The Burmese received instruments and other influences from India via the Mon people. Some of these instruments and forms, still employed in Burma, disappeared from India a long time ago. One example of this kind of instruments is, for example, the Burmese harp, saung gauk, regarded as the country’s national instrument. It is based on […]
The roots of Burmese literature led to indigenous folk poetry and to the basic Buddhist literature adapted through the Mons. Didactic Buddhist Jataka stories were already being written in Burmese prose in the 15th century. At the same time religious as well as historical poetry evolved, together with epistle addressed to the king. In the […]
“Tai” refers to Tai-speaking ethnic groups, whereas “Thai” refers to the entire multiethnic population of present-day Thailand. However, many scholars prefer to use the more ethnically relaxed term “Siamese” when discussing the people of the Ayutthaya and early Bangkok period, since Thailand was formerly called Siam.
The Jataka stories refer to a large group of ancient folk tales originating from the Indian cultural sphere. They tell about the previous births of the Buddha. They are morally instructive stories in which the main character is an animal, human, or superhuman being seeking to do good. Within the Theravada Buddhist tradition they were […]
The Natyashastra consists of 36 chapters. The outer and spatial aspects, such as the stage, the theatre building etc. are discussed in Chapters 1–5. Chapters 6–7 discuss the theory of rasa, i.e. the crucial question as to how to evoke a mood, while Chapters 8–13 focus on the physical acting technique. The verbal aspect, such […]
The person of Bharata, the supposed author of the Natyashastra, is a widely discussed topic. Some believe that the treatise is certainly the work of one writer, while it has also been argued, for example, that he is a fictitious person and that the treatise is merely a creation of the long theatrical tradition and […]
There was already mention of lasya-style dances in the Natyashastra, or the Drama Manual, compiled in the 2nd century AD. These dances are soft or “feminine” in style and combine abhinaya (mimetic storytelling) sequences with nrtta (pure dance) sequences. In Indian literature these dances are often related to mythical apsara nymphs, famous courtesans etc. The […]
The classical cosmologies of India’s own religions, i.e. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, all started to appear after the middle of the first millennium BC. Their roots are, however, much longer and originally emerged from the more simple cosmology of the Vedic period of India (c. 1600–500 BC). The focus here will be on the Hindu […]
by Ari Tenhula Butoh, a branch of Japanese contemporary dance, evolved in the late 1960s and the early 1970s during the politically stormy period of student riots, art happenings, and radical agitprop performances. Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–86) is regarded as the founder of butoh. He studied various styles and techniques, among them the German expressionistic Ausdrucktanz, […]
by Pertti Seppälä The role categories of Chinese opera started to take their present shape during the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), when the first important dramas were written. These role categories were direct predecessors of the role types of the present Peking Opera. Some characters from even earlier periods are known, such as the two protagonists […]
by Stefan Kuzay Chinese theatre and opera as we know them today only developed rather late in Chinese history, compared with the other genres of the acting profession. Nevertheless, their origins lie far back in the very early forms of religion and the first and simple forms of dance and play. Thus, as in the […]
Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) is without doubt the most famous Peking opera actor, both in China and abroad. It was Mei Lanfang who, for the first time, brought Peking Opera to the West, and thus influenced many Western pioneers of early modern theatre. He was born into a Peking Opera actor family that specialised in the […]