Asanga Domask’s Serendib Dance
“An Evening in Sri Lanka”
Millennium Stage South
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
March 22, 2014
by George Jackson
copyright 2014 by George Jackson
No need to look at a map to notice how near Sri Lanka is to India. Just keeping one's eyes on the Serendib company’s dancers shows ties between the big island in the ocean and the subcontinent jutting south out of Asia. Bodies often are bent already as a Sri Lankan dance begins. Limbs frequently start flexed. During the course of the dance, the anatomic line may stretch and straighten, but corners reappear when the dancing comes to a rest. At least one of Sri Lanka’s venerable movement traditions shares this course of events with India’s classical dancing whereas in Western ballet everything starts and ends straight. Sri Lankan dances, though, aren’t identical with those of India. They have a pulse, a percussive rhythm that seems almost African. From where did winds, from whence did tides sweep dance, dress and music to the “magical island” known as Sri Lanka or Ceylon or by its old Arabic name of Serendib?
Origins are lost in time. In her “Evening”, Asanga Domask showed ten dances meant to preserve old forms. Also, I suspect, she mixes in new techniques for her adult and child performers. Low squats, emphatic jumps and deliberate stepping mark some of the venerable ritual dances. When there is narrative, it often involves bird imagery – the peacock, swans, the eagle. In such instances the motion of the upper limbs can be imitative of feathers and wings. At other times, arms are as abstractly articulated and fingers are as splayed as anything in Indian dance. In “Hansa Villa”, Domask’s “Swan” ballet, there is a moment in which the Prince lifts the Swan Princess! It seemed parachuted in from Petipa and Ivanov’s “Swan Lake”. However, the long white gauze skirts worn by the swan maidens are not ballet tutus but actually derive from an Indian costume tradition.
The dances described as coming from Sri Lanka’s Kandyan style seemed the most classical – symmetrically patterned, anatomically articulated, votive. Those labeled as being Low Country had more movement for the shoulders, torso and hips. Did this lowland style, perhaps, influence the pliant hula? Transpositions can reform origins remarkably, as in a pair of musical compositions by Lalantha de Silva. Instead of hand drums and two competing narrators’ voices or the thudding gait of a ceremonial elephant, the composer transcribed melody and rhythm for a Western cello (played by Stephen Czarkowski) and violin (Nathan Wisniewski). Hearing the two instrumentalists in another context, who would have guessed that the source of their intriguing sound was Sri Lanka?