Colombo Dance Platform keeps in step with traditional and modern
The Colombo Dance Platform will launch into its third edition come next week, in a three-day session titled ‘Transforming Bodies’. Curated by Anna Wagner from Germany, the Colombo Dance Platform is organised by the Goethe Institut.
The Colombo Dance Platform (CDP), much like its artistic contemporary, the Colombo Art Biennale, explores contemporary dance practices in Sri Lanka, and the changing context of traditional dance forms. The last edition of CDP in 2012 brought to the spotlight Singapore-based dramaturge Ong Keng Sen who introduced the concept of ‘the archive’ as a common theme for interdisciplinary productions.
For curator Anna Wagner, ‘Transforming Bodies’ is a pertinent theme that tackles how dance is traditionally perceived. “I am fascinated by the individual way each artiste has approached the topic,” she shared with the Sunday Times over an email interview. “They challenge and expand the context they are coming from without neglecting their roots.” The body’s role, as the central most important medium of dance, is rarely addressed in performance and artistic research which the Colombo Dance Platform hopes to correct over the course of the performances.
Wagner is the programmer and curator for dance at Theatre Mousonturm in Frankfurt and is currently organising The Dance Platform, Germany 2016. She has worked in South East Asia before but had never been to Sri Lanka prior to this commitment. She was invited by the Goethe Institut of Sri Lanka to collaborate as curator for the 2014 edition of the CDP, and was “very curious to get to know this country with its rich and turbulent history and cultural heritage and to get to know people-dancers, artists and creative producers with whom I share the same passion, an interest in the body as a tool of expression.”
As an ‘outsider’ Wagner believes that her unfamiliarity could perhaps be a strength, although she has used time wisely over the course of three visits to acquaint herself with the country’s dance scene. With the support of Ruhanie Perera, CDP’s programme coordinator, members of theatre company Floating Space and Goethe Institut, she made contact with artists and thinkers in Colombo, Jaffna and Batticaloa. “We spent a lot of time together and this helped me gain great insight into the Sri Lankan culture and the life and work of these dancers,” she shares. “During my second stay I started to work with the artists chosen for this and we travelled together to the countryside for an intense work camp, where the dancers shared their ideas for the platform and dance practices with each other.” Her full-time job as a curator in German theatre meant she was unable to stay for too long, but she touched base with her performers frequently via Skype and mail. “It was a completely new way of working for me,” she adds. “But it was interesting, like the evolution of the performances.”
Wagner is “fascinated” by the variety of dancing styles she has encountered over her visits to Sri Lanka. She assisted in stage performances of Bharata Natyam and Kandyan dance, and finds of particular interest the latter which has transformed from a ritualistic context into a dance form on stage. “As an outsider I’m not able to understand the codes and systems of these dance forms completely,” says Wagner. “But at the same time there is always something that communicates through the moving body that is independent from its cultural context. We all have and are ‘a body’, but how we use and read it is very different.”
The 12 artistes who will take centre stage at CDP were chosen on the basis of project proposals around the theme. Some may be familiar and some may not, yet they all hope to bring something different to the platform. Take Akila Palipana, a full time member of the Chitrasena Dance Company and independent choreographer, who will present ‘Pata Thalam’. Then Heshma Wignaraja, another Chitrasena almuni now artistic director, will present ‘Pantheru Matha’, revolving around the folk music instrument pantheruwa. Bandu Manamperi and Godwin Constantine plan to tackle the already well-worn issue of identity with ‘Me and My Image’.
‘The Body is Present’ by Eva Priyanka Wegener is a ‘playful work’ about expectation, power, vulnerability, dialogue and the three dimensions of time. Floating Space’s ‘Path of Incoherent Time’ revolves around the notion of disembodiment in theatre practices that revolve conventionally around the notion of embodiment. Mahesh Umagiliya’s ‘Nirmanakaya’ explores low country dance rituals while Priyanthi Anusha’s ‘Inner Outer’ is a piece of performance art.
Arpeggio dancer Pradeep Gunaratne will take on ‘Kuvanna’s Metamorphosis’ while Wendy Perera and Sulochana Dissanayake will present ‘Cocoon’. Sumudu Virajini Lenora explores time and its passing with ‘Cikkana-Gilihiyama-Slippage’. Sellathurai Srikannan, explores the ‘History of Histories’ which for the artist encapsulates the experience of those living in Jaffna. Venuri Perera will take on Traitriot, a performance conceived at the GATI Dance residency in New Delhi in August 2014, and extended for the CDP.
Wagner is confident that her chosen performers will deliver in addressing the topic at hand. “Together with the audience we will experience various ways in which the body is used as a medium of communication for aesthetic, political and social purposes,” she says. Wagner wants her audience to be of an open mind and disposition, for you just may find yourself inextricably woven into the performance-“after the intense exchange with the dancers I’m happy to be in contact with their audience,” she says.
| The eventThe Colombo Dance Platform will take place from October 31 to November 2 at the Park Street Mews. Tickets are available at the gate and at the Goethe Institut.
Schedule November 1 (Saturday),7 p.m. November 2 (Sunday), 5 p.m. |