Myanmar’s deeply traditional culture won the hearts and minds of the Thais attending Museum Siam’s “Myanmar Night” last week, leaving them mesmerised by an extravagance of music and dance once only seen in the Myanmar royal court. The event, held as part of the ongoing “Myanmar Up-Close” exhibition, was designed to promote closer ties between Thailand and Myanmar through the arts,
“Myanmar Night” brought together traditional dancers and folk artists from Thailand’s Western neighbour and also featured a well-known veteran harpist from Yangon and a range of traditional sweet treats.
The dancers were members of the Shwe Tarapee dance troupe, which was set up in 2015 and is made up of migrant workers based in Mahachai, Samut Sakhon province, home to the largest concentration of Myanmar workers in Thailand.
The night opened with the nat dance, a form of Myanmar traditional dance performed by talented Thai male dancer Kiatkong Silpasonthayanon of Chiang Mai University’s fine arts faculty. Dressed in red from top to toe, Kiatkong has studied and performed this and other kinds of classical Myanmar dance for the past five years. The Myanmar people believe that the nat is the guardian spirit of the land.
The dance is staged as part of the Myanmar custom of making an offer
ing to the guardian spirit before the staging of every important national event. The purpose is to appease the nat, thereby avoiding spiritual unrest. In the dance, a tray of gifts, such as bananas and coconut, is offered by a dancer dressed in red silk. The dancer performs a sequence of ritual movements whilst singing songs to the nat. Kiatkong rose beautifully to the occasion but stuck to the dancing rather than the singing to the solemn backing of recorded classical Myanmar music.
“The nat dance is connected with Myanmar daily life from birth to death. It is quite difficult and completely different from classical Thai dance. I have been practising it for the past five years, and still there’s a lot more to learn about these complicated movements. Thai dance is very slow with gentle movements of the limbs. But the nat dance is energetic, dynamic and fast-paced, with swift swings of the arms and legs. The movements are quite complicated, more like classical Indian dance,” Kiatkong told XP.
He added that traditionally, the nat dance was only performed by female dancers. These days, though, more and more lady boys are becoming nat gadaw (spirit mediums) and performing this kind of dance, which shows that society is opening up.
Kiatkong’s performance drew rapturous applause from the spectators and many looked surprised when the emcee introduced him, thinking he hailed from Myanmar rather than Thailand.
Harpist Aung Pyae Son of the Gitameit Music Center in Yangon was next up on stage for a performance of the saung-gauk, an arched harp native to his land. The son of the nationally acclaimed harpist U Win Maung, he started to play at the age of seven and has since won many awards.
The artist explained through an interpreter that the harp is one of Myanmar’s national instruments and is used in much of the traditional repertoire. It’s considered sacred, as every harp has to be consecrated from the outset in a ceremony held at a pagoda or an important religious site.
Believed to have been introduced as early as 500 AD from Southeast India, the saung-gauk has evolved over the centuries, going from an instrument found only in the palace to a key component used in traditional music for the general public to enjoy.
Historical records note that the harp benefited from the cultural renaissance of the Konbaung era (1752-1885). When the Burmese king Hsinbyushin sacked Ayutthaya, he brought back with him many Siamese courtiers. The captured Siamese actors and musicians fuelled new forms and experiments in harp music. The most significant innovator was the talented courtier Myawaddy Mingyi U Sa (1766-1853), who adapted repertoires of Siamese music iino Burmese, rewrote the Siamese Ramayana as the Burmese Enaung-zat, composed harp music for it, and developed a whole new genre of harp music called “Yodaya”, (the Burmese word for
Ayutthaya).
Aung Pyae Son told the fascinated spectators that the hollow body of the instrument is made of paduk rosewood while the neck is fashioned from cutch (acacia) wood. The strings are silk or nylon. The covering on its base is leather from the hide of a female deer that has produced offspring once.
The entertainment was punctuated with a seminar on the beauty and
history of the Myanmar Luntaya Acheiq textile led by Thai textile collector and researcher Thaweep Rithinarakorn, who fell in love with traditional Myanmar garments during his visits to the country.
After the lengthy seminar, Kiatkong returned for a performance of “mask dance”, an applied Lanna dance form inspired by the masked dance of the Myanmar royal court. Kiatkong joined a female masked dancer in imitating the movements of a marionette with perfectly angled limbs. The two froze at the end as if hung in mid-air by their strings.
The evening continued with the oil-lamp dance with four female Myanmar dancers in gilded costumes performing this ritual to honour the Lord Buddha.
Traditionally, the oil lamp offered to the Lord Buddha is a lighted wick of cotton soaked in an oil-filled earthenware saucer. It is often incorporated with many of the religious ritual dances performed in western Myanmar by the Rakhine people.
For many the highlight of the might was the second nat dance performed by a female Myanmar dancer. Faster-paced than the one performed by Kiatkong, it showed off the dancer’s lithe frame, long hair and flamboyant dress to the maximum, turning the performance into a visual feast.
Up next was “U Shwe Yoe and Daw Moe”, a contemporary comedy folk dance duet that tells the story of an old bachelor (U Shwe Yoe) who tries to woo a spinster (Daw Moe) with limited success. The costumes are bizarre and flamboyant and include U Shwe Yoe’s long moustache and a twirling Pathein parasol. Staged to entertain the crowd at community charity activities, the choreography is often spontaneous, which adds to the entertainment.
The night ended with Anyein, a combination of solo dancing and clowning by lu-pyet, the erstwhile jesters of the royal court. Just as they did in the past, the clowns entertained with singing, dancing, impromptu dialogue and jokes about current events and various other topics.
MORE ABOUT MYANMAR
– The “Myanmar Up-Close” exhibition runs through July 31 at Museum Siam. The museum is on Sanamchai Road near Wat Pho in Phra Nakhon district. It’s open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm. Admission is free. Find out more by visiting www.MuseumSiam.org.
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.