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| Sunday, 24 July 2005 |
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Chitrasena : End of the cosmic dance Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
Last Monday night on the news bulletins the death of Chitrasena was sandwiched between the trivia of politics which forms the pabulum of the newscaster these days. Only the bare biographical bones were offered of a man who had become a legend in his own lifetime. One reputed television channel which makes a fetish of Sri Lanka's glorious past did not even have live footage of the dancer. It was a sorry commentary on the contemporary moral climate and the sad drift from the cultural standards which giants such as Chitrasena had sought to uphold in their time. To measure Chitrasena's contribution to Sri Lankan life one has to set him against the times and the background which produced him. For Chitrasena not only drastically redrew his own personal map but also challenged the orthodoxies surrounding the classical dance in Sri Lanka. Hailing as he did from a well-to-do urban family immersed in colonial culture it was the height of apostasy for him to take to the dance identified with a certain caste in the Kandyan social structure. Students of tradition will tell us that caste in traditional society was determined by occupation and carried no social stigma but the deterioration of Kandyan society under the onslaughts of imperialism and the rise of the imitative middle class fostered by the White Raj had ensured that by the time Chitrasena appeared on the horizon the traditional dance would be relegated to a caste pocket outside the pale of polite society. In fact in later years Chitrasena used to laughingly recall that once when he performed an item at a concert at the Regal Theatre the venerable 'Times of Ceylon' the organ of the snooty British sahibs had baldly reported that 'A devil dancer had also performed.' That devil dancer however was soon to take the country by storm and transform the social imagination. Here Chitra was greatly helped by his father. Seebert Dias was an entrepreneur and a sponsor of the arts. With the then British manager of the Colombo Stores he had taken the Tower Hall on lease and there paved the way for performances for the dramas of John de Silva, Charles Dias, Dick Dias and others. But his own proclivity was towards the plays of Shakespeare but the patriarch was sympathetic when his young son, who by then had drunk deep at the Tower Hall springs, expressed his intention of studying the traditional dance. He invited the best exponents of the Kandyan dance to his own home to teach his son the rudiments of the art. Soon studying under such masters as Algama Kiriganitha Gurunnanse and Lapaya Gurunnanse (to whom Chitra retained his fidelity until the latter's death) the young Maurice Dias as he still was had become an exponent of the traditional dance himself. But the immersion in one's own tradition had to be completed by exposure to wider influences and one finds the young dancer undertaking the obligatory pilgrimage to the fount of our common culture, Mother India. In Travancore he became a pupil of the fabled Kathakali dancer Gopinath Guruji who himself had revolutionised the dance by introducing what had hitherto remained sacred temple rituals to the public stage. At Shanthinikethan, that great cultural ashram where he was exposed to all the heady currents of the Indian Swaraj movement, the young dancer's talents were recognised to such an extent that he was invited to play the role of Ananda Thera opposite Tagore's grand daughter Nandita Kriplani in the ballet 'Chandalika.' By the time he returned to Sri Lanka therefore in his artistic incarnation as Chitrasena the young dancer was fully conversant with both the Kandyan and Sabaragamuwa dance traditions as well as the many forms of the Indian dance such as Kathak, Kathakali and Manipuri among others. Now began the exciting time of experiment. Before embarking on his path-breaking ballets such as 'Karadiya' and 'Naladamayanthi' he brought to stage 'Vidura' and 'Ravana Samaya' by way of experimentation. Here there is a parallel between Ediriweera Sarachchandra who sought to combine the elements of the Japanese traditional theatre and our own folk plays such as kolam and nadagam and Chitrasena who in similar vein sought to strike a path between the traditional dance, the Indian dance and modern western ballet. The genius of Chitrasena was not merely that he was able to bring about this mix but that he was able to do this within the framework of a sophisticated theatrecraft. He was not only a consummate dancer but a master of all the elements which go into a theatrical production. He has unfailingly emphasised the importance of music, lighting, decor and other such elements which go into the total production apart from dancing and choreography. Here he was undoubtedly the pioneer and the trail blazer combining tradition and modernity but yet in a mix which struck a resonant chord in the national imagination. He rescued the traditional dance from its feudal caste-ridden cocoon and introduced it to the stage in a recognisably modern form but yet without losing its anchorage in tradition. He was a modernist and a cosmopolitan without losing his roots. As a dancer, of course, he was pre-eminent. With his powerful physique, total mastery of his body and his formidable stage presence he dominated the stage travelling the globe as Sri Lanka's unacknowledged cultural ambassador and has been compared by some critics to outstanding Indian dancers such as Udaya Shankar and Ram Gopal. Anybody who has seen his spectacular performances will not forget them during a lifetime. Chitra was greatly saddened when he lost his beloved home at Kollupitiya which was not only home to him but a gathering place for the cultural and artistic literati of the day. A powerful politician of the time whose name drove fear into the nation's heart demanded that Chitra vacate the place. He refused but had to give in when a mysterious fire razed the house to the ground. Attempts were made to sell the bare land but to no avail. It was up to Lapaya Gurunnanse to offer the explanation. 'Mahattaya,' he said, 'this is a place used to the sound of the drum. That effect lives on.' After losing his Kollupitiya home Chitra moved to Mahara where at Jinasena Mawatha he bought not only a house but a paddy field two and a half in acreage where his friends used to relax often in the 'kamatha.' But he and Vajira (his companion both in the dance and life although that companionship was not without its tempestuous moments) could never find a fixed place for their classes after losing the Kollupitiya ashram but they soldiered on doggedly. Chitra kept in trim not only by dancing but by an early morning swim at the Kinross Swimming Club. A generous host and a lively raconteur he was excellent company and a man of big stature and large heart. The death of Chitrasena at the age of 84 truly closes an era in Sri Lankan life trite though that phrase has become by ritual incantation. He belonged to the renaissance of Sri Lankan life and letters following Independence and the recrudescence of national feeling which this generated. However he was no narrow chauvinist but sought always to broaden the traditional horizons to encompass a universal experience. With the death of such giants in their own fields such as Ananda Samarakoon, George keyt, Mahagama Sekara,Ediriweera Sarachchandra, Martin Wickramasinghe (all his contemporaries), Chitrasena's passing evokes a feeling of epochal loss. The dancer is dead but the dance lives on because there is a magical moment when the two fuse so that while the corporeal body leaves the frail human stage the form lives on and lingers. From the distant snow-clad mountain ashram Nestling in the young fragrant and cold forest groves What comes wafting through the wind Is your name A free translation of the song 'Aatha Kandukara himaw arane' sung by Amaradeva and composed by Mahagama Sekera from Chitrasena's ballet 'Naladamayanthi'. |
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