Theaters together with dances in Thailand brought a brand new impetus to Burmese performing arts. From the late 18th to early 19th centuries, the prime time of theater in Myanmar, latest forms of drama such as marionette developed and then had a huge effect on the Burmese dances’ aesthetics as well as repertoire. A type of mask dance-theatre telling stories of Ramayana, called Thai Khon, see its equivalent in the dance-theatre of Myanmar. Several dances are considered as yodayar from Ayutthaya, an old capital of Thailand, and they are available for tourists to enjoy during their Burma tours.
Puppet Style
Many people think that the marionette theater in Myanmar evolved with an aim of enacting Jataka stories of the Buddha in their own ways of teaching. Live dancer-actors were thought of as too impure in a role of impersonating main characters who show the former Buddhist incarnations.
Dances in puppet-style are still favored by the locals in Myanmar and even tourists looking for best tours. A lot of dance numbers have their base in the marionette theater’s like Magician’s dances, the Prince’s (mintha) and the Princess’s (minthamee). This can help some part in explaining dancers’ jerky movements while the dancers usually sit or crouch on the floor to perform. These marionettes also had an influence on the way of dancers falling down, just like a marionette with cut strings. Nevertheless, the performer usually fails to the ground gracefully while thei legs have been bent back and their arms angularly bent. You can see from the holidays to Myanmar that the expressions on faces are usually a frozen and smile like a puppet’s, and this is believed to come from marionettes. Throughout years, different kinds of puppet-style dances developed, which put more pressure on exact imitation of marionettes.
Technique in present days
The technique and dancing style in Myanmar nowadays may be resulted from the canonizing of Burmese dancing technique during the 1950s. The first institutes of government which took the control of education of dances in this country were called the State Schools of Music in the cities of Mandalay and Yangon, which were established in the year 1953. In Myanmar, as a court tradition ended in an abrupt way, people could feel that the classical dancing technique must be recreated or standardized so that it can be used in the curriculum of the State School which is newly constructed.
With the initial basic position, knees must be bent into a position which is almost crouching, while body and arms are forward together in support of the back. From the seemingly tensed position, a dancer will rise many times and his body is being in the shape of letters. Footwork nearly looks like the “flat-foot” ones which are native to a lot of dancing styles in India. However, Myanmar style means dancers’ feet only touching the ground a little bit, and at times kicking backward the long train of their costume. You can try this position during your Myanmar holidays with the help of local artists.
Various dances, or at least parts of them, are shown in the crouching positions; sometimes dancers are almost lying on the theater floor. From your best Myanmar tours, you can learn that there are many similarities in dances between different Southeast Asia parts, and these might be dictated by requirements of serious court etiquette.
