Daya Nellampitiya, a senior artist, Virindu vocalist and veteran dance instructor, has died at her home in Kalubowila at the age of 91, Hiru News reported.
Her final rites will take place on Tuesday, September 15, according to family sources.
Nellampitiya spent much of her working life as a dance instructor at several leading schools across the island. Hiru describes her as widely recognised for her dedication to preserving the Kandyan dance tradition and passing it on to thousands of children.
She was the first teacher of numerous artists now working in Sri Lanka’s arts sector, and the wife of the veteran Virindu artist Sena Fonseka.
Her contribution to preserving, promoting and transmitting Sri Lanka’s traditional folk arts, folk music and dance to later generations is, in Hiru’s words, immeasurable.
Virindu and the classroom tradition
Virindu is a Sinhala folk verse form, improvised and sung — often competitively, with performers answering one another in verse — and carried for generations through live performance rather than notation. Performers of her standing have typically been among its principal transmitters.
Kandyan dance, the classical tradition of the up-country, has been sustained in large part through exactly the work Nellampitiya did: school instruction, where children encounter the form young and a small number carry it forward professionally. Teachers in that role rarely become public figures themselves, and their influence is usually visible only in the careers of those they taught.
Reporting on her death
Ada Derana also carried her death, under the headline “Veteran Sri Lankan artist Daya Nellampitiya passes away at 91,” confirming the age and the September 15 funeral. Its article could not be retrieved — the site has returned a CloudFront 403 block to every fetch attempt for several weeks — so it is not cited here.
No other verified newsroom had filed at the time of writing. Searches across the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, the Island, Daily FT, Colombo Gazette, Daily News, the Sunday Times and the government news service returned nothing on her death.
Not reported
Hiru News does not give her date or place of birth, her full name, or the names of the schools where she taught. It does not name any of the artists she taught, list awards or state honours she may have received, or say whether she held any position in a national arts body.
It does not say where the funeral will be held or at what time, and does not report survivors beyond her husband, or whether Sena Fonseka is still living.
