Guru Pooja to the incredible Upeka

Gwen Herat reviews

The Guru Pooja was the wealth of talent Upeka has nurtured into her followers and they in their ardour for perfection, made this occasion a platform to express how lucky and grateful they are to her

The spiritual essence stamped in her well-equipped, strong, stateque figure, inherited from father, Chitrasena, Upeka also posses the grace, felince qualities of her icon mother, Vajira.

Upeka the virtuoso dancer-daughter of the two legendary dancers icon dancers, Vajira and Chitrasena is endowed with the best of her parents. She inherited all this when she was barely able to walk, making her dance debut at seven years.... and fifty years later the ‘prima donna’ of Sri Lankan ballet was felicitated by her students, in a celebration that climaxed half century of dedicated service towards her beloved art.

Their homage to her was very touching and emotional but with passionate fire they have inherited from their teacher. This incredible first daughter of the first family of Sri Lankan classical dance, beamed from where she sat knowing in her heart that the youngsters would be the guardians of this traditional art.

Inspiring the drummers and maintaining the pure classicism in Kandyan and low-country dance.

There was body-language between them as was Upeka with her parents when she started thumping her feet to the rhythm of the drums.

Upeka carries the torch forward into the future from where her parents stopped. And there is the next generation already already in the making and a fourth generation member is also standing by not knowing what is happening around. So much for the Chitrasena family... all aglow in the fourth generation.

Upeka is blessed with her father’s physical strength and mother’s doe-eyed, feline and dark beauty. She is a striking dream dancer with classicism running in her blood, which she imparts to her students generously. A strict disciplinarian like mother, Vajira, Upeka ’s sense of musicality is phenomenon, never missing a single drum beat.

But today what I saw in The Guru Pooja was the wealth of talent Upeka has nurtured into her followers and they in their ardour for perfection, made this occasion a platform to express how lucky and grateful they are to her.

Upeka would have felt the same as Vajira would have during her time. And rising in high spirits on this memorable occasion, the students invited Upeka to the stage at the end of their tribute and she obliged. The audience stood still as she payed homage to her late farther whose picture adorned the corner of the stage.

She danced with her ensemble for full twenty minutes as the crescendo rose to rip the night apart. One could see the body-language she infused between her dancers, singers, drummers etc. And there stood amidst applause the shining, vibrating, incredible Upeka , the greatest of the greats, an artist of dazzling virtuosity, electrifying charisma who dared to dance around the world that included the Sadlers’s Wells.

Upeka, the doe-eyed daughter of the First Family of Dance in Sri Lanka, Chitrasena and Vajira

The Chitrasena-Vajira Dance Foundation presented The Guru Pooja over the weekend running through three days to a packed audience at their own Chitrasena Kalayathanaya where there the dancers felt very comfortable and threw themselves in full aplomb to create the sensational evenings.

The evening’s programme opened with an appropriate set of drummings who not only enjoyed their own playing but captured the imagination of all those present. The maestro behind this compositions known as Ridimashirvada was none other than our own Ravibandu Vidyapathi and was presented by The Ravibandu-Samanthi Narthanayathanaya.

They were classified into three sections of joy, blessings and celebration. Among others, was Ridmaranga choreographed by Vajira for the young and sensational Thaji who simply vibrated in this excerpt of pure movements from a Kandyan Dance ritual. Ridmaranga was originally choreographed by Vajira for daughter Upeka way back in 1984. Susantha and Prasanna were the drummers who escalated Thaji tonight.

Ruhunu bera too stood out in classical innovation that inspired the people who adore drumming. The compositions were by Vajira, Piyasara Shilpadhipathi and played with a masterly touch by Susantha, Prasanna, Udaya and Priyanga. All the dancers rose to the occasion, bearing in mind they were students who spontaneously represented the great tradition of our culture and its dance and they did it well.

However, the evening belonged to the wonderful drummers.

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