A review of Kumbi Kathawa

“The story of the ballet is simple, but carries a very timely message. It shows how an enemy should not discourage and weaken you, and how a common enemy like a natural disaster makes everyone dependent on each other. And finally it highlights the fact that you can even bring yourself to help your worst enemy, which reflects the ideology of all our main religions.”

Excerpt from Programme Notes of Kumbi Kathawa

It is a familiar lament amongst those who appreciate good theatre that there isn’t much of it around in Colombo. The commercial extravagance of productions with their celebrity casts often smears the stage with a debased theatre of worth only to the mercenary audience of corporate sponsorship. Kumbi Kathawa was different and how! It began with a sombre reminder, familiar to those of us who know the travails of the Chitrasena and Vajira Dance Foundation, that funds for the production of the play were incredibly hard to come by. This essential perversity of theatre sponsorship – in abundance for the mundane and ordinary at best and a paucity for the sublime – is not unique to Colombo, though one does notice that the phenomenon seems to be getting worse. It is inspiring then to see a quality of performance uncompromised by financial austerity and perhaps even tempered by such dire circumstances to be what it is. Kumbi Kathawa was not without its blemishes, but indubitably one of the best productions I have seen. This is especially significant considering that the ballet featured actors who ranged from 9 to over 35.

It was the costumes that largely riveted the attention of the audience. Photos quite simply don’t do them justice. I had the opportunity to see them up close when I sat through a rehearsal for the ballet a few weeks before it went on stage. They are incredibly detailed and imaginative, with designs inspired by the insects as well as African tribes. And if costumes were form, the content was in the movement of the characters on stage. The first we see of the ants was their brisk entry on to the stage – their movement incredibly detailed and performed to perfection, making it seem as if ants had really invaded the stage. Being a ballet, movement is everything and in Kumbi Kathawa we saw a huge range of insects ranging from ants, fire flies and grasshoppers to lady bugs and butterflies and others delight us with unique and impeccable movements rooted in traditional dance and inspired by the natural movements of the insect world. It was a blend on dance that was highly disciplined and though a visual treat, obviously challenged the performer to adhere to a regime of steps and movement that, considering the tender age of some of those on stage, bordered on the incredible. And yet, they carried it off with aplomb – from their faces to their fingertips. The genius behind the artistic direction, costume, puppet and set design as well as the music selection, arrangement and editing was Mahesh. Mahesh’s talents extend to the computer, which is where I first saw the set design for the ballet and also how Mahesh’s vision for the costumes germinated from line drawings to 3D animations. The man is a walking design studio in the guise of a dancer.

There is a tendency to associate productions with children and for children as technically and qualitatively inferior to productions with professional actors and adults. Kumbi Kathawa comprehensively debunked such an association and in fact, was of a standard far higher than or effortlessly equals the best theatre in Colombo. This to me speaks volumes of the training at the Foundation. When I was there, the rehearsals began with some minutes of meditation that transformed chattering, sprightly children into models of serenity and concentration. It is this singular dedication to dance that is the Foundation’s signature cadence on stage. A fact that may have gone unnoticed was the presence of two Chilean dancers – Catalina and Lucia – who presence at the Foundation is a marker of its enduring international appeal and recognition as a temple of and for dance. It is also a marker of how ballet transcends language and cultural distinctions – it is its own language and as the excerpt from the programme note indicates, is able to tell a meaningful story without a single verbal utterance.

Thaji brought to life a hugely satisfying rendition of a mosquito and was also the solo dancer in a short performance before Kumbi Kathawa titled rebirth that amptly demonstrated the talents of a girl with dance in her DNA. I find myself in full agreement with “Java Jones”, a critic who having seen the ballet, wrote this of her:

Thaji played the villainous mosquito and did it to perfection. Her total absorption of the music made her timing impeccable and this, combined with her fluid grace, her flawless lines and her malevolent expression, elicited the Yang aspect of the story in no uncertain terms. Having watched Thaji develop over the years, it was always obvious that she would be the heir apparent to her predecessors – Vajira, Grande Dame of Sri Lankan Dance (her grandmother), and Upeka, successor to Vajira (Thaji’s aunt and teacher). This has now come to pass, as Thaji has surely come of age – and from now on, can only get better over the years to come, which, to us dance-aficionados, is something to really look forward to.

