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| Monday, 26 January 2004 |
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Happy birthday! Deshamanya Chitrasena Born on January 26, 1921, Deshamanya Dr. Chitrasena will be 83 today. By a wide margin, he happens to be the fittest 83 year old man in the world, known personally to me. By William Shakespeare's staging of the human life cycle, Dr. Chitrasena has reached the last scene of the seven ages. So he should be "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste and sans everything". Nothing could be further from the truth in the case of Dr. Chitrasena. In fact, he is sans nothing; i.e. he is with everything. Given my special interest in the science of physiology, which studies how the human body works to keep itself alive and well, the critical question that springs to my mind whenever I see Dr. Chitrasena is: What is the secret of his wonderfully robust health and manifest energy?
As a professional dancer Chitrasena has had to dance vigorously every working day of his life to earn his living - and worldwide fame. For me to recall the fact that humans have been hunter gatherers for about 99% of their million years on earth, is to realize that a sedentary life style is so very unnatural and therefore unhealthy for our species, Homo sapiens. Our bodies evolved to chase down animals, to climb trees in order to pick fruits, "to go miles before we sleep". Our bodies were not evolved for sitting in front of a computer and go on pressing buttons for 8 hours a day. Chitrasena is living proof that vigorous physical activity is a potent promoter of healthy longevity. For a mundane physiologist like me the moral of Chitrasena's life is that if you wish to live longer and feel better you cannot do better than dance, dance, dance... Chitrasena came on stage at age 15 and he is still there. He once said "dance and life are inseparable". For him to live is to dance, and to dance is to live in harmony with the rhythm of the universe. He has danced through the world and into the hearts of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people all over the world. Among the way he and the great woman behind him - Vajira - have brought to the stage no less than 33 different creations. By far the most famous is Karadiya in which Chitrasena depicts an extremely macho man, "drunk with liquor and lust" as one perceptive critic in Sydney put it. When Chitrasena danced in Sydney, Australia, in 1963 one critic writing in the Sydney "Daily Herald" said that Chitrasena is "one of the most virile dancers of any nation we have seen on a Sydney stage". When Chitrasena danced again in Sydney some ten years later, the same thing was said in the same words. Some unvarying virility, that! Those who have seen Chitrasena on stage at his prime are unlikely ever to forget the visual experience. When he is on stage, nobody else on stage has a snowball's chance in hell of gaining any attention. What gives him that power to fascinate? I think it is technical perfection plus something else. What that something else is can be sensed, but it is beyond my power to pin it down in words. Impressions of his magnetic presence on stage at the height of his artistic powers are among the indelible imprints in my otherwise failing memory. Dr. Chitrasena is, of course, much more than a mere dancer. We revere him because almost single-handedly, he redeemed the traditional dance of our cultural heritage, at a time when it was in danger of extinction under the impact of colonial cultural domination. He is the fountain, the undisputed master, and doyen of modern Sinhala dance. In 1986 Bandula Jayawardhana judged that Chitrasena is a dance in our culture, what Martin Wickramasinghe was to literature, Sarachchandra to drama, Lester James Peries to films, and Amaradeva to music (It is of melancholy interest that Bandula Jayawardhana who greatly admired Chitrasena's dance, and presided over the felicitation ceremony held at the BMICH on Chitrasena's 82nd birthday last year, passed away recently. He was a highly erudite, gentle soul and I greatly miss him. Were he alive, I would have phoned him before putting pen to paper to write this piece. It was mainly by picking his brains that I have managed in the past to create the illusion of my knowledgeability about the arts. Dr. Chitrasena, I know, will deeply miss Bandula on his birthday.) Although Chitrasena is already immortal, thoughts about much-loved, little-lamented Bandula (little-lamented because on his instructions, his remains were disposed of within 24 hours of his death) brings to mind an inevitable question: After Chitrasena, what? There is no question that his art must go on. Fortunately for the arts in our country, we have a President of the Republic, whose heart is, I feel, more artistic than political, I have heard her talk disparagingly of politics. I have never heard her talk disparagingly of the arts. As a little girl she learnt dance at the Chitrasena School of Dance. As President of the Republic, she granted to the Chitrasena - Vajira Dance Foundation a valuable plot of land in Colombo 5 on which to build the Chitrasena Kalayatanaya. One fervently hopes it will materialize before December 2006, for it will be in the fitness of things that President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, should ceremoniously open it. So on his 83th birthday, let us wish Deshamanya Dr. Chitrasena what he must surely wish for himself: namely, to see the Chitrasena Kalayatanaya materialize before he passes into immortality. - Carlo Fonseka |
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Knowing him as I do (his son Anudatta is married to my dancing niece
Janaki) I have come to the conclusion that he has simply danced all the
way to health. Dance is, perhaps, the most enjoyable and exquisite form of
human physical activity.
