Brit Lankan Dilini reveals why she is promoting Kandyan dance form in the UK and what prompted her to publish a book on this mesmeric dance form
Words: Tina Edward Gunawardhana
Professionally she pursues a career as a Cybersecurity Compliance Manager, but in her spare time Dilini Seneviratne is a proponent of
Kandyan dance in the UK. She first started dancing as a 5 year old while in Sri Lanka. Once she moved to the United Kingdom, Dilini
realised that practising this dance form was a good way to keep in touch with her Sri Lankan culture and roots. “I started to research into
the history of Sri Lanka and watch videos from various traditional troupes which made me fall in love with it. The effortless way the dancers
move around, the energy and elegance as well as the costumes all spoke out to me from a very young age” she explains.
Encouraged by her mother and grandmother, Dilini says “My grandma wanted both me and my brother to stay in touch with our culture
and roots. Be around Sri Lankan kids. Speak in Sinhala. Even though we’re Roman Catholic, my mum took us to the local Buddhist temple
in Kingsbury in the hopes of us mingling with kids our age. That’s where I met Miss Kumudu Perera, who was teaching dance for the new
year show. I performed in multiple cultural shows and events including at the
Sri Lankan High Commission in London. Professor Mudiyanse Dissanayake also visited London for the Kingsbury New Year show and had
a troupe there and I later performed under him as well.”
After moving to the University of Southampton, Dilini started a club called the Southampton Kandyan and Bharatanatyam Dance (SKBD),
the first classical south Asian dance society at the university where she taught simple choreographies to other students and performed as
well. This lead to an event called Thaala which Dilini describes as a “dance show where Kandyan and Bharatanatyam dances can be
showcased to the rest of the university.”
