Dance is the language of the gods
Subtitle: the Chitrasena School and the traditional roots of Sri Lankan stage-dance
By: Marianne Nürnberger.
Series: Sri Lanka studies ;; 5; Sri Lanka studies in the humanities and the social sciences ;; 5.
Publisher: V.U. University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Amsterdam
Language: eng
Format: 16,5 x 24 cm
Number of pages: 282
Subjects: Dance -- Sri Lanka.
First sentence: When I first met the dance maestro Chitrasena, in 1977, we quickly agreed that I would make the history of his school the subject of my dissertation. The work was completed less quickly. It was to take eleven years until I received in 1988 my degree at the University of Vienna with the research work resulting from it, under Walter Dostal, to whom thanks are due for giving me a great deal of my general social-anthropological comprehension.
Description: Dance in Sri Lanka stands at the heart of the rituals formerly performed for the welfare of the kingdom. In traditional Sinhala society the occupational group of dancers was integrated into a feudal system in which services to the king and to the Buddhist temples were rewarded by giving rights to cultivate land. The roots of the Sinhala dance are to be found in the oldest surviving dance-cult of the country, the Kohomba Kankariya ritual, which was connected to the maintance of peace between descendants of aboriginal groups and the descendants of Indian invaders under Prince Vijaya. In the 20th century, however, modern stage dancing imerged: the Chitrasena school. This school broke away from caste barriers and gender roles, and accomplished the transformation of traditional dancing to a modern indigenous form of art.
The author, Marianne Nürnberger, has spent many years researching the material in this book and the results are both fascinating and scholarly.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-265) and index.
Table of contents: label: I
title: The dancer in the Society
pagenum: 1; label: II
title: Up-Country Dance - The Origins of the Art of Dancing
pagenum: 31; label: III
title: Low-Country Rituals: Dance, Drama and Dialogue as Therapy
pagenum: 99; label: IV
title: The Modern Stage-dance of Sri Lanka - The Chitrasena School
pagenum: 119; label: V
title: A Summary
pagenum: 237; label: VI
title: Dance and the New Languages of the Gods
pagenum: 249; label: 6.1
title: High-caste Ritualists
pagenum: 250; label: 6.2.
title: Women as ritualists
pagenum: 253; label: 6.3.
title: Dance as a political instrument
pagenum: 255; title: Bibliography
pagenum: 259; title: Index
pagenum: 267; title: Summary in Sinhala; title: Summary in Tamil