URP presents a special work in progress virtual screening of an excerpt of cohort member Sudesh Mantillake's film, Response to Tea Dance. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Sudesh and his collaborators.

Response to Tea Dance is a piece that records the process of reflecting on and expressing the problematic "tea dance" choreography used to represent up-country Tamil plantation workers and their Malayaga community in Sri Lanka. People of the Malayaga community are the descendants of migrant workers from South India who were brought to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) by the British Colonial Government between the 1830s and 1930s. In the 1970s, Sinhala choreographers created the "tea dance" for the first time to represent Malayaga Tamil people on stage, under the choreographic model used to create Sinhala "folk dances." In effect, they choreographed their imagination of the lifestyle of the women and men who work on tea plantations, portraying them comically and ignoring the stark socio-economic realities they are forced to struggle with. A group of artists came together to collectively respond to this problematic "tea dance.”

Collaborative choreographers:
Sudesh Mantillake
Hewagamage Chamanee Darshika
Selvaraj Rajeew
Sumudu Wikasitha Manelanga
Rasiah Dhanarajh
Kaladevi Anah Harish