Khon

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Khon mask

Khon ( Thai โขน ) is a Thai dance in which the dancers wear masks . The dance is based on the classical drama Ramakian , which comes from the Indian culture and was adapted in Thailand .

The khon is the most ritual form of the classical Thai dance. Four groups appear one after the other or together: men, women, monkeys and demons. The story is about the eternal struggle between good and evil.

Originally the khon was only danced at court. Because of the large number of performers and the elaborate masks that are necessary, the dance never found much favor in people's everyday life. The later Thai Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj , who was a khon dancer himself at a young age, formed the group Khon Thammasat to save the dance style from oblivion. There is a theory that the popularization of the khon at the end of the 19th century contributed to the decline of the courtly shadow play Nang Yai , which similarly stages episodes from the Ramakian.

In Cambodia , a variant of the Khon is played as Lakhon khol . After the Kingdom of Ayutthaya was conquered by the Burmese Konbaung dynasty in 1767, numerous Siamese artists were abducted to the Burmese court in Ava . They enriched the culture of the neighboring country and probably also shaped the Burmese puppet theater Yoke thé with the mask dance .

literature

  • Marie-Christine Bischur: The Thai Khon. A theater between tradition and modernity . ( Münchener Universitätsschriften Theaterwissenschaft, Volume 32) Utzverlag, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-8316-4845-0 .

Web links

Commons : Khon  - collection of images, videos and audio files