The primary annoyance on the night of my performance was sound – which was scratchy and far too loud, with the result that the video played at the beginning was exceedingly difficult to follow. Lighting was also terribly off on some occasions, bathing in bright lights what should have been action and characters, such as fireflies, best suited for an ambient light that would have highlighted far better their movement and costumes.

These shortfalls are of minor consequence however and I am told were not present or addressed on proceeding nights. What was enduring and immensely fulfilling was an hour of theatre that was like a good Pinot Noir – rich, full bodied and tasteful – a rich interplay of costume, lighting, choreography and music that surely only the Chitrasena and Vajira Dance Foundation could have so effortlessly managed to produce. One can only hope that Kumbi Kathawa facilitated the local and international visibility and through it, the funding the Foundation so desperately needs to secure and strengthen Vajira’s and Chitrasena’s tradition of dance in Sri Lanka.

Also read:
In conversation with the Chitrasena – Vajira Dance Foundation on theatre in Sri Lanka
A brief glimpse of “Kumbi Kathawa” (Ant Story)
Chitrasena, Art and Politics

A brief glimpse of “Kumbi Kathawa” (Ant Story)

“We give you something that is very traditional and something that at the same time is not. This is discipline. You can’t do this without thinking”

Chitrasena, quoted in Bandula Jawayawardhana’s essay “The Meaning of Chitrasena” published in Nŗtya Pūjā: A Tribute to Chitrasena 50 years in the dance

To witness first and then attempt to write about a production by the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya is a humbling and daunting experience. It is humbling because the writer soon realises the inadequacy of verbal and written expression to capture the exhilaration of dance performed with a vigour and technical precision not often found with such effortless abundance elsewhere. It is daunting because one attempts to capture a movement so mellifluous, rhythmic and disciplined that the rigidity of words necessarily alienates the writer from the performer and the performance. It is with these thoughts in my mind that I pen this short review on my experience with a preview of Kumbi Kathawa, the Kalayanthanaya’s latest production slated to go on the boards at the Bishops College Auditorium from 7 – 9 September 2007.

Kumbi Kathawa is an original production inspired by a Russian children’s story and is a new ballet conceived by Anjalika, the daughter of Vajira and Chitrasena, who also directs the production with Mahesh, a hugely talented graphic and performance artiste responsible for the costume design and stage sets. I was told the production was in development for many years and aims to bring out through an insect story the varied qualities of human nature, from the good and sublime to the bad and ugly.

I made my first entrance into the Kalayathanaya, located adjacent to Apollo Hospital on Baseline Road, with stories recounted by my grandmother and mother on their experiences with Chitrasena, Vajira – his wife, the young Amaradeva, Punchi Gura and the rest of the troupe playing through my mind. Their affection towards the troupe and dance was obvious and it was clear to me, listening to them, that what Vajira and Chitrasena had inspired in the theatre and arts in Sri Lanka was exceptional. The present day Kalayathanaya itself is nothing more than an expansive stage, adorned by two portraits of Chitrasena. There is a small office and two or three rooms that serve as changing areas, storage and space for set-design. The back wall is of an earthen shade, against which a stunning black and white, larger than life photo of Chitrasena seemed an ill fit, yet from the perspective of a dancer was perhaps a source of inspiration during performance. There is a simplicity and economy of architecture and decor as well as a certain air of stoicism, perhaps the result of a perennial struggle for funds to maintain the institution.

I walked in and for a few minutes watched and listened to dozens of dancers gathered in groups, talking animatedly in their colourful costumes about school, their latest crushes, toys and games and the drudgery of exams. Then the rehearsals began, with a few minutes of meditation. From the perspective of an outsider, it was thrilling to see 10 year olds who only moments ago were at play transform into calm, collected performers getting into character. It is an impression that stayed with me throughout – I have never seen, or thought I would see, such a disciplined cast of children and teenagers. Their approach to dance and performance was one of absolute dedication and discipline. Mistakes were made, corrected, steps were fine tuned, movements were re-engineered to seamlessly flow from one to another and expressions honed – all with a seriousness and single-minded pursuit of perfection that I still can scarce believe exists at such a young age.

