(Continued from last week…)
To celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of iconic traditional dance guru and pioneer Chithrasena, we publish this one-on-one interview with the maestro published in the Sunday Observer on May 28, 2000. This is the final episode of the interview.
Q: But did you foresee the eventual death of the dance ritual?
Yes, I foresaw that.
Q: Is that why you took the tradition and adapted it to the stage?
Yes, that is one of the reasons. You cannot cling to tradition. Traditions change even in the process of handing them down. Early in my life I was influenced by certain Buddhist principles, like I realised that nothing is permanent, the impermanence of life.
So Sunil Shantha and Ananda Samarakoon were two artistes who were with me in the early period. Ananda Samarakoon’s song had still not been selected. We sang that song everywhere we had shows throughout the island.
We sang Namo namo matha at the end of a show, not as a national anthem and it became quite popular. In my Vidura ballet Samarakoon was the Pothe Gura, the story teller, long before anyone thought of that notion. They won’t admit that now. I noticed Sunil Shantha’s sitar under his bed and I asked ‘why don’t you play this’, then he suddenly declared he wanted to sing, so the first song he created was influenced by Ananda Samarakoon.
He’s not the only one who was influenced by Samarakoon who was a great musician. Samarakoon was the one musician who could create his own lyrics and melodies together. He was greatly influenced by Rabindranath Thagore’s sons and his works in general. Sunil Shantha was a Sinhalese trained teacher and a Catholic and that is why his songs are influenced by hymns.
Around 1950 my brother Sarathsena told me there’s a young boy who plays the violin very well. Then I was building up an orchestra and I had orchestral people. He was well known at that time playing tabla tharanga and helped me with the compositions. Amaradeva was known then as Albert Perera.
So he was brought to me and after hearing him play the violin I said you must help with the orchestra. Meanwhile, I was working on ‘Chandalika’ ballet with Ananda Samarakoon. He created the melodies and lyrics for ‘Chandalika’ Amaradeva had an inborn talent for singing and he sang this song beautifully.
That was Amaradeva’s first encounter with Ananda Samarakoon. He had the opportunity to meet singers like Sunil Shantha and Ananda Samarakoon at the beginning of his career.
I had lots of students coming in and the school built itself up into a fantastic centre. There was a renewed interest in the traditional arts and a revival making a transition from traditional to contemporary. I allowed musicians, artistes, dramatists to use my place very freely for rehearsals and I didn’t charge. Rehearsals for Dr. Sarathchandra, for Henry Jayasena, for Simon Navagatthegama’s ‘Suba Saha Yasa’ were held there. It became a meeting place for artistes because there was no other place where the artistes could go in Colombo, even to spend a night in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
There were many rooms and my mother used to feed all these people. Some of them even never tell her that they are not coming in the evening and the food is thrown away the next morning. Amaradeva, Lionel Algama, Edwin Samaradivakara, Somabandu, Makuloluwa, Somadasa Elvitigala came and lived there and there was constant interaction among artistes in different fields.
Many artistes started their careers with me, but how many of them acknowledge they were there in the very beginning? I gave them food to eat, room to sleep, everything free for years. My place was where they met everyone. Soon the school became highly recognised and the country accepted that place as the cultural centre of Sri Lanka. People often came and went and it was like a temple. I had a hand in all the music because I knew enough ‘ragadhari’ music to dictate what I wanted for my stories and I wanted such style of music. This is how a good thing came out.
So I had to be hands on. I am saying this to show difficulties I experienced when I started these things. For instance in Karadiya I had to break up the story into small parts. The first scene goes on for say 15 to 20 minutes. I break it down.
I take the main rasa and get the musician to compose the music for that part, and many music parts were created for each scene. The whole music score was created like in parts, so that in the end I had all the music on 10-15 tapes.
Karadiya was the first ballet we did on tape in1962. I did this because I had problems getting all the musicians together for rehearsals. There was no discipline and they came at different times. I experimented by recording one scene from Chaudalika on tape for a show in Matara and it was a success. My contemporaries at the time were critical, but after Karadiya everyone started recording on tape. In the long run it is practical. I went on editing this tape for six months putting it all together, because I knew the story.
