Kandyan Dance - Costume

Costume

The dancers wear an elaborate costume including a headdress. The dancer's chest is only covered by a decorative beaded net. This costume is known as the Ves costume. The headdress incorporates a metallic front which makes the dancer look taller than he is. The complete costume also includes anklets that produce a metallic rattle each

The headgear in the ves costume can only be worn by the males & can only be worn after a special ceremony called ves mangalaya in which the male dancer first wears the ves vostume and dances. Legend also says that if a female wears the headgear she will have a lot of bad luck or get very sick even the males if they have not performed at the ves mangalaya the same will happen to them(only males perform at the ves mangalaya and the females have a separate ceremony called Kalaveny mangalya).

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