Culture

In a different light:

Vajira Chitrasena

By Aditha Dissanayake


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For the first time in my life I get to know the real meaning of the word ethereal. Dressed as she is in a white kurtha, hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck with silver strands glistening here and there, with the kude gatha... - beat of a low country drum thundering as background music when I enter the office room of Vajira Chirtrasena at the Chitrasena Vajira Kalayathanaya on Alvitigala Mawatha, I cannot help but mutter under my breath “She is beautiful”.

Then I remember that by the time this article appears in print she would have turned seventy six. If to be seventy six means to be like Vajira, I decide, I cannot wait till I get there.

The delicacy and grace of her movements as she sailed through the air in perfect harmony with the rhythm of the beating drums in plays like Karadiya and more recently, Berahanda are still there.So too the toughness and the resilience.

My heart skips several beats when she says without preamble “I feel I have been talking too much to the press recently. It feels almost like yesterday that I spoke about Chitrasena on his birth anniversary in January.

“But this is about you” I remind her gently. “That is worse” comes the quick retort. Then she looks at me and smiles. Seeing that warm glint of love sparkling behind the brown spectacles I find the courage to venture beyond territory I would not otherwise have dared to go - to discover Vajira Chitrasena in a new light.

To know her not as the dancing partner described by critics as “the exceptional leading dancer” of Chitrasena, but as his sweetheart, as his wife and as the mother of his three children. To see her not as the foremost ballerina in the country but as a great-grandmother, eager as every other great grandmother to talk about the achievements of the extremely talented little ones.

“The older you get the more experience you have to give the young people

This is not easy. In the same way the fragrance of a jasmine cannot be separated from its petals, Vajira cannot be separated from dancing. Drawing my attention to her daughter Upeka who is seen dancing with her students in the hall in front of us she says this tradition of the teacher dancing with the students was one begun by Chitrasena and one which is continued to this day now by Upeka.

“When I was a student I used to dance behind Chitrasena. Then I danced with our students and now Upeka is doing the same. There was a time when all of us danced together with the students. We were connected to each other (through our dancing).

Now begins a lesson on the bar exercises. Taking on the role of the teacher, she explains the bar is not an instrument used only in the west when it comes to practising dance movements. Kandyan dancers had used the trunk of an arecanut tree as a bar. But before you begin exercising on the bar there are other exercises you need to master; lying down exercises, sleeping exercises etc.

She gets up from her chair holds its arms and bends her knees to show how the bar was used in Kandyan dancing. Straightening herself with one hand on her hips she laughs. “Your readers will know a lot about dancing after reading your article”.

A lot about dancing and I hope a lot about the creator of these dance forms too. How does she spend her days now that she has retired from the stage. “I meditate from seven to eight in the morning and in the evening, every day. This is not something new. I have been doing it for quite some time now. My mother, who lived to be ninety-nine is the one who introduced me to meditation.” She says until about sixty five she had had no need to worry about her figure. Then she had begun to put on weight; to expand around her waist and so she had started to exercise regularly. “I am determined not to get too big so that I won’t be able to carry myself around. She thinks its important that everyone of her age group should see their weight as a ‘cumbersome thing’ and keep it under control.

Calling her body as “no longer supple” but saying “I hope I will stay on my feet till I die, she turns the pages of a book to show me dance movements (stationary turns, stationary jumps etc.) which were similar to the ones she had performed on stage. “I don’t have the strength to demonstrate these movements now. You can’t be a dancer when you have to sit and pant every few seconds”.

Chitrasena and Vajira as Mandadirala and Sisi in Karadiya

He supported her in every possible way

He supported her in every possible way

Even though age has kept her off the stage it has not prevented her from encouraging the next generation. “The older you get the more experience you have to give the younger people. We can show them how to make a creation. We can give all the new material for them to work on”.

This ability to create something new from the Old Order is a talent she says Chitrasena had in abundance. Looking back she marvels at the way he had changed the conventional, barren stage in the 1940s into what it is today.

“At a time when there was no stage craft in the country it was Chitrasena who introduced costumes, lighting, etc. needed for a show.” He had foreseen a certain form for Sri Lankan dancing and “what he foresaw he worked to achieve, and achieve it he did”. She also appreciates him for allowing her to do her own creations and for guiding her in every way possible when it came to dancing.

She laughs when I ask her if she remembers a specific day or moment when she realized she was in love with her Guru. “I used to see him everyday. Chitra was a handsome man with lots of girls hanging around him. He had hardly noticed her at first.

She remembers how he had played the role of Ravana while Irangani Serasinghe played Sita in the Pageant of Lanka, played the role of the deer and was not on their level at all. He never even looked at me at that time”. She says.

“But you must have had admirers too” I remind her. By the time I had admirers I was fully involved with him”.She recalls. Would it have been difficult to have balanced the ‘artistic sides’ of their lives with the normal? “It must have been” she says with laughter in her voice.

The great joy she had known as she traversed the best part of her life besides Chitrasena is evident on her face when she walks up to the book shelf - the only other item of furniture in her simple office room apart from the desk and two chairs; the statues of the Buddha, Goddesses Saraswathi and Lord Ganesh - takes a well thumped book on dancing called the Baron Encore and turns to the flyleaf.

