The continent of Asia stretches from Pakistan in the
west to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia in the east and
with its 3.5 billion people houses half of the world's
population. A can be divided into regions, depending on
political or cultural cohesion - here it is the cultural
cohesion that conditions the division: 1) Central Asia,
which consists of Siberia east of the Urals, Mongolia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan, is without significant theatrical interest, 2)
South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet and
Sri Lanka), which is described as the cradle of culture,
where the major religions of Buddhism and Hinduism
originated, 3) East Asia (China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan),
whose philosophical thinking is influenced by Confucianism
and 4) Southeast Asia (Myanmar (formerly Burma), Thailand,
Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia),
which have mixed cultural influences from both South Asia
and East Asia.
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Countryaah is a website offering country profiles
and lists of of countries in the continent of Asia.
Intense cultural exchanges characterize the
whole area, where traders and artists both at sea and over
land have brought philosophical thoughts and cultural
expressions with them, so for example Indian dance has
traces all the way to Indonesia via Thailand and Malaysia,
Chinese masked dances are spread to Korea and Japan and
Vietnamese music is characterized by Japanese, Taiwanese and
Filipino music.
It was not unusual for court troops to be brought home as
booty, which gained crucial importance for the development
of performing arts in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and
Indonesia. In recent centuries, colonial powers have brought
with them Western forms of theater, which with varying
degrees of success have introduced word theater into the
otherwise musical, physical, and epic-based Asian theater.
The Asian theater forms appear as a symbiosis of several
different art forms, song, dance, mime, mask art and martial
arts, where the external form of expression can be puppet
theater, musical theater, dance performances, shadow playsmv.
Word theater in the Western sense does not exist in the
original theatrical forms, only in the form of narrative
art. The majority of Asian theater forms are built on dance,
primarily in South and Southeast Asia, while others are
based on singing, primarily in East Asia. Mask and puppet
drama can be found throughout the area.
Performance practice and audience reception differ
significantly from Western theater. The playing style is
strongly stylized; originating in shamanic rituals and
primordial drama, the performer is a medium that, based on
aesthetic-symbolic values, conveys folk myths and narratives
in a strongly codified language, whereby the performance
gets the primary focus at the expense of the text, which is
all familiar. In the often night-long performances, the
audience can therefore go to and from the performances and
select the passages that are particularly important. The
performer is trained from an early age in a master learning
system and in many forms such as kathakali, Peking opera,
kabuki andnō it is men who perform the female roles, where
in other forms, such as in certain Balinese, it is women who
perform all roles.
The Indus Valley, which stretches along the Indian border
towards Pakistan, is considered with the Harappa culture
2500-1500 BC. to be the starting point of Asian culture. The
area was inhabited from 3000 BC, but became approximately
1000 BC invaded by Aryans, Indo-Europeans, who came from
Afghanistan and brought the Sanskrit language with them.
Here, among other things, a system of rituals and religious
activities that later manifested as Hinduism. The myths and
legends that were associated with Hinduism, in the two epics
Mahabharata and Ramayana, became a central part of the
Sanskrit dramaand spread since then as a textual basis to
the rest of the continent. approximately 500 BC Buddhism
arose, which thrived side by side with Hinduism, and which
from northern India spread over A in two main directions:
hinayana (the small chariot Buddhism) along with Hinduism in
Southeast Asia and mahayana (Buddhism of the great chariot)
in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The Indians were an
active merchant, who diligently sailed Southeast Asia,
approximately 100 AD the first accounts of Hindu kings are
found in Cambodia. approximately 900 AD large parts of
Southeast Asia up to North Vietnam were Hinduized. They were
well received as they brought with them sophisticated
philosophies, written language and cultural habits, thus
gaining decisive influence on the dance, which to this day
carries unmistakable features of Indian culture. At the same
time, Hinayana Buddhism flourished, where especially the
jataka tales, parables of the Buddha, became part of the
performative culture.
approximately 1000 AD the Muslims invaded India, and with
the image ban of Islam, the performing arts met in difficult
times, whereas the music drew much inspiration from the Arab
culture. Buddhism disappeared from India, but in the rural
regions Hinduism and Sanskrit grew strong and supported the
dance, whose oldest forms are kutiyattam and bharata natyam.
The Muslims continued their conquests in Southeast Asia,
displacing Hinduism and Buddhism; approximately 1400 the
Malacca Peninsula was totally Islamized and approximately
1600 also Indonesia, New Guinea and the southern
Philippines, which in turn became important for the
performing arts. The conversion, however, was performed
there by Indian Muslims, who were less dogmatic in their
religious conduct and to some extent tolerated the dramatic
art. In the Indonesian Theater,wayang, they replaced the
living theater, wayang kulit, with puppet theater, wayang
golek, and thus did not lose the performative art, which to
date is very strong. In Bali, however, they managed to stand
up to Islam, to date the island is Hindu and the dance
tradition is intact.
802 AD founded the Javanese Hindu Prince, Jayavarman II,
the Khmer Empire in Cambodia with Angkor Vat as its capital;
it existed for 600 years. He brought with him thousands of
dancers who, on the basis of Indian-inspired dance, laid the
foundation for Cambodian dance. In 1353, the Thais
overpowered the Khmers and brought home the entire court
force as booty. From here the classical Thai dance is dated.
In 1767, the Burmese, who had been at war with the Thais for
centuries, took home the entire Thai court dance troupe,
which was set to teach the Burmese dancers. Thus, both the