Interculturalism refers to support for cross-cultural dialogue. This also support for normal social interaction where we find a separation of a religious or ethnic group (self-segregation) from the rest of the society in a state by the group itself. The dance is a main medium that can differentiate the ethnicity of people in such states. It also helps to maintain their own traditions and customs. It’s a way of analysing individual identity and remaining in isolation. Dance is a way to get in to the comfort zone and experience the social isolation.

‘Susanyog’, a performance of Kandyan dance by me and Kathak dance by Hansa Himawanthi was an experimental work, happened to find the interculturalism through dance. In this experiment main aim was to find similarities of two dance traditions by using similar rhythm patterns or thalas, similar topics that happened to talk (eg:Ganapathi) and also ways of taking challengeable conflicts. Through the performance we also tried to take different audience aspects to a balanced aesthetic perspective by using the theory of ‘Known to unknown’. We used the usual methods such as presentation and discussion with the audience to achieve above targets. Therefore this research paper will analyse and argue the practice of dance interculturalism while finding different approaches of choreographing and performing two dance traditions within different audience aspects to give a balanced aesthetic perspective.

Key words:

Interculturalism, self-segregation, dance, ethnicity, traditions, customs, individual identity, isolation, comfort zone, susanyog, Kandyan dance, Kathak, rhythm patterns, thalas, aesthetic perspectives.