28 June
MYANMAR has its own traditional dances. A variety of traditional dances which captivates the viewers or audiences due to beautiful and synchronous movements of the dancer’s head, waist, legs (feet) and hands in line with Myanmar tunes or Myanmar scale. Myan-mar styles of dances, Myanmar music, traditional musical instruments and display or setting of dazzling Myan-mar orchestra on stage with performing arts captivate the locals and foreigners alike. The Myanmar orchestra is dazzling-ly beautiful as its decoration or ornamentation is made of glass mosaic embedded in gilding. Basic Myanmar traditional musical instruments consist of bronze instrument, string instrument, leather (skin) covered instrument (long and short drums ) , wind instru-ment and bamboo-clapper.
The successive gov-ernments of Myanmar sent Myanmar cultural troupes to foreign countries, especially Europe countries, on cultural exchange program. Most of the foreign audiences appreciate the graceful and enchanting Myanmar traditional dances and tunes. They also enjoy Myanmar music played by the set of Myanmar drum-circle (ပတ်ဝိုင်း သို့မဟုတ် ဆိုင်းဝိုင်း) and the set of small brass gong of the traditional Myanmar brass gong circle (ကြေးနောင်ဝိုင်း).
In addition, the audiences are mesmerized by the performance of traditional dancers and the traditional beautiful dance costumes. Myanmar cultural troupes are always given laudatory award and appreciation by the audiences in foreign countries whenever the troupes entertain to them. Next to Myanmar plays, danc-es, Myanmar traditional string- marionette show manipulated by living humans on stage is fascinated by the foreign audi-ences as well.
The theatre- goers and enthusiasts of Myanmar traditional dances are obsessed with the Ka-Byar-Lut dance item consisting 125 ( one hundred twenty five ) different steps. Basically, all sorts of traditional dance patterns are used with heads, waist, legs and hands, fingers on the flexible motions. So are the Ka-Byar-Lut dance patterns. A Ka-Byar-Lut dancer must be skilful enough to use the flexible motions of her or his body parts mainly heads, waist, legs, hands and proper facial expressions must be shown . Since Ka-Byar-Lut (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) is one of the popular Myanmar traditional dances in Myanmar, Myanmar youngsters especially school students and adults like to learn how to dance it.
Daw Oba Thaung was an eminent Myanmar ‘Anyeint’ dancer and singer(အငြိမ့်မင်းသမီး)in Mandalay. Myanmar term ‘Anyeint ‘means; ‘non-dramatic performance where a female artiste dances and sings to the accompaniment of light music and is usually supported by comedians’. Daw Oba Thaung codified 125 steps of the traditional Myanmar choreography called Kabyar-llutt dance(ကဗျာလွတ်အက) in 1953.. The state School of Music (yefwsmausmif;) was opened in Mandalay in 1953 and Daw Oba Thaung was appointed as a dance teacher. She was the first instructor of dances in that school. She disseminated and shared the innovative dance techniques and patterns of Ka-Byar-Lut (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) to the students of State Music School in Mandalay. In other words, she is the pioneer or innovator of Kabyar_llutt dance patterns. She coined the word “Kabyar_lut” for this type of dance. The literal meaning of “Ka-Byar-Lut’ (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) is “ A Dance with No poetry”. This implies that it is a type of dance comprising no recitation of poem, no chanting of verse and literature. This style of dance can be performed by a single dancer or a group of dancers rhythmically and harmoniously.
Daw Oba Thaung inno-vated “Ka-Byar-Lut’ dance (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) and taught dance patterns and dance- techniques to the professional dancers as well as the Music School students in Mandalay. The stu-dents have to exercise to develop the flexibility of their bodies so that the specific physical motions can be performed in accordance with the designed or pattern of the dance accom-panied with the proper drum- beat or tune or melody. At first, Daw Oba Thaung had innovat-ed basic 25 steps of Kabyar_lutt dance played by four short- drums with clappers in metal (pnf;ESifh0g;) and bamboo.