Kumbi Kathawa features, in addition to ants a smorgasbord of insects including butterflies, ladybirds, grasshoppers, fireflies and a mosquito. All their costumes are extremely detailed and beautifully made. Standing up close to the performers, I was able to see the meticulous attention to detail in the costumes and to fully appreciate the effort that had gone into designing and sewing them to fit each cast member. At moments the stage was a fusion of colour – a full blown riot of bright orange, luminous blue, green, red, yellow each entwined with the other creating the illusion of a painter’s palette brought alive on stage. The movements of the insects on stage are a delight to see and to the trained eye, an exquisite interpolation of traditional dance steps and movements with those inspired by the movements of insects. The resulting action is at times fast and furious – as in the scene where the insects are battling for their life against a flood – and at times deliberate and measured, yet never laborious or inelegant.

The cast itself is an interesting mix of age, culture and ethnicity. Two Chilean dancers, students of dance at the Kalayathanaya, delight us with their rendition of grasshoppers and importantly remind us of the Kalayathanaya’s abiding international reputation and appeal. With the language of instruction and the lingua franca of the production being Sinhala, it was interesting to see the many varied English accents I heard earlier in the day respond and converse in Sinhalese during rehearsals – an interesting study on the interplay of culture and language within the Kalayathanaya’s unique history and dance lexicon ripe for an anthropologist’s own argot. There is also the significant variance in age – the youngest, who when asked stated with great confidence that she was exactly 9+, to those over 30. Age however is no determinant of competency – all those on stage are hugely talented performers. Though technique and training is more visibly evident in the older dancers, the younger display a remarkable aptitude to meld the traditional footsteps and techniques with the movements of the insect they play – no mean feat. But if all the dancers are equally talented, Thaji – who plays the mosquito – is primus inter pares. I first saw her perform at the Chitrasena Memorial Production in 2006. Seeing her again reminded me of the Indian Shantala Shivalingappa, one of the most beautiful and greatest living exponents of Kuchipudi, who I had the great fortune to see on stage in India. Thaji’s movement epitomises the lasting legacy of Vajira, that of combining the lasya, an effortless grace and presence on stage with the strength, precision and vigour of movement of the tandava. Indeed, Thaji’s sublime rendition of a mosquito is to stage what Ralph Gleason (the co-founder of Rolling Stone) once said of Frank Sinatra’s music – an artiste able to take something banal and ordinary and make it live and breathe and communicate emotion.

Chitrasena’s acute grasp of choreography finds, as expected, ample expression in Kumbi Kathawa – “The choreographer must have a profound knowledge of his medium of expression together with a sound understanding of music, lighting, decor and costume, for it is what he conceives and envisions as a whole that brings together the parts into a total experience of dance into Natya or dramatic element, Nritta or pure dance and Nrithya, sentiment and mood” (“Choreography and the Traditional Dance of Sri Lanka” in Nŗtya Pūjā: A Tribute to Chitrasena 50 years in the dance). Mahesh, a prodigy in digitally visualising set design and costumes and bringing them to life coupled with the choreography gene embedded into the DNA of Anjalika guarantee a production that not just brings insects to life on stage as never before but is a step closer in what Chitrasena once said was the “elusive goal of perfection” to which he dedicated all his work.

Speaking with Heshma, the daughter of Anjalika and Rukshana, a senior dancer of the Kalayathanaya after the run through of the production, what struck me and not for the first time was how difficult it was to promote and sustain good art and theatre in Sri Lanka. Chitrasena himself was no stranger to the lack of funding to support his work – he had to borrow 3,000 rupees from his servant to produce Karadiya in 1961. However, what is dispiriting and indeed bizarre today is that the abundance of sponsorship and funding for the mediocre and banal and on the other, a near complete lack of funding for productions that are original, innovative and what is more, rooted in and develop Sri Lanka’s own rich traditions of dance and theatre. That the Kalayathanaya had to withdraw money from fixed deposits to stage Kumbi Kathawa is a sombre and damning indictment of the state of theatre in Sri Lanka today.

