Dance in Sri Lanka stands at the heart of the rituals formerly performed for the welfare of the kingdom. In traditional Sinhala society the occupational group of dancers was integrated into a feudal system in which services to the king and to the Buddhist temples were rewarded by giving rights to cultivate land. The roots of the Sinhala dance are to be found in the oldest surviving dance-cult of the country, the Kohomba Kankariya ritual, which was connected to the maintance of peace between descendants of aboriginal groups and the descendants of Indian invaders under Prince Vijaya. In the 20th century, however, modern stage dancing imerged: the Chitrasena school. This school broke away from caste barriers and gender roles, and accomplished the transformation of traditional dancing to a modern indigenous form of art.
The author, Marianne Nürnberger, has spent many years researching the material in this book and the results are both fascinating and scholarly.