I don’t think the people who got involved with it musically knew the story. So I put this together and every time I put three to four pieces together, I rehearse and if I feel that some part is long, I work again with the editor who was editing it for me with my aid. In this way, the entire ballet was created by editing. Of course the music was there. For this ballet and my other Nala Damayanthi ballet where Amaradeva created the music. Musically be is superior to many artistes. A very musical artiste. That is how these things started.
At the beginning those were the difficulties I had with musicians, I didn’t have musicians who were able to give me what I wanted. That is why I had to break up stories and put them together. If I had musicians who could understand what I was doing things would have been different.
Q: Did you find it difficult to get receptive audiences in the beginning?
It was not difficult because what I was doing was audio-visual. Not only for the ear but the eye also. So when sound and visual are co-ordinated, the Rasa is created in the onlooker. I knew the stagecraft which I learnt from my father in the early period, so it was easy for me to present this sort of thing in terms of the theatre. For instance, the décor. Somabandu started doing his décor very early for my ballets. He learnt a lot from it.
I used to direct him to do what I wanted and then later on of course by experience we have to learn and know. For Karadiya he gave me three or four sketches for the décor scene and I chose the one I wanted.
I had to train everyone including Vajira. All who came to study there, I had to train, it was the first step. I had to train them to dance. I used the Nava Rasa and showed them how to express emotions through the dance. All those techniques I learnt through experience and my training in Kathakali. I had to train them to give expression to my ideas. They couldn’t help me. I was all alone in the field. Of course now everyone is dancing. Everyone thinks they are doing ballet. Most of the artistes who are doing the ballet have come from my School.
Q: What do you see for the future of the dance and music?
I can’t see a future for the dance. The dance is there. Traditionally we have had these great dance forms, but there are very few people who are choreographers, who could take this thing and recreate it to tell a story, meaning ballet. Very few people know the art of choreography which includes the art of the theatre, which means theatre craft. It is only by experiment and by practice. Even then, if you don’t have the artistry, it is very difficult.
It is said that one must have an artistic intuition for these things. Artistic intuition is necessary for creative work.
Q: But intuition is not enough is it?
No, no, I said artistic intuition is necessary for creative work. Very few people have it and everyone is dancing. We have a lot of dancers who can play the drum and they dance, but beyond that they can’t go. I showed them a way of releasing their talents on the stage by creating Nirthanjali and Navanjali. That was a precedent I set for them. After that, most of these dancers gave all kinds of names and did the same things, have items on stage. But they can’t go beyond that. They can’t go beyond that because they have no knowledge.
And that knowledge could have been given by the College of Fine Arts, but without training only dry technique is given. We have to blame that school, the authorities, for not creating a section where ballet and these things are taught. With the ballet comes costumes, décor, music, lighting. So many things are put together to create the ballet. If that training was given in that school, today we would have far better performers and people who do more creative work. A training is still not given.
Q: You predicted the death of the ritual. Will the technique then disappear?
Yes. The dance had to live somewhere. Live in the sense somebody had to be dancing. So the dancing survived because of the ritual, the people’s interest and belief in the rituals. The dance was handed down from one generation to the other. When the beliefs and love of the rituals die, naturally the dance had to die. I saw this and that is why I adapted the dance for the stage and on the stage it will survive. The rituals are dying, but still the dance is going on, on the stage. Not as a ritual. The ritualistic features of the dance die and it becomes something else. It becomes theatre, dance theatre.
Q: And its form will naturally change?
Naturally? Form has to change.
Q: But you said there was no future for the dance.
Yes. Because of a lack of understanding of dance theatre-theatre craft and presentation. In India also the contemporary dance is very much dead.
But the traditions are still very strong, more in South India. Of course in the North you get Kathak and Munipuri, but the real dance forms are in the South. There is no contemporary dance as such now.
There was in the past. People such as Uday Shankar, Ram Gopal, Mrnalini Sarabhai, Menaka, are those who created the contemporary dance and the art of presentation in the theatre.
I was a great admirer of Uday Shankar. I was very much influenced by the way he presented these traditional items on stage. He was my guru in a sense. So today what is lacking is that, in Sri lanka and also in India.