Interview with Vajira, Sri Lanka’s Prima Ballerina Assoluta
Repost This Article
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Vajira is now 78. In just over half an hour and recorded at the Chitrasena and Vajira Dance School, Vajira looks back at her life and recalls how she began to dance, what dance means to her, what’s changed from when the time she was an active dancer, her legacy alongside that of Chitrasena’s, what and who inspired her, the changes she brought about to traditional Kandyan dancing and the future of the Dance School in the hands of her children and grand-children.
Allowing Vajira to speak at length and interrupting as little as I could, for those who love dance (and love to dance), this is a record of a lifetime dedicated to its perfection.
Thanks a lot and as with many interviews you do, it is brilliant. But this better be preserved in archive.org. I know I am partial.
THREE CHEERS to Vajira’s contribution to contemporary Sri Lanken dance theater , through Chitrasena productions . As divulged in the interview. having getting inspired seeing Martha Graham in dance , the simultanious dance movements on three tiered choreography experiment by Vajira in the Kinkini Kolama Ballet was remarkable . Nihal Fernando of Studio Times has captured it in climax through his camera and has published it in one of his photography books . Vajira well deserves an applause in retrospect. (Certainly this interview has to be preserved.)
My humble adoration to my teacher Vagira, I hope you remember me. I’m your one and only Muslim dancer that you ever trained by yourself. Ever so loving and ever so grateful, from your obedient student, Mohamed Ishrath Mackie, from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA….
Hi1 Wajira, I have associted Suramba gurunanse, Sedaraman ete from my chilhood and most recently one niece of gurunanse spoke to me.
In 1987 I could see a very fantastic presentation of your daughter with an American guru in Mahamaya college,Kandy. Best of luck for your future career.