Dancers and Drummers Offer a Rich Sampling of Sri Lanka

The Consul General of Sri Lanka couldn’t make the industrial landscape around the L.A. Convention Center resemble the fabled vistas of a South Asian nation that Marco Polo called “undoubtedly the finest island of its size in all the world.” However, by importing a skilled contingent of university dancers and drummers on Saturday, he provided a sampling of cultural riches rarely seen in this country.

Performing on a small platform stage ringed with voracious photographers, the 13-member company offered 16 selections in two hours: ritual, classical and folk dances.

For both men and women, costumes fit tightly or left bodies bare at the waist, but accentuated the hips with wraparound sarongs or wide skirts often at tutu-length. Gleaming bracelets, collars and headdresses added to the splendor, with no accessory more exotic than the dancers’ hoops of ankle-bells secured with toe loops.

Starting with the invocation quintet “Magul Bera and Puja Dance,” these bells added not only rhythmic accents but a delicate shimmer to the otherwise assaultive drum accompaniments.

Twice during the program, the women portrayed agricultural workers, miming the picking of tea leaves or the winnowing of rice as they danced. In “Mayura,” however, they played peacocks, dressing in iridescent blue and using quivering hands, nodding heads, balances on one leg and stiff-leg walks (more stork than peacock) to suggest bird movement.

The men’s dancing required proficiency in different kinds of high-velocity turns and also such specialties as plate-juggling and gymnastic flips. Performed by Suranga Dinesh and Samantha Kumarasiri, the masked cobra-versus-bird folk duet “Naga and Gurula” featured an uninterrupted sequence of some five dozen accelerating torso rotations--deep circular bends in which the top of the mask nearly grazed the floor and then revolved into a fully upright position and back.

Hemantha Jayawickrema Pradeep excelled in the intricate shoulder-shakes and cantilevered barrel turns of “Devil Dance,” while the bejeweled Kumarasiri and Rasika Kothalawela-Saman added vaulting maneuvers and a fabulous strutting walk to such feats in “Thelme Dance” from the “Devil Maduwa” ritual.