special degree Sabaragamu Dance

The field of Sabaragamuwa dance is a prominent dancing style in the Sri Lankan dancing culture as it exhibits the esteemed and proud Sri Lankan heritage to the world. This program has been designed as a four-year special degree to produce resourceful graduates with a theoretical and practical knowledge of Sabaragamu Dance. Department of Sabaragamu Dance equipped with professionally qualified four Grade I Senior Lecturers, one Grade II Senior Lecturer, one (Probationary) Lecturer and an Accompanist.

The Sabaragamuwa Department, UVPA was established in 2005. Senior Lecturer Wickramasinghe Bandara was appointed(2005 – 2008 and 2011 – 2013) as the first Department Head who had done an immense work in bringing up the Department. He successfully organized and monitored ‘Saman Pahana’ in 1987, ‘Saman Sesath’ in 1988 that were held in the John De Silva Memorial Hall, Colombo 07. These ceremonies gave Sabaragamuwa Dance country wide publicity. Dr. Gayani Maddumage and  Prof. Sriyani Rajapaksa who are currently working as senior lecturers of UVPA also took part in these events.

Mr. Wickramasinghe took the ritual conducting knowledge and the ritual literature from traditional aduras in preparing the Syllabuses.  With the well structured new syllabuses, the numbers of the students in the department gradually increased. The undergraduates were persuaded to do field research. Currently Dr. G. D. Maddumage is working as the Department Head (2008 – 2010 and 2017 – 2020) and had done workshops about syllabuses, editing conference about wannam in 2009,  workshops about Dramatic Events in Curative rituals and Sabaragamu Sokari Nataka field studies. The Department was further developed by adding subjects such as Ethnology and Literature Studies which requires the students to visit historical places and do field studying.