Portrait

Suddenly you’re in a new place, with no identity, where no one really cares who you are or what you think. And all those special things about you, your talents, your ways, your character, cease to exist: because of course, if no one knows, leave alone loves or appreciates those very things about you, then how much do they matter? Or how little?

Suddenly you’re not special, you’re nothing much, really. You can be anybody, but you can also be nobody. And this is the best and worst thing about being away. Just like the best and worst thing about being home, especially when home is Sri Lanka, is that your business is everyone’s business and everyone wants to know where you’ve been and who you’ve been with. We are all suffocated by this sense of community, family, networks: but it’s also what assures you, time after time, that you will never, ever be out on the street starving. Someone will care enough. Out there, in the big bad city, you’re anonymous. And it’s this anonymity that is liberating to me; this sense that no one cares what you’re wearing or what you’re doing, or how ‘different’ you are. Nothing is ‘different’. Certainly, nothing is worth staring at. But with the anonymity, comes the isolation. It’s no one’s business to help you.

The trip to London was a revelation to how much I’m anchored by context, how much I depend on those who love me, how much they create part of who I am by simply appreciating me. It was also a good, swift kick to that part of my ego which has told me ‘You’re so special and interesting and no matter where you go, everyone will love you’.

It was also a revelation to find that nothing is necessarily better there, only maybe easier. The buses are late, the streets are dirty, people litter. Most people are emotionally distant and isolated from each other, and exist in this cocoon of never risking getting too close. It’s a country of over-analysis and labels, where everything is a mental illness with a name, and the system has a way to solve any problem, telling you that they are there you help you, while actually what they are telling you is that you have a ‘problem’ which is ‘abnormal’: but of course the government is there to help you, you need the government. They make a big deal about everything, creating a society which doesn’t function without queues or carefully built systems, a society in which things like drugs are much of a taboo than here. There is CCTV everywhere, apparently they are watching out ‘for’ you, and they tell you things like ‘We’re here to give you emotional support if you’ve drunk too much or taken drugs’ and (on the bus) ‘Relax and breathe normally. If you feel sick or stiff, immediately tell our staff. Exercise your upper body and do relaxation exercises. Carry water with you at all times’. I just wanted to shake them sometimes.

The great thing about London is that you never feel like you’re in a white country. But drive 40 minutes out of London, and it’s almost as if they’re forcing the stereotype down your throat. White families with farms and thatched roofed houses, with sheep and cows dotting the meadows and the green pastures.

My week at the Laban Centre, on the other hand, made me not only optimistic about the UK and the West, but about life and the human race in general; that’s how amazing it was. It was exactly what I’ve been searching for and thinking about for a long time, and what I always felt we sorely lacked, doing Dance and Dance Theatre in Sri Lanka. It taught me the ‘how’ and most importantly, the ‘why’, which has changed the way I see movement forever. Laban’s work is so interesting and radical, and it fills a lot of gaps that have arisen in my mind over the years. The perfect balance between the spiritual and the scientific is exactly what I think anyone needs to achieve to be a truly good artist.

So I’m back. In my comfort zone, in my country. Far from the madding crowd.