Dance and the nation (original) (raw)

Susan Reed has written this book having built up a close relationship with the artists of the Berawa (drummer) caste in Sri Lanka and analysed various groups such as colonial officials, foreign entrepreneurs, Kandyan aristocrats, low-country elites, Burgher artistes, Sinhala government officials, tourist agents, and middle and upper class performers and choreographers et al. Who are associated with the development of the Kandyan dance within the period 1984, 1986-1989. This work has been compiled from the perspective of the Berawa caste and mention is made how the political riots and terror that took place between 1984 and 1989 and how it affected the traditional background of the Berawa caste and how it culminated in national politics including the benefits that accrued to the Berawa caste. Reed, who was doing field work in Sri Lanka during 1986-89 and later in 1997 comments as follows on the prevailing political and cultural atmosphere. " The period of 1987 to 1989 often referred to as bhisana kalaya – " The time of terror " – was a particular horrific one in Sri Lanka. Quite independent of the ongoing civil war between the Tamil separatists and the state, there ensued a violent conflict in the Southern and Central regions of the island between the state's armed forced and the JVP, a Sinhalese opposition movement.(p.18) Throughout her work Reed examines relationship between this political uprising and the re-emergence of the berava caste. Anthropologist Susan A. Reed adopts a different approach in her Dance and the Nation; it is not solely a self-reflexive critical essay but primarily deals with the limits of dances translation on text. Particularly, the writer tries to build up a relationship between ethnography and history. At the outset Susan mentions that her primary aim is to give an account of the national dance from the perspective of non-elites (p.14). Similarly, she points out how dances and dancers have been transformed in relation to the values of middle-class culture and to an aesthetic of respectability (p.14). She emphasises the fact that the entrance of middle-class women into the Kandyan dance form had made a major transformation in it. The Kandyan dance which was performed in a male dominated atmosphere provided an opportunity for women to enter it with the admission of the Kandyan dance into the school syllabus. The description given in the Dance and the Nation in such aspects as how a majority of the female students asserted their authority in this dance form with the inclusion of it in their school syllabus, how they performed on the public stage, and how they asserted themselves against the public opinion expressed about the suitability of women entering into this dance form and the transformation of the traditional dance form to suit the modern stage is indeed noteworthy because no such attempt has been made in the past. The book contains seven chapters and a documentary video running to nearly 50 hours. In her first chapter entitled " Kohomba Kankariya as village ritual " examines the Kandyan village ritual with Kohomba Kankariya and the dance items Special mention may be made in this connection of Planting of the Kapa, hangala yadeema, magul bera, yak anuma, aile yadeema, Kuveni asna, hath padaya, guruge malava, kolmura kavi and palawela