THAILAND / Impressions 1 / Khon mask show
I knew the beautiful Khon masks from different books and museums, but watching a real Khon mask show was something different and a great experience. They mix the traditional drama and music with modern effects such as multimedia projections. I really loved it.
Last year was my third trip to Thailand.
I was booked for a big art project but planed one week longer to travel and see more.
Khon
Khon is a genre of dance drama from Thailand. There are four groups of characters: male, female, monkeys, demons. The story is about the fight between good and evil. It is traditionally performed solely in the royal court, by men in masks accompanied by narrators and a traditional ensemble. Originally the actors had painted faces. The cast of such a performance is very big, which makes it difficult to paint so many faces. This is the reason why they started using masks. A variation of this genre with female performers is called khon phu ying.
The most famous characters in the story are the monkey warriors, Hanuman and Phra Ram.
Modern khon contains many elements from the lakhon nai (a performing art originating in the royal court of Thailand) and today, includes female performers playing female characters, formerly performed by men.
Khon is based on the tales of the epic Ramakien. Khon Ramakien originally could be performed by men only.
In the past, khon was performed only by the royal family, with the sons of the king performing as monkeys and demons.
Long before Thai people made extensive contact with the West social life was centered on entertainment.
"Sing, dance and play music." Archaeological evidence for this type of entertainment culture can be seen in many cave paintings in Thailand.
The previous photos were all mine.
The following few photos are from a Khon book I brought from Thaialnd.
Find more photos from Thailand here:
http://bella-volen.com/thailand-travel-photography.html
!steemitworldmap 13.734049 lat 100.537262 long Thailand-Khon mask dance show information d3scr
Hi @bella-volen-art, this is a super interesting post. I never knew about this dance. It looks like it would be great to see. Next time I'm in Thailand...
As one of the editors for @steemitworldmap’s daily #traveldigest, I would love to see this post pop up on http://steemitworldmap.com. If you're interested, simply go to the website, click on code (down the bottom) and add a short description. It will then generate the code you need to copy and paste into your post to have it show up on steemit worldmap. There’s also a FAQ section if you get a bit lost.
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Hi;) thank you, I will check it ot. It sound a bit confusing on a first glance, but I am sure I will manage to do so and share it there;)
I have a question. I did add my post there but in Thailand, I guess that was the correct way right? So every post from a country has do be shared on the same way.
I'm not sure I understand your question. I can see you've pinned this one to Bangkok. which looks right. You just need to pin your post to wherever it relates to.
Your answer is what I wanted to know, each post to the location related. Nothing to do with my own location. Thank you, makes perfect sense.
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