Sri lankan dance and culture

Know about Sri Lankan Culture

Sri Lanka is a diverse nation with individuals from diverse religions and backgrounds. The strategic location of this country makes it perfect for business purpose and beauty of island makes it ideal for travelers and traders. Sri Lankan people are helpful, friendly and warm with everyone even who are not aware of their customs. They are open-minded, empathic, shy and polite. Not just people, but Sri Lankan culture is also very rich and reflects on their activities, food, dance and education.

Sri Lankan people are patriotic and strive to promote their culture globally. Sri Lanka Cultural Dance School in California is providing its constant support in promotion of Sri Lankan folk dance and music among people in US. Here we will talk about the most popular Sri Lankan traditional dances.

Kandyan Dance The name of this dance form is inspired from Kandy, Ceylon’s last capital. It is a classical dance and considered as Pure Dance (Nrtta) in Sanskrit language. It features an extremely advanced method of Tala or rhythm that is given by cymbals termed thalampataa. There are five different types of this dance form.

Pasadena Sri Lankan Community in California is providing classes on weekends to help people from Sri Lankan in CA to learn their conventional dance form.

Ves Dance Ves dance is invented from an earliest purification procedural called as Kohomba Kankariya or Kohomba Yakuma. Ves is performed by men only with ves costume and headgear. It is considered holy and is supposed to related with deity Kohomba.

Uddekki Dance Uddekki is a very admired and respected dance form in Sri Lanka. The name of this dance is taken from uddekki, a tiny lacquered drum in the form of an hourglass, supposed to have been gifted by the god Iswara and Vishnu. It is very hard musical instrument to play. It is believed that this musical tool is built according to the commands of Sakra.

Sri Lanka Traditional Drumming Center in Los Angeles guides people in learning drum playing skills.

Naiyandi Dance This dance is performed during the preparations of the festival called Kohomba Kankariya. In this dance, performers wear a white colored cloth and turban with beadwork decorations on various parts of body. This is an elegant dance form that is also performed in temples of Maha Visnu (Vishnu) and Kataragama Devales on various ritual and festive occasions.

Vannams The name of this dance is taken from Sinhala word varnana. The earliest Sinhala scripts refer to a significant amount of vannams that were presented in vocal form only and later changed into solo dances. Every solo dance expresses unique idea.

Pantheru Dance

In this dance form, pantheruwa is a musical device devoted to the divinity Pattini. It looks like a tambourine and includes little cymbals involved at intervals around its border. The dance is supposed to have invented at the time of Prince Siddhartha, who converted Buddha later.

Sri Lanka Foundation of Los Angeles has started its culture and performing art classes on every Saturday and Sunday where people in LA can learn their favorite art like dance, music and languages.

Address- Sri Lanka Foundation, 1930 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1100 Los Angeles, CA 90057 Phone : (213) 483 0126 Fax : (213) 413 1233 More info- http://www.srilankafoundation.org/pac-classes/ Email : info@srilankafoundation.org