![bharatanatyam in tamil language bharatanatyam in tamil language](https://s3.studylib.net/store/data/025263582_1-f1fb3b049e6261ec7280181e3a7a1596-768x994.png)
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Slowly Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka became “polarized” and soon “both communities were engaged in cultural revivals” with dance playing a key role in the construction of “traditional” culture and ethnic pride. The Sri Lankan dancer Chitrasena was highly-influential and reminds one of Uday Shankar in the way he synthesized elements of Sri Lankan, Indian, and Western dance styles into “oriental ballets,” though he later focused primarily on the adaptation of Kandyan dance to the stage. Into the 1930s, Bharatanatyam was heavily developed by Tamils in Jaffna and Tamils “often claim cultural superiority over the more anglicized Sinhala elite.” Meanwhile, Indian dance forms were very popular in the 1930s and 40s with many famous Indian dancers visiting Ceylon and many Sri Lankans traveling to Tagore’s Shantiniketan, and it took some time for the Sinhalese to awaken to and fully accept their artistic traditions. A decade before Rukmini Devi’s Kalakshetra came into existence, the Parameshwara Academy (now the University of Jaffna) was established in Jaffna, Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was known then) in the 1920s and Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music were taught. Inspired by the “revivalist” movements in India, Sri Lankan Tamils took an early interest in and propagated traditional dance and music long before the Sinhalese. My reaction to the film dance was largely informed by Susan Reed’s insightful and clearly-written book on Kandyan dance history, Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics. She provides some fascinating nuggets about the history of Bharatanatyam dance in Sri Lanka and about Sinhalese-Tamil relations. Browsing through the rest of the film, the dancer only seemed to appear in this song and there was no indication she had any context in the film that would explain her dance and its stylistic choices. I would have expected to see Bharatanatyam dance in the less-developed Tamil-language cinema of Sri Lanka, but I certainly would have never imagined seeing it in a Sinhala film and especially not in a scene depicting national pride which by that time was apparently well-equated with the majority Sinhalese Buddhist culture and Kandyan dance. Despite all of this, the dancer is performing choreography inspired by Bharatanatyam, the dance associated with the minority Tamils, along with what appears to be some Kuchipudi influence such as the backwards anchitam movement of the feet on the heels! And to add to the confusion, the jewelry she wears with her Sinhalese dress is the traditional Hindu temple jewelry of a Bharatanatyam dancer (edit: I’ve since learned that the headdress is not exclusive to Tamil culture in Sri Lanka).