Audience Left in Awe

Thaji in Ridmaranga. Picture by Lukshman Nadaraja.

There are three things that make a champion. The three D’s. Desire. Devotion and Discipline. The first two I can’t give you. The last one I can, but you have to be willing to receive it.
Karate Kid III

Your guru can teach you the techniques and give you hours of training. But in any field in the world you need to put in the hard work and you need to be passionate about what you are doing. Because without passion there is no power in the activity, and without passion there is no success. We speak to Thaji Dias, an accomplished and successful dancer on life and dance.

The Chitrasena Dance Company have recently completed an exciting and successful tour of the USA. However, they have done many tours in the recent past as well. In 2012, the artistic director of Nrityagram Dance Ensemble of India invited the Chitrasena Dance Company to collaborate with them. Thaji with her cousin Heshma who is the artistic director of Chitrasena Dance Company and the dance troupe traveled to India and they worked on their first production together. The production was called Samhara and was done in 2012.

Back in 2019 they did a collaboration called Ahuti. It was also collaboration that was initiated by the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble of India. They specialize in a dance form called Odissi. It is one of the Indian classical dance forms. Ahuti was their second production which was done in 2019. And then Covid19 happened, so there was a big break in between.

Packed audience

Then they started touring with the production again last year. They toured last year in October to the USA. This year in April and May they toured the USA again for one month. “Performing in the USA is very special, especially in New York.

This time with Ahuti there was a six night run at the Joyce theatre in New York. So it was very successful. We had fully packed audiences and standing ovations every night. That was quite overwhelming. For us it is great to perform in spaces like that, because we hardly get opportunities like that now in Sri Lanka. We did not only do New York, we did other states as well. Every place we went to had some amazing theatres and spaces. It is also a learning experience. I really cherish that, every time we tour the USA,” said Thaji.

In that tour to the USA, from the Nrityagram side there were five dancers and four musicians. From the Chitrasena Dance Company there were four dancers and one drummer. Then there was the managing trustee and the lighting designer Lynne Fernandez who travels with them. She manages the company on tour. Surupa Sen was the Artistic Director of the production and the choreographer for Odissi dance. HeshmaWignaraja did the choreography for the Kandyan sections.

Ritual inspiration

“Every show is special. The preparation is always the same. We had to spend a lot of time away from home as we traveled to India. So we have to find ways to manage classes at the Chitrasena School of Dance when the company is traveling. A production like the one we did, takes around one year of preparation. Most of our company members are not full time dancers at the company. They are doing dance full time. But they are either teaching dance somewhere and then coming in the afternoon to the Kalayathanaya. I am the only full time company member and teacher at the Kalayathanaya. It is difficult doing something in a few months. If you had a permanent company it would be different. That is why it takes a longer time, because we need to take into consideration the availability of the artistes. So we have to plan everything well in advance,” she said.

The Chitrasena Dance Company puts their blood, sweat and tears into everything they do. In 2015, there was a production done by Heshma called Devanjali. Before that they did another production called “Dancing for the gods”. That was based on the different sections from our ritual – the Kandyan or Low Country ritual. Those productions were very special for her. They also did a tribute show for the great maestro Chitrasena when he passed away. It celebrated his work and his life. Then there was Samhara, the first collaboration with Nrityagram Dance Ensemble of India.

Samahara was the first collaboration, so it was very special. The whole process leading up to Samhara I loved very much. The way we worked towards the production was special since it was completely a new production. Ahuti the second production was a different experience because there were some pieces that are very different to what we did in the first production. There were more expressive dance pieces, whereas earlier it was collaborating more with abstract dance forms itself. Our dance form is an abstract dance language. There is no meaning to the movement, but if you want you can use it to give meaning. But in Indian dance there is an inherent aspect of story- telling where they use facial expressions and a codified gestural language to tell stories. Because of that in Ahuti we actually took it to the next level where we do tell a story through the two different forms. So I cannot say that one production is better than the other, every production has taught me something,” she pointed out.

Rhythmic patterns

Thaji has been performing since the age of seven. She first performed in her grandmother’s production Hapana. It was about very brave fish. It was again a little story about the fish in the sea and how they come together to chase away the angry shark.

“On July 18, we commemorate guru Chitrasena’s 18th death anniversary. Whatever we do is always a tribute to my grandfather, the maestro Chitrasena. Because it is his work and vision that is being continued. Be it a collaboration or an informal dance evening at the Kalayathanaya, we always have him in our hearts when we dance and perform, because he is the reason that we are doing what we are doing right now. He was one of the pioneers who brought this dance form from the village ritual to the modern stage. If that did not happen, we would not know where the dance forms would be right now. But I don’t think my grandfather saw what was going to happen to the dance form after it transitioned onto the stage. From the ritual to the stage it evolved.

The form became more refined, and women came into the dance form because it was predominantly a male form. My grandmother Vajira was one of the first professional female dancers in Sri Lanka. Now I feel that there are more females than males doing the form. Now the state of the dance form itself, I don’t think my grandfather foresaw how it was going to change further.

He thought bringing it onto the stage would preserve the dance form further. And people would expose the form to audiences. Which it did. But now the situation is, when you take the artistes in the dance community, I feel that they do not understand how to evolve within the form and keep the essence of it. Because whatever we do, it is the essence of the pure form we must present. That is the uniqueness of it. It is not infusing other dance forms into it, with the intention of making it interesting. That will make the form lose its identity.

I feel that many of the local dancers and choreographers have not figured out how to change the form or make the form evolve without harming its essence. What you see outside now is a very watered down version of the pure Kandyan or Low Country or Sabaragamuwa form itself. When it becomes more commercialized and money oriented, then the form also starts to feel very shallow. There is no depth in it. At the Chitrasena Dance Company, as a representative of the third generation, Heshma (Choreographer) has done a lot of experimenting and created work that has made the form evolve beautifully and meaningfully.

is what she is taking to the next generation. So I think a good example would be some of her work from Devanjaliand Dancing for the gods. But I also feel you have to be a dance enthusiast to understand how the form has changed. If you approach it as a normal audience member, it is just pure dance to you. But if you know how the dance has evolved from the ritual to the stage, then you will understand how the dance form has also changed on stage. I think that is the difference.

To be continued