If I may be candid

The post-independence class structure in Sri Lanka is a product of colonial inheritance. Venuri, born in Colombo, was brought up in the English-speaking middle class, which maintains certain practices adopted from the former colonial masters that protect their social status. This class hierarchy is not so much about money, as Venuri grew up ashamed of being 'poor' because of the living conditions of her immediate family, but she acknowledges that it was a 'privileged poverty'. Through various research, work and performative experiments in recent years, Venuri is learning the nuances and complexities of how class is embodied, coded and communicated. She uses her body as a personal site from which to unravel the complication of being a privileged brown woman with a Sri Lankan passport inhabiting neocolonial spaces. Venuri will touch on a few of her work and personal experiences and openly reflect on what she has learnt. She will examine how her class upbringing and notions of respectability created a complicated relationship to dance, her body and sensuality. How privilege shifts when she leaves her context, how she positions herself, and how she finds herself positioned. How class connects across borders. She will share strategies she used to attempt to disorientate the perception of class structures in order to connect with the 'other'. And the moments when strategies fail because of the insidious nature of how class is mentally and physically embodied.