Sri Lankan dance takes the spotlight during special Randolph College event
Randolph College hosted “Movement Rhizome: Quillian International Symposium on Sri Lanka,” a celebration of the culture of the South Asian country, in February.
Curated by Quillian Visiting International Scholar Sudesh Mantillake, the event explored the intersection of dance, performance, film, geography, philosophy, anthropology, architecture, religion, music, literature, rhetoric, decoloniality, and migration.
It also included a series of workshops, panel discussions, film screenings, and mindful movement sessions that culminated in a special performance by Mantillake.
The event included an introduction from President Sue Ott Rowlands and remarks from Sri Lankan Ambassador Mahinda Samarasinghe, who was in attendance.
During the performance, entitled “Contextualizing My Devil Dance,” Mantillake blended history with movement in what he called a “docu-dance,” weaving the rich traditions of Sri Lanka’s Kandyan dance into an immersive performance alongside students and special guests Chinthaka Bandara and Vajira Mantillake.
Though now widely recognized as a theatrical art form, Kandyan dance was initially rooted in spiritual and restorative practices within Sri Lankan communities. But when British colonizers and missionaries encountered these rituals, they misinterpreted them as “devil worship,” stripping them of their true purpose and cultural significance.
His performance traced that journey—examining how Kandyan dance was misunderstood, how colonialism reshaped its perception, and how it evolved through nationalism and globalization into its current form.
“I want to show what happened in the past, while also looking at how a culture, how an artform, can be misinterpreted,” Mantillake said, “and how we can reclaim that.”
