‘Applause’, a synchronised swimming concert, will be held at the Visakha Vidyalaya Pool on the 25th, 26th and 27th of April, 2014. The school’s synchronised swimming team will perform most of the events, and will be joined by around 40 kids from the lower grades as well as dancers who will stay dry and dance on the edge of the pool. The show is choreographed and directed by Rovini Illukkumbura, an old girl who is a veteran of the sport.

The first concert she directed was ‘The Little Mermaid’ in the year after she left school, and was also the first time a synchronised swimming concert was held in the new Visakha pool. The shows have, up to now, always been based on a story; fairy tales such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or ‘Beauty and the Beast’ but as Rovini said “It’s easy for us to follow a cartoon or a fairy tale and keep going, but then we were thinking about what would really make them smile. This time we’re doing it a bit different – the concert will be songs that these girls love to dance for.” This not only enamours the sport even more to the girls but will help make the event fun and exciting for those watching, who won’t necessarily know all that much about the sport itself.

For the team however, it’s not just about having fun and pleasing the audience. “We take our sport very seriously.” Rovini says. “It’s not just swimming from one end to the other end, putting your life out just to get to the other side of the pool – this is much harder, you hold your breath, you go underwater for like 10, 20 seconds and you’re lifting your legs.” For anyone still on the fence about whether Synchronised Swimming is a ‘real sport’ or not, consider this: “It’s a lot to do with your muscles, because you have to have strong arms, strong legs to scull, to stay upside down, to balance yourself. It’s like doing ballet but in water, and that’s so much harder.”

Yet while the athleticism is admirable and it should never be overlooked, it’s the aesthetic element of the sport that makes it such a beautiful event to witness. “You can’t be a swimmer and expect to do this, you have to use your skills. This is the only sport where you get points for artistic impressions.” While they twist and turn underwater and lift themselves out of the water with extraordinary strength, their “job is to make it look easy, that’s the nature of the sport.”

How is such precision gained? Simply, practise. To ensure that all the members of the team perform the moves at the same time, they all count in their heads. On land they practise the moves together with the counts which enables them to do this in water as well. However, this is no easy feat. The lack of a portable underwater music system that is readily available (there exists only one of its kind in the whole of Sri Lanka) means that the amount of practise that goes into each routine is insane. Nonetheless, Rovini does not see this as a drawback. “It’s okay because that only makes us stronger, because with the song comes the beat and then when we swim it gets so much easier.” Acquiring such a music system is one of the goals of this concert.

The main objective of this concert, though, is to push themselves to their limits and to really set the bar high for synchronised swimming in Sri Lanka. “We can get into the water, lift our hands and it will still be beautiful because not a lot of Sri Lankans understand the difficulty.” Instead of just putting on an audience pleasing show however, she says “We are going to go and do all the difficult moves, hold our breath for longer and do all that because it makes us proud as well that we are doing all we can and not just trying to please the audience but as a sport we’re developing ourselves as well by doing the hardest figures.”

Thus, this concert really will be something special. The team is doing their personal best to make their performance outstanding technically, and they will also relate to the audience by their fun choice of music. The best of both worlds!

By Marissa van Eyck

Pics by Waruna Wanniarachchi