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SESSIONS The essence of Thai Male Classical Dance by Chommanad Kijkhun, Thailand Paper The essence of classical dance features the particular characteristics, which helps differentiate one theater form from the others. Thai dance theater is a form of disciplinary performing art which has been long transcended from court. Its training starts from 'pleng-char-pleng-raew' (elementary dance following the pace of slow to fast tempo). Among the various dancing styles of Thai classical dance is the pattern of 'tua-pra'(male characters) which is usually performed by female dancers. This research aims to explore the components, the structure and the grammar of such male characters' dance. Interdisciplinary approach is employed as the methodology of this research, relying on the principles of Bharata’s Natyashastra theory of ancient Indian dance, Linguistics and Laban Movement Analysis. This research discusses some major essences of Thai classical dance. In terms of anatomy, arms and fingers must be bendable. There are 16 directions of dancing, involving 3 levels of body postures: high (head level), middle (shoulder level) and low (abdomen level). For the backward posture, the position of the arms must be at the low level. Placing footstep at the side-diagonal position creates visual dimension, which helps angular posture while kneeling down. To make the curving posture obviously visible and elegant, dancers must rotate their lower arms into and out of the body trunk as much as possible. The major used muscles are the set of side muscles and back muscles. In terms of structure, there are three patterns of hand posturing: 'mue-bae', 'mue-jeeb' and 'mue-loe-kaew'. There are 88 posturing patterns and 7 dancing sets. The principle of body movement concerns reciprocal relation between body weight taking and limb rotation. The posturing and the moving of arms and hands do not relate to those of head, body trunk, legs and feet, but help balance the body and implement visual aesthetics. Concerning the grammar, male characters’ dancing has 49 alphabets, 5 vowels and 21 tonal accents. Each construction of dancing vocabularies comprises of 'ta-ton' (beginning posture), 'ta-tor' (interval posture), 'ta-tarm' (following posture) and ‘ta-toke-tang’ (decorative posture), which the last will become the beginning posture for the next vocabulary. With this logic, all dancing vocabularies are stringed together like a chain from the beginning through the end of a dancing set. The researcher held a conference to ask for peer comments from the circle of Thai dance. Among the 78 participants are National Artists, classical dance experts, dance artists, dance professors and teachers from various educational levels, and public. According to the consensus and the questionaire replies, most participants suggest that Laban Movement Analysis and Labanotation is the most suitable approach for the analysis of Thai classical dance. It is a good source of structural investigations and vocabularies as well as a mean to organizing the body of knowledge on Thai classical dance in order to be disseminated to international communication. Chommanad Kijkhun. She finished her Ph.D. in Thai classical dance From Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, in October 2004. The topic of her research is “The Essence of Male Classical Dance”. She has attended the technique of Labanotation and Its Implementation for Teachers of Performing Arts, The Intermediate Level Technique of Labanotation and Advanced Level Training Course on Labanotation, in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand which granted by SPAFA since 1989-1993. Among those courses, she also had opportunities to study with Ilene Fox, Prof.Rhonda Rhyman, Madam Zhang LingLing, Prof. Judy Van Zile and Prof. Chua Soo Pong. Currently, she holds the academic position as Associate Professor at Rajabhat Suan Sunandha University, and expertise in Labanotation, Thai Royal Court Dance and Thai Folk Dance. She is also a guest lecturer at Chulalongkorn University.
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