Sri Lankan dances date back to the Vedda people who descended from King Vijaya around the 6th-5th century BCE.
There were many different reasons as to why people would dance. Some would use it as a way of expressing themselves. Dance was frequently used as a way of portraying passion and affection towards the opposite gender. The philosopher Plato (c. 428-348/47 BC) was an influential dance theoretician who developed dances that would enhance the beauty of the human body which ties in with using dance as a tool in order to attract a mate. It was also used as a way of storytelling. It was used in order for the people to perform and actually act out their myths in order to portray the story better. Greek dances are a great example of using dance in order to express oneself, e.g. pyrrhichē, the weapon dance which was practiced as