On it written in Chitrasena’s handwriting is the inscription “A family, 1 son, 2 daughters. Father anxious to bring them up according to his understanding of the world”.

An ambition fulfilled.

Having celebrated her 76th birthday twenty four hours ago she says even though she is no longer in the “dance world” her creative abilities are still at its best. “Your creative ability does not die as you get older. It matures.” Does this mean a new creation is in the offing. “No. To bring out a new creation you must have money. I have decided to stand back and give whatever financial support that comes my way to the younger generation”.

Finally, looking back at the years gone by she recalls one memorable “bad moment”. The day she twisted her ankle two hours before a concert on their second trip to Russia. “My sister was also in the troupe and she stepped in to play my part.

With only two hours left before the play began there was no time to prepare a new costume. She wore my clothes but because she was slightly bigger than me the jacket wouldn’t close”. The Russian audience did not know that the heroine on the stage was not Vajira but her sister.

This is only one among many memories she says and suggests I dig deeper if I need to know more. Perhaps on another day when I compile the biography of this national treasure praised by critics hailing from as far as Switzerland as a dancer with “the highest technical mastery together with profound religious concentration” (St. Gallen, 1970). Till then, one final question.

If everything had gone well on that day long ago in Russia, apart from having had to hobble around with a swollen ankle what would have been the really bad moment that she remembers of the event. She beams saying. “ I lost the chance to show myself off”.

No one who has the ability to fill their lives with love and laughter ever grows old.

Now I know.

Focus: video art

by Sajitha Prematunge

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There were plastic bottles, filled with water, placed in front of every pillar that lined the length of the wall on either side of the building. First we all thought they were art installations, since the discussion of the day was art. To our astonishment (and my huge embarrassment, since I was the one who made the inquiry) the head of the IT department, University of Moratuwa explained that it was to prevent the dogs from marking their territory! Thus began our introduction to this years Artlink programme, of which the focus was video art.

Explaining why art was selected for such a venture, Olga Kisseleva, one of the European participants of the programme, said it best when she said “When we are looking at a piece of art, it’s emotional understanding, which can rarely be grasped by any other form of subject.” The art link programme is a 10 year old exchange programme for amateur artists - involved in visual, fine arts and performing arts - which are willing to think out of the box.

A collaboration effort by British Council, Goethe Institute, Alliance Françoise and the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, University of Moratuwa has also joined the Artlink programme for this year. All expenses of the programme are also covered by the three main partner institutions.

The exchange programme gives a limited number of local artists a chance to mix with British, French and German artists. With the theme of video art for the year 2008, the objective of this years Artlink programme has been to encourage creativity in developing video art and modern media in Sri Lanka.

A range of workshops, spanning from the 4th to 12th March, was held at the faculty of architecture, University of Moratuwa, with the participation of 15 local artists in all walks of life and three Europeans - Elliot Dodd, Florian Thalhofer and Olga Kisseleva.

Elliot Dodd born in Jersey, Channel Islands was educated in University of Western England, Bristol and Slade School of Fine Art, University of London. Florian Thalhofer who lives and works in Berlin, is a documentary film maker. Olga Kisseleva, born in Saint-Petersbourg, primarily stays at New York University and the University of California.

The 15 local participants were divided into three groups and assigned a European artist each. The objective of the Artlink programme in integrating these artists was exchange of experiences, discussion and identification of similarities and differences among the participants.

“It’s a win win situation where both sides will gain, learn and take away many new ideas.” Said Peter Lang, Director German Cultural Centre. The officials of partners in the project-Peter Lang, Jean Phillipe Roy, Director, Alliance Françoise, Jill Westaway, Director of British Council agree that - although some of them were not even involved with the programme when it got off ground ten years ago - shaping the programme, selecting the medium according to the technological development, was a challenge in deed. Sri Lankan art has now developed to the state where the medium has become laptops and mobile phones, instead of the conventional brush and canvas!

The three teams resided in Subodhi Institute of Integral Education, during the workshop. And this was no contemporary art workshop, devoid of lectures the brainstorming sessions among the three groups sometimes went well over midnight. Three projects are slowly taking shape out of the discussions and exchange of ideas, the team members claim that they are not worried about the outcome but the process that they under go to get there.

Documentary film making has a style of its own. Olga Kisselevas said that she and her teams objective was to focus on strict angles using real and conceptual projections and individual expression through projection. Florian Thalhofer, the inventor of Korsakow system - a revolutionary software which enables simultaneous viewing of different frames, says “I wanted to depict how an alien would picture our world and how it would try to find patterns in our world.”

Florian and his team is the best example that these young minds have much to share and learn from each other. Apart from art they have other things in common, such as the problem of identity.

Sri Lankans according to Florian are very keen on preserving their identity just as the French, German and British are concerned about theirs. Elliot Dodds teams theme was illusions. Projecting light through mosquito nets, glass, water and trees, the team seemed to agree that what mattered was not the final product but the process that got them there.