Portrait

The ant and the mosquito.
Image by Alefiya Akbarally.

Kumbi Kathawa, which was a production staged by the Chitrasena-Vajira Dance Foundation last weekend at the Bishop’s College Auditorium was a family story, in more ways than one.

Firstly, it was a story about family: it was about a family of ants, who despite obstacles both natural and not, persevere with determination and courage to rebuild their homes and their lives. It was a touching tale, the kind of tale that you really want your kids to know - the kind of story that is both beautifully simple and obvious, and deeply meaningful and profound. Its timeless lessons about courage, hard work, never losing hope, and most importantly perhaps forgiveness, all seem like ‘messages’ that we’ve heard so many countless times before. But I look around me today, at my surroundings, at my country and finally at the world, and I see that these are lessons we still haven’t learned, and that maybe we’ll never hear it enough. But the story it tells about family is the one that resonates most deeply within me. It is, simply, a story about a family who stick together through thick and thin, work hard and work together to stay together.

Secondly, it was a story for families. Each night, the auditorium was filled with audiences of all age groups: young parents with their children, older siblings with younger siblings, aunts with nieces, godparents with godchildren, young adults with parents and elderly grandparents, friends with friends’ children. It was a heartwarming variety of all members of family with each other, escorting each other, bringing each other, sharing with each other this one evening. It was touching, some of the people I met and their stories of whom they came with and who they brought - it was a weird kind of nostalgia, watching all of these different people enjoy this one show.

Thirdly, and this is what this post is really about - it was a story created by a family. A very special family that I have known almost all my life - through boyfriends, and triumphs and failures and indecisions and certainties, and though corny, literally tears and laughter . A family who are not only a family in themselves, but have absorbed many other families, and have made so many others a part of a bigger, extended family. The Ant Family in Kumbi Kathawa mirrors the Chitrasena family almost exactly, in their dedication to each other, as well as to their cause.

I don’t need to say that Chitrasena’s and Vajira’s hard work is being kept alive by their family - everyone knows how their legacy of perfectionism, greatness and innovation has been kept alive with a great deal of dedication from their children, and today, their children’s children. But what everyone may not know, is that working with them is, in ever sense of the term a ‘family affair’.

Take Guru Pooja, for example - the show last December that celebrated Upeka’s 50th year in Dance. There was their family, naturally, holding the fort. The last section of the show, in which there was a lady and two young girls singing, accompanied by a gentleman - they were a family, too. Mother, father and two children, artists who have been collaborating with the Chitrasena-Vajira Company for many years. Backstage too we had two brothers, absolutely hard-working and committed. This is of course besides all the students who are children of old students, all the mothers who help backstage and provide us with food and drink through rehearsals and shows - and an array of other ways in which this operation functions with family.

And then there’s my family - who’s never quite been able to get enough of the Chitrasena family. In Guru Pooja, I danced and my brother edited the A/V about Upeka. Just before I sat down to interview Upeka, on the anniversary of her 50th year in dance, I flipped open the programme brochure from the show that was staged to celebrate Vajira’s 50th year in Dance, some years ago. And there it was - a great, touching interview with Vajira, done by none other than my own mother. It reminded me why I was there - it reminded me that we go way back, to when I was a wee baby, that my life with this family was pre-destined before I was even born.

They are a true testament to family, and the things that are best about it. Because this feeling of family stretches to enfold everyone within its warm and loving confines. This feeling moves you, motivates you, energises you. And therefore, everything always works like clockwork. Kumbi Kathawa was no different.

All major theatre and dance practitioners in Colombo can take a page out of the book of all those children, some small, some only a little older, who made Kumbi Kathawa come alive. They are already true followers of the holistic approach that the Chitrasena-Vajira Dance School inculcates in its students: ironing their own costumes, mending their own props, carefully folding every article, caring for each other, and for themselves. Even the smallest of small fireflies were exemplary in their level discipline and carefulness. I have seen much older children, young adults, who have a lot more ego and not half the discipline or integrity that these children displayed. And this is what it takes to produce perfection: discipline, love, and hard work.

Kumbi Kathawa took five years to create and almost a year to rehearse this time around. People always ask me why they take so long - and I always say, ‘because that’s how long it takes’. That time, and that level of dedication and discipline is what it really takes to create something that is flawless. You can go to a theatre on almost any weekend and see slip-shod, half hearted, half-baked attempts at drama or dance. You can see professional directors and actors, grown men and women, producing things that aren’t worth a minute of your time, leave alone the huge amount of money they charge you to watch it. You can see meaningless, insipid, soul-less things all the time.

But for this - for this it takes time, it takes patience, and it takes soul. Try doing anything for 11 months with a bunch of people who don’t absolutely love and believe in what they are doing - you can’t do it. And this is a cast of children rehearsing a ballet.

It’s hard. But its worth it - because it’s good, and it’s true.