DAILY ARTRA'S ARTIST OF THE MONTH

Aadhya Wijegoonawardena

If you ever find yourself asking the question, “Why do humans feel the need to dance?” you may come across answers ranging from physical fitness, mental clarity to emotional stability. But if they are artists, they dance to express themselves. Daily ARTRA’s Emerging Artist of the Month, Aadhya Wijegoonawardena expresses her joy of being through dance while indulging in the liberation of her spirit, which we found exemplary from her suave movements to seamless positions.

Aadhya Wijegoonawardena, is Sri Lankan born but raised in Melbourne, Australia. Currently training to get into drama school, Aadhya’s journey began very early when she ventured into the world of musical theatre, commercial dance and screen acting, signing with her first ever agent at the age of sixteen. Taking after her mother, former Kandyan dancer at the Chitrasena Dance Company, Aadhya’s first steps might as well have been those that lead the pirouette. Training classical ballet for fourteen years led her into other styles of dance including contemporary, tap, hip hop, jazz, acrobatics and others. But dance was not her only passion; Aadhya was profoundly immersed in music, participating in musicals and acting.

Throughout the twentieth century performance art was often seen as a non-traditional way of making art. Performance has been understood as a way of engaging directly with social reality, the specifics of space and the politics of identity. The performance arts, in the context of individuality is also a form of self-exploration, a way to understand and convey emotion and expression within one’s self, and in the midst of societal influences and conventional norms, Aadhya turns to dance for change, “I had to commit to my heart and stop convincing myself to stick to the status quo. I am now discovering who I am as an artist.”  “I think that my strong background in classical ballet has shaped and defined my unique movement. You can see the clean lean lines and angles in any style of dance I move through, even hip hop. It has really helped me to build a solid bodily awareness to position and contort my body into different shapes and trained my body and mind with a full range of motion so that I am not limited by flexibility or gravity or mentality and I can truly dance freely,” she states.

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2nd August, 2019 Performance Art

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