At the end of the day, Kumbi Kathawa is largely a production by children, for children. I remember, as a child, seeing Srilal Kodikara’s Manasa Vila (The Lake of the Mind) rendered as an opera by Premesiri Khemadasa. I can’t remember in detail the plot or action, but what I do acutely remember is the lights, the colour, the music and how much I was enthralled by the spectacle and overall performance on stage. Children are deeply influenced by the arts and delight in good performance. There is something magical about good theatre, as Marsh Dodanwala delightfully reminded us recently. If you, like I, would like to see more of the same, buy a ticket for Kumbi Kathawa today.

Editors note: Tickets are priced at Rs. 400 (downstairs, open seating) and Rs. 150 (balcony). Those who purchase four downstairs tickets will receive an edditional ticket for free as a bonus. Special rates are also available for groups of over 20 people. Tickets are available at the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya, 590 Elvitigala Mawatha, Colombo 5 (next to Apollo Hospital). Phone Inquiries: 0602150570

Please listen to a podcast with Heshma (grand-daughter of Chitrasena and Vajira and Rukshana, a senior dancer at the Kalayathanaya on VOR Radio here.

Thoughts on Chatroom, a play by Enda Walsh directed by Tracy Holsinger

Thoughts on Chatroom, a play by Enda Walsh directed by Tracy Holsinger

Chatroom, directed by Tracy Holsinger and produced by Mind Adventures Theatre Company, was a refreshing departure from banal productions that usually feature in Colombo. Dealing with suicide and online communication, the script by Enda Walsh, an Irish playwright, explores the understanding of and responses to depression, suicide and ultimately, human relationships of six teenagers brought together in Internet chat rooms.

The regrettable and never to be repeated, I hope, projection of commercial advertisements before the commencement of the play aside, Chatroom was, as is to be expected from Tracy Holsinger, excellent theatre and personally, a deeply fulfilling return to her directorial style after 3 Star K at the Wendt in 2003. Exploring for the past couple of years the representation of suicides in the mainstream print media in Sri Lanka, I found the play to be a very interesting take on the issue and our responses to it. Chatroom, as the moniker suggests, approaches suicides through the lens of Internet chat rooms – places where with relative ease, anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can engage with topics and issues as diverse and perverse as the human imagination. Chat rooms can be at once engaging and frightening, faceless yet full of character, distant yet palpably close and real, and often perceived to be, by those who frequent them regularly, a real connection to a world beyond the confines of one’s own occasionally claustrophobic life and relationships.

Escape through death is a leitmotif in the production. Jim, played by Brandon Ingram, actively seeks it. Laura, played by Tehani Chitty, found it and yet returned to (a) life. Emily, an essentially good / moral character played Subha Wijesiriwardene attempts to vitiate the influence of the wickedly engaging William, played by Arun Welandawe-Prematileke and Eva, played by Erasha Sugathapala on Jim. Emily is helped, to an extent, by Jack, played by Ruvin de Silva, who is caught between a desire to be accepted in the chat-room and his conscience, alerting him to the grim telos of participating in William’s cruel mind-games. As the Director’s note avers:

“The sense of freedom that comes from being faceless and nameless can be exhilarating, can make you more daring than in your everyday interactions with people.”

Morality in online communications & relationships is complex and fluid. Chat room patrons may never know, meet or see the face of their greatest detractors, or indeed, their closest friends. Coincidentally, a recent article in the New York Times explores the phenomenon of intolerance and hate speech online (flaming) through the emerging field of social neuroscience – looking into what goes on in our brains when negotiating largely anonymous, online communications and the relationships built thereupon. As the Daniel Goleman writes in Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior (NYT, 20th February 2007):

“Flaming can be induced in some people with alarming ease. Consider an experiment, reported in 2002 in The Journal of Language and Social Psychology, in which pairs of college students — strangers — were put in separate booths to get to know each other better by exchanging messages in a simulated online chat room. While coming and going into the lab, the students were well behaved. But the experimenter was stunned to see the messages many of the students sent. About 20 percent of the e-mail conversations immediately became outrageously lewd or simply rude.”

