The Art Corner: dancing as narrative
Dancer and choreographer Kapila Palihawadana talks to us from his studio in Colombo, Sri Lanka
In the last year, I have had the opportunity to get close to many people who use their bodies as language, and in the process, I am learning to do it myself. I am not a dancer, but I have a body, and this body — containing mind, heart, intestine, lungs to breathe and all my emotions — is the one thing I have that is only mine.
The body, therefore, tells a story and also constructs the narratives in and around us. Each body has its own language, but we all have a body language, and dance can act as the bridge between each other’s bodies.
Dance is a whole conversation
Today the Art Corner is dedicated to Kapila Palihawadana, who talks to us from his studio in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is a dance and yoga teacher with a background in ballet, yoga, and Kandyan dance, a native dance style to the Kandy region of Sri Lanka.
His background in different styles served as the starting point to create a different choreographic style, fusing the traditional Kandyan dance, ballet and yoga, including Bharathanaatyam (a dance style with South Indian influence, expression of Tamil culture), to create the first contemporary Sri Lankan dance theatre.
What Kapila has done is to create a body language that builds a common space in a country that suffered a civil war between the North (Tamil) and the South (Sinhalese Government). Through the body, a dialogue is created between two cultures that were at war only 12 years ago and that still bear the physical scars of the conflict — Jaffna in North Sri Lanka still has walls full of bullet holes that remind of the war.
“Dance for me is a whole conversation”
Kapila’s work became important and relevant for Sri Lankan culture as it represented a step forward in understanding modern expressions of dance as a means of reinterpreting the country’s original roots. Dance is a language where there are no words.
“Dance for me is a whole conversation, I can’t just stop at only words. It’s a language through my whole body, and I find it’s a non-verbal communication where we express our feelings emotions, love, hatred, sorrow,” Kapila tells me as a mantra is playing in the background of his studio. His voice is poised and auric, it calms my nerves immediately.
In dance, he says, “everything is coming through in the moment. Whatever the feelings you have, it represents through your body, it first goes to your brain and through the brain, those emotions come, even through your fingertips.”
“You feel like you are in a different world and you are communicating with someone else, not only with your audience but with something that doesn’t even exist in this world. Or it is something that you connect your whole personality to that person you are communicating with. So dance is a beautiful divine language that represents so many genres and beautiful ideas.”
Dance, too, can engender a healthy relationship with our bodies, which is more important than we might think. Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, writes that people who have experienced trauma often lose touch with their bodies. “Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard,” he says.
“[Dance] is also the language of healing, it is also the language of expressing, the language of telling a story; not with words but with your body,” Kapila says. This reminds me of the ways that bodies react to trauma, and one example that comes to mind is the Resignation Syndrome, where refugee children are in a sleeplike state for months and maybe years because of experiencing traumatic displacements from their home.
When I speak of “embodiment” I imagine it as something simply existing, without needing an explanation. This is what the body does, and this is why we need to move. “The language of dance allows you to have so many varieties of communication, and it is a great skill of expressing your inner self to the world.”
“Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard”
Now, since we are celebrating art I would like to propose an exercise where you watch part of the video above and describe what you see: what does it remind you of? what feelings does it evoke? Write it down freely and without judgement, we’ll come back to this at the end of the piece.
Recreating narratives through bodies
nATANDA, which means “dance” in Sri Lanka’s Sinhala language, works to recreate narratives around social justice issues such as sexual harassment. “I created a dance piece based on touch, inspired by the stories of many of my female dancers who were facing unnecessary and painful situations of sexual harassment.” He says that his female dancers who came to the studio with public transport often were groped. At first, he says, they could not talk about it, but when they created space for dialogue, that’s where the idea for touch came.
Kapila tells me that before developing a show, the dancers sit in a circle and discuss their ideas and feelings, “everybody brings their own ideas” he says. For “touch,” the female dancers shared the experiences they had when travelling on public transport in the evening.
The circles, says Kapila, are really important for them to stop and talk about these issues together, something that is not done when everyone is busy with their life and work. Working on the piece, and constantly having dialogue around it, and choreographing it together, is healing for the people who have gone through these experiences but also educational for the others. “We don’t have gender barriers in our company, and we engage with all genders when we create a piece,” says Kapila.
He adds that in this particular case, the male dancers were part of the dialogue and at the beginning felt ashamed and guilty hearing their colleagues share their experience, but the creation of the piece was healing in this sense. “The dancers have become aware and their behaviour has changed as a result of this dialogue,” they do not tolerate sexual harassment in silence anymore.
“These activities have had an impact in the contemporary ways of thinking about certain social issues,” says Kapila.
What they wanted to do through “touch” is recreate a narrative around the idea of touch, show the multitudes of touch as invasive, but also show that it can be beautiful, caring and so much more. Creating a narrative and dialogue around touch, and touching on these topics, raises awareness to the audiences that come to see the show too, says Kapila.
The projects of nATANDA have tackled topics such as environmental degradation, war trauma, and disability.
“[Dancing] is a divine language for people, especially those that are connected to the God of Dance, those who want to give their maximum message to the world. That’s why dance is so beautiful and so generous. A truly amazing language.”
Going back to the piece of paper you wrote your thoughts on, read it once more and put it in a place where that is hidden but where you will find it again. It will remind you to dance, at the right moment.
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When I spoke to him it was the one year anniversary of the pandemic, and he told me that the ongoing restrictions had badly impacted his studio, resulting in him having to let go of some of his students. Columns like the Art Corner strive to keep art alive through language because it is a pure expression of our humanity and a weaver of embodied narratives.
Kapila is a strong man with the soul of an eagle and the heart of a sailor, and he is so incredibly passionate about dance and bringing his company forward to open important dialogues in his society.
