies in Shantiniketan I went to Lucknow, Lahore, Almora.
In Shantiniketan I had another wonderful experience when I played opposite Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s grand-daughter, Nanditha Kriplani-we called her Burudhi-in Chandalika. Then when I started the school, Sir E.P.A.Fernando gave me ten thousand rupees. At that time ten thousand was a lot of money. He was very interested in what I was doing and he used to visit me once a week at the studio.
Collaboration
In India I met Sunil Shantha, I said I have my school in Colpetty. At that time none of these artistes had a place to stay in Colombo, leave alone space to practice.
Sunil Shantha and after a short time Ananda Samarakoon came and occupied two wings of the house. I drew them into my early work. The first show, Vidura Jathakaya show, I did with Ananda Samarakoon, and Sunil Shantha created music for some items.
In those days, we had a series of items in the first half showing the traditional dances and after the interval the ballet starts. Sunil Shantha was an instrumentalist then. He had a degree in instrumental music from Bathkande University, Lucknow. He was not a vocalist. When Ananda Samarakoon came to me he was already a well-known vocalist. He composed the national anthem-it was not the anthem then- and he sold the copyright and he never thought that his song would be chosen as the national anthem.Ananda Samarakoon was in my group then, Ananda Samarakoon and Sunil Shantha both.
We used to perform all over the island. Moratuwa, Kalutara, Ambalangoda, Galle, Matara. There were these school halls and no proper facilities. When I have a new ballet I take this show across. And then to Gampaha, Kurunegala-Kurunegala was a big centre-Kandy, Matale, Anuradhapura, I was the first dance artiste to tour the island. There was another group travelling like this. Eddie Jayamanne’s group with Eddie Jayamanne’s brother B.A.W. The ‘Minerva Players’. At that time they never liked our traditional dances.
When they hear the drum they shout. Places such as Kurunegala, Moratuwa, Kalutara you know, when they hear the drum they shout before the item is seen. I remember my gurunnanse telling me, Lapaya gurunnanse, Sir, I’ll sit inside and play. No, no,no,you must come out.
And I was wearing the traditional Ves costume and they would be shouting hey-hoo while the item was going on. I didn’t care. I just went on dancing. And I did some contemplation, a little bhavana. I suddenly realised this thing had been brought down to a very low level.
From the Kohomba Kankariya sacred dance ritual they had brought the dance to the streets. People could see it in the perahera, they could see it at village weddings, all kinds of festivals. So when I put this on stage they naturally shouted because they thought nothing of it. I changed it.
I did the identical dances without the traditional costume. I created my own consume, an Indian-influenced costume and they watched spellbound, During my Arjuna dance I used to hold them. I realised then the power of the dance.
Q. What about the Kankariya?
The ritual was very much alive. But elsewhere the dance was being debased. And that costume! The audience can see only the costume, They don’t know. You can wear the Ves costume and do the most fantastic movements but they won’t see those hings. They see only the costume.
Q.When you started your career you didn’t think that the dance was dying?
No, no. At that time I wasn’t thinking of anything, When I started, when I was a youth and in the full bloom of the dance. You are only thinking of yourself, and you know, you become a very selfish human being for a short period, that power you gain through the dance. And when it is established in the dancer, the power, it’s fantastic feeling.
When you go on applying one principle to a thing for years and years, that is what you call the mantra, go on with the mantra, then it gets hold of you and gets you to move; to move, to dance, to feel and, suddenly, like thunder it comes and then it gets established. Mantra, yantra, tantra. I becomes established tantric. I becomes tantric and it remains like that, most probably rill you die.
I was just talking of the power of the dance. That is, I am telling you my experience with the movement, when the movement gets hold of your whole being.
And I have great faith in the Kandyan dance. The Kandyan dance is one dance, among the many other dances, that has a fantastic history, a background, a mantra that has been going on for four or five thousand years, the mantra and when the dance becomes established in the dancer, they are the people they call, in this ancient ritual, the yakdessa. They are the yakdessas. That is what the dance was. Because I got this idea from the way Lapaya gurunnanse behaved towards me.
Continued next week