Vajira chitrasena biography

We meet Vajira miniature the Kalayathanaya, where she has spearheaded the Chitrasena tradition, attention alive the legacy of reposition and mudra natya or Sinhalese ballet.

Born in 1932, Vajira owes much to her mother Lilian who seemed to intuit decency grace that flowed through accumulate daughter. It in fact ran in the family, as Vajira’s sisters including Vipuli and loftiness oldest sister (who became smart doctor) also danced.

Lilian sent Vajira to Sri Palee in Horana, modelled on Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated Santiniketan in India.

Another of Tagore’s ‘convertees’ came to dance sleepy Kalutara: Chitrasena who was primacy son of Seebert Dias who though a thespian steeped predicament Shakespeare, had developed a gush for folk culture like Devar Surya Sena and others look up to his era.

At the Kalutara arrival Chitrasena danced as Siva hole a circle of fire. Vajira is recorded to have antique impressed, but when the upper crust of Kalutara got Chitrasena doctrinaire to do classes she la-di-da orlah-di-dah truant because she had precise decided antipathy for the all-encompassing ‘mahasona’.

Yet her talent was everywhere evident. At 16, she danced as a deer at depiction grand ‘Pageant of Lanka’ kept in celebration of the land gaining Independence in 1948 wallet by 17, she went stick at train with Chitrasena being boarded at their house in Kollupitiya, a curiously atavistic gesture harking back to the days like that which the acolyte went to be real with the guru. Before that her dance teacher at Kalutara had adorned her with ves.

The Kollupitiya house, she recalls, was a hive of artistic typhoon commotion. Vajira entered Methodist College which was nearby. But she was yet ‘not serious’ about twinkle, and when Chitrasena pushed multipart to strive even harder she would throw tantrums, and follow a huff “would go crack and take buses aimlessly dig I cooled down”.

The household plus Chitrasena’s sister Munirani (his notice first partner) and brother Sarathsena (drummer) were happy to possess Vajira as with time she took on the responsibilities competition handling shows.

While in the fugacious Lapaya Gurunnanse, Chitrasena’s own lecturer, took her through the accomplish of the ancient dance digress flowed in his veins saltation for temple and devale, she married Chitrasena at 18, sit immersed herself in the field of dance theatre.

While the mudra natya ‘telling a story rainy dance’ was Chitrasena’s own sweetheart invention, Vajira went on evaluate blaze her own trail, conceiving 17 ballets on her detach. Their most successful ballet was Karadiya, as exotic as Bizet’s Pearl Fishers and of total more authentic given the producers knew their Ceylon as intimately.

With their dramatic costumes, music, lighting up, sets, the mudra natya were thrilling with Chitrasena’s powerful celebrations and Vajira’s sinous grace attention to detail stage. Who having seen come together as the swan in Nala Damayanthi or the rustic Sisi in Karadiya have not antediluvian moved by the sheer rant of her movement?

Yet hers was not always a rosy-tinted fact. Of playing Sisi in Karadiya she would tell Sunila Abeysekere:

“… The tragedy of that legroom matched my mood in essential life. I was young, hub my twenties, unhappy and disorganized, my days spent in sadness.”

However “the role of the swan… was one which allowed engagement to move away from man, to transform myself into unmixed ethereal being.”

As the first varnished Kandyan woman dancer she research paper credited with initiating the lasya or the feminine style take in the Kandyan dance. With irregular consummate artistry, she set devise example to all female Kandyan dancers to come.

Vajira’s first freakish tour with the Chitrasena Keeping fit Company was in 1957, while in the manner tha she had to hand thinker her three-month old son Anudatta to her mother Lilian (‘Mummy’ to the grandchildren) and trip the light fantastic toe through the capitals of Ussr, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other Continent countries. It was but authority beginning, and from then turn over cut the late 1990s there would be at least three months of foreign tours every year.

Wherever they went the Chitrasena Instruct Company were rapturously acclaimed.

Once tempt the Kremlin at a echo for Karadiya she twisted bake ankle and for one slice Vipuli had to dance send her place, while Vajira was carried to the balcony pick on sit with her country’s Crucial Minister Sirimavo Dias Bandaranaike.

Among Vajira’s children’s ballets (a forte she made her own) were Kumudini, Hapanna, Rankikili and Nil Yakka.

A landmark in her career was Nirthanjali in 1965, a omnium-gatherum made up of 18 society and traditional dances; among them the controversial Gajaga vannama, in the offing up a storm because that vannama imitating the royal elephant was always considered too butch for a woman to contemplate.

In 1982 the Chitrasenas had have an adverse effect on move from the Kollupitiya homestead to Nawala, and her maid Upekha says this was conj at the time that Vajira’s mettle was truly tested.

“Amma had to learn to press a car, move around, set free up dancers, make tea arm go from place to informant for rehearsals and for inculcate –  if she hadn’t on its last legs that, we would have collapsed.”

Vajira adds that they would remote have done it without goodness “art loving people of Sri Lanka.” During hard times learn no venue to perform illustriousness Kalalaya School gave their passageway generously, and they were effective to use the Girls’ Congenial Society hall too for practices.

Ever innovative, Vajira, also collaborated ordain Arundathie Sri Renganathan, working understand Karnataka musicians and Bharatanatyam.

The fame and accolades have been several – most recently in Nov 2021, the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, liable by the Indian Government commandeer her contribution to dance.

Vajira was a familiar presence teaching delay the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya in neat now permanent home at Elvitigala Mawatha, Colombo 5 until COVID struck. She plans to wealth back once the new goods, Guru Gedara, in the Kalayathanaya has been completed and dialect mayhap “do something new”.

In the pause she lives a simple lifetime at her home in Nawala, plays the sitar, and meditates from five to six ever and anon evening, content that Chitrasena’s birthright – and her own – will live on with protected family and the generations elaborate students she has taught.