Hands of Ramakien
By Richard Seah
25 Oct 2009
It's been a year and the Da:ns Festival is back at The Esplanade in Singapore.
The festival in 2008 marked the start of my fascination with On Stage Photography after I attended a performance of Raemker, the Cambodian interpretation of the Hindu epic, Ramayana.
This time round, it is the Thai version of the same epic, called Ramakien.The Thai version is much easier to photograph. The pace, like the Cambodian version, is slow. But an added bonus is that Thai dancers tend to hold their poses for at least a couple of seconds and, in one case, for about 10 minutes - the dancer just sat at the back of the stage, holding her pose like a statue, while her fellow dancer danced around, even going off-stage into the audience.
Most difficult so far was the Balinese, Indonesian version, where the movements were fast and frantic.
Anyway, I have one (fully-packed) year year of On Stage Photography experience behind me. In addition, I rented a Nikon 80-400 zoom VR, which gave me a longer reach and more stable images. I fell in love with the lens!
This performance was a Khon, which is considered the highest form of Thai classical dance. According to the compere, there are five conditions to be fulfilled before a dance can be considered Khon, one of which is that it must be a scene from the Ramakien.
The rest are...
2. Dancers wear masks (or at least the demons do)
3. The dance is accompanied by a five-instrument ensemble comprising xylophones, drums, double reed (like an oboe), a tiny bell and... er... I forgot the fifth, maybe it's two diferrent xylophones.
4. There is a commentary - in fact, during the commentary, the music stopped and a man with a marvellously projected voice read the script.
5. And in the past, all the dancers were male but today there are female dancers too.
One more thing... as usual, the bad guys are in black and the good guys are in white.
But, the compere could not resist remarking that in Thailand today, the people no longer believe in black and white, but in red and yellow (You need to follow Thai politics to appreciate this comment, not many in the audience did!)
I hope you appreciate my latest series of Photographs of Hands.
Obviously, you won't get a full idea of the performance from just these photographs. But then, will you even if I show you faces and fighting scenes et al?
Sorry, you have to be physically present to fully appreciate the beauty of these dances. This is but a small glimpse.
Enjoy!
1 response
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Michael Adams gave props (27 Oct 2009):
Love it! Not out here often anymore but always look for your stories!
