Destined to dance: Vajira looks back
As Vajira Chitrasena (born Vajira Perera, then Vajira Dias) celebrates her 90th birthday on March 15, it is at her life as a legendary Kandyan dancer, choreographer, teacher and incomparable artiste that we look back on.
We meet Vajira at the Kalayathanaya, where she has spearheaded the Chitrasena tradition, keeping alive the legacy of dance and mudra natya or Sinhala ballet.
Born in 1932, Vajira owes much to her mother Lilian who seemed to intuit the grace that flowed through her daughter. It in fact ran in the family, as Vajira’s sisters including Vipuli and the oldest sister (who became a doctor) also danced.
Lilian sent Vajira to Sri Palee in Horana, modelled on Rabindranath Tagore’s famed Santiniketan in India.
Another of Tagore’s ‘convertees’ came to dance at Kalutara: Chitrasena who was the son of Seebert Dias who though a thespian steeped in Shakespeare, had developed a nostalgia for folk culture like Devar Surya Sena and others of his era.
At the Kalutara hall Chitrasena danced as Siva in a circle of fire. Vajira is recorded to have been impressed, but when the ladies of Kalutara got Chitrasena down to do classes she played truant because she had a decided antipathy for the big ‘mahasona’.
Yet her talent was always evident. At 16, she danced as a deer at the grand ‘Pageant of Lanka’ held in celebration of the country gaining Independence in 1948 and by 17, she went to train with Chitrasena being boarded at their house in Kollupitiya, a curiously atavistic gesture harking back to the days when the acolyte went to live with the guru. Before this her dance teacher at Kalutara had adorned her with ves.
The Kollupitiya house, she recalls, was a hive of artistic ferment. Vajira entered Methodist College which was nearby. But she was yet ‘not serious’ about dancing, and when Chitrasena pushed her to strive even harder she would throw tantrums, and in a huff “would go out and take buses aimlessly till I cooled down”.
The household including Chitrasena’s sister Munirani (his very first partner) and brother Sarathsena (drummer) were happy to have Vajira as with time she took on the responsibilities of handling shows.
While in the interim Lapaya Gurunnanse, Chitrasena’s own guru, took her through the steps of the ancient dance that flowed in his veins dancing for temple and devale, she married Chitrasena at 18, and immersed herself in the world of dance theatre.
While the mudra natya ‘telling a story through dance’ was Chitrasena’s own beloved invention, Vajira went on to blaze her own trail, conceiving 17 ballets on her own. Their most successful ballet was Karadiya, as exotic as Bizet’s Pearl Fishers and of course more authentic given the producers knew their Ceylon as intimately.
With their dramatic costumes, music, lighting, sets, the mudra natya were thrilling with Chitrasena’s powerful performances and Vajira’s sinous grace on stage. Who having seen her as the swan in Nala Damayanthi or the rustic Sisi in Karadiya have not been moved by the sheer eloquence of her movement?
Yet hers was not always a rosy-tinted existence. Of playing Sisi in Karadiya she would tell Sunila Abeysekere:
“... The tragedy of that character matched my mood in real life. I was young, in my twenties, unhappy and confused, my days spent in sadness.”
However “the role of the swan... was one which allowed
me to move away from myself, to transform myself into an ethereal being.”
As the first professional Kandyan woman dancer she is credited with initiating the lasya or the feminine style of the Kandyan dance. With her consummate artistry, she set an example to all female Kandyan dancers to come.
Vajira’s first foreign tour with the Chitrasena Dance Company was in 1957, when she had to hand over her three-month old son Anudatta to her mother Lilian (‘Mummy’ to the grandchildren) and dance through the capitals of Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other European countries. It was but the beginning, and from then till the late 1990s there would be at least three months of foreign tours every year.
Wherever they went the Chitrasena Dance Company were rapturously acclaimed.
Once at the Kremlin at a rehearsal for Karadiya she twisted her ankle and for one show Vipuli had to dance in her place, while Vajira was carried to the balcony to sit with her country’s Prime 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 medley made up of 18 folk and traditional dances; among them the controversial Gajaga vannama, brewing up a storm because this vannama imitating the royal elephant was always considered too masculine for a woman to contemplate.
In 1982 the Chitrasenas had to move from the Kollupitiya house to Nawala, and her daughter Upekha says this was when Vajira’s mettle was truly tested.
“Amma had to learn to drive a car, move around, pick up dancers, make tea and go from place to place for rehearsals and for classes – if she hadn’t done that, we would have collapsed.”
Vajira adds that they would not have done it without the “art loving people of Sri Lanka.” During hard times with no venue to perform the Kalalaya School gave their hall generously, and they were able to use the Girls’ Friendly Society hall too for practices.
Ever innovative, Vajira, also collaborated with Arundathie Sri Renganathan, working with Karnataka musicians and Bharatanatyam.
The awards and accolades have been numerous – most recently in November 2021, the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, given by the Indian Government for her contribution to dance.
Vajira was a familiar presence teaching at the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya in its now permanent home at Elvitigala Mawatha, Colombo 5 until COVID struck. She plans to come back once the new building, Guru Gedara, in the Kalayathanaya has been completed and maybe “do something new”.
In the meantime she lives a simple life at her home in Nawala, plays the sitar, and meditates from five to six every evening, content that Chitrasena’s legacy – and her own – will live on with her family and the generations of students she has taught.