Gradually, she increased the number of Kabyar_llutt dance steps. She had de-signed up to 125 Kabyar_lutt dance steps. These 125 steps comprise all of the Myanmar dances. Compulsorily, all the would-be professional danc-ers have to learn Kabyar_lutt dance. She taught the female students and the artiste by the name of U Shwe Daung Nyo taught male students. Daw Oba Thaung enlisted U Shwe Daung Nyo’s help to compose a rhyme for the Kabyar_lutt dance of the basic 25 steps. Furthermore, she incorporat-ed all six kinds of Myanmar string -marionette “thrust chin’ (ရုပ်သေးရုပ်မေးထိုး) movement into the new designed Kabyar_lutt dance. Thus, the performing of Kabyar_lut dance become more appealing to the viewers or au-diences. She was acclaimed as a choreographer or an innova-tor for all steps of Kabyar_lutt dance. Her choreography has added the mesmerizing Kabyar Lut (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) to Myanmar traditional dances. So Daw Oba Thaung is known as the moth-er of Ka-Byar-Lut (ကဗျာလွတ်အက) in the history of Myanmar performing arts.
The dancer‘s facial expres-sion has to be cheerful and live-ly in performing Ka Byar-Lut dance. In other words, Ka-Byar-Lut, (ကဗျာလွတ်) means the rendi-tion of music and instrumental accompaniment played by four-traditional- short-drums (ဗုံလေးလုံး) with timing bells and bamboo clappers (စည်းနှင့်ဝါး) . Since it has no poetry nor song the Ka-Byar-Lut (ကဗျာလွတ်) on the respective steps and movement played by the four short- drums with timing bells and bamboo clappers.
In the course of KaB-yar-Lut dance, the posi-tions of hand and fingers or hand attitudes known as-mudras (မုဒြာ) and head, waist, legs (feet) and limbs must be moved in harmo-ny properly. Each step is moved in steady, synchro-nous and graceful way in line with drum-beats. The dancer has to see the mov-ing hands while dancing and perform a sequence of graceful steps and move-ments. The dancer does not recite poems, verse and literature lampoon. The dancer or performer can wear Myanmar casual dress for the ordinary oc-casion or ceremony when she or he entertains to the audiences. If it is a group for dancing KaByar-Lut dance to entertain public, they have to wear same Myanmar casual dresses. However, if it is for state guest entertainment or concert or cultural show or formal occasion, the dancers have to wear full dress.
In Myanmar, the var-ious traditional occasions or ceremonies or events such as schools concerts, opening ceremony of sporting events, opening or closing ceremony of traditional festivals, state banquet for foreign guests are entertained with Ka-Byar-Lut dance. Some of the dancers are amateurs and some professionals in-deed. The dancer must be skilful enough to perform KaByar-Lut in respective steps or movements. In some government-owned schools, colleges and universities the basic course of KaByar-Lut dance is being taught as an extra-curriculum subject (not a compulsory subject) to the students who like to learn how to dance it.
The popular Ka Byar-Lut dance item is admired by ordinary audiences, en-thusiasts, traditional dance amateurs and foreigners as well. The government also promotes and transmits the Myanmar traditional dances to the enthusiastic people. Basic KaByar-Lut dance training course is being given to basic and higher education across the country.
The KaByar-Lut basic course training program in-tends to disseminate basic course of KaByar-Lut dance to all levels of students for learning how to dance it systematically. The train-ing course is conducted by the Fine Arts Department under the Ministry of Reli-gious Affairs and Culture. This popular traditional dance is cherished by My-anmar people. We express thankful to those who preserve our own tradi-tional dances including Ka-Byar-Lut dance as profes-sionals or as instructors at the National University of Arts and Culture, Yangon and National University of Arts and Culture, Mandalay.
Credit; Khaing Mar Lwin, Tutor of National University of Arts and Culture, Yangon
Reference book: ဗုံလေးလုံးသံစဉ် ဂန္တဝင်အကဗေဒသစ်နှင့် ဩဘာသောင်း
ရေးသူ- ဇော်ပုလဲ၊ ခင်ဝင်းနွယ်
Some of the beautiful, supple and graceful dance steps and motions of Ka Byar-Lut dance by using head, waist, legs, hands, MUDRA fingers and knees (ကဗျာလွတ်ကကွက်များ)
By: Tommy Pauk