Chatroom explores these complex issues through a script that attempted to unravel the complex interplay of emotions, conviction and action through the words and ideas that are exchanged between six characters online. Regrettably however, in largely sticking to stereotypes, the production did not fully explore the ways in which online communications can subvert and change our perception of identity and belonging. The characters, for the most exceedingly self-centred, never really grew to appreciate the viewpoints of each other. Perhaps indicative of a dominant aspect of the medium of a chat room itself, it does not however, represent the chiaroscuro of emotions and rich textures of many relationships online. Each of the characters attempt to mirror a certain dimension, or character, of a typical chat room – William for instance with his twisted logic and opinionated self-indulgence, Laura with her quiet resolution and Jim, searching for belonging. Chat rooms however are more than the sum of each of these characters. Simplifying thus the range of human interaction online, we are never fully satiated as to whether Chatroom is a distillation of what transpires in chat rooms, or whether it is in fact, far removed from reality. Also unsatisfactory was the denouement. Jim’s pontifications on suicide towards the end of the play were tedious and contrived. It is almost as if the playwright, through Jim, wanted to proselytize life over death, and drill in the message that suicide is terrible and unnecessary. It may well be, but surely the audience can make up its own mind and it’s entirely possible for youth theatre to edify without resorting to such trappings of a script. Furthermore, that Jim and Laura find commonality in furry bunnies at the end of the production is heartwarming, but I’d much rather an ending that didn’t smack of Grimm’s fairy-tales. Better use of the advanced lighting at the British School Auditorium may have also brought on to stage, life passing by in front of a computer monitor by better indirect lighting to create ambient hues on the faces of the chat room participants, given what I’ve read in the papers about the state-of-the-art facilities available at the venue.

These remain minor annoyances in a production otherwise extremely fulfilling. The cast, for many of whom this was their first mainstream theatre production after school, delivered overall above average performances. Tehani and Arun, playing Laura and William respectively, clearly stood out for what were finely played performances of two characters, very different from each other, central to the leitmotifs and the action of the play. Tehani’s light touch in her sensitive portrayal of Laura, a complex character torn between her own traumatic personal experience and the desire to prevent another suicide, clearly had an edge over the other characters, save perhaps for William. Arun was brilliant in a sublime rendering of an opinionated young prick with scant regard for the trauma of others save for his own, twisted enjoyment. Brandon’s enactment of Jim, a depressed, lonely teenager with an obvious alcohol problem in need of counseling was adequate, but not entirely convincing. Ruvin, playing Jack, was again not entirely comfortable with his character, playing it with varying degrees of alacrity in the production I saw Friday night. Emily, played by Subha, I am told by her mother, was essentially herself in the play! But her character, perhaps the only “good” one in the play and the most uni-dimensional, was not one that I found particularly engaging, which is a pity since Subha’s talent far exceeds that which we saw in Chatroom. Played by Erasha, Eva, was acted out extremely convincingly even though next to Emily, I found Eva’s character to be the flattest and least developed of the lot.

Returning to the issue of commercial sponsorship, the history of theatre is such that it has always relied on rich benefactors or commercial sponsorship for the promotion of art, but when mercenary foundations are objectionably projected into the stage itself, it invariably colours our appreciation of the creation. Art and commercialism simply don’t mix, and to coalesce both is a dangerous trend where marketers & advertisers, with generally no aesthetic appreciation save that which is governed by a profit motive, can increasingly determine cultural production. The point is simply that financial support for a (good) production is can be better appreciated without having to project it in the faces of an audience. This of course is a larger discussion that I think serious directors such as Tracy should take up with a broader audience with a view to creating a foundation for artistes to produce their works that is not wholly reliant on the largesse of commercial enterprise.

I came into Chatroom expecting it to be a play aimed very much at a teenage audience, with necessarily, a light treatment of social concerns. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the contrary – that it was a transcendent dramatic exploration of some of the most pressing issues online and in the real world today. Tracy’s notes in the programme brochure tell us that it was not the intention of Chatroom to send us back home thinking that life is a piece of cake. Clearly, producing Chatroom would not have been a piece of cake either, but we are happy that it was so well baked and served. Having tasted it, we can only want more.

C u ltr Tracy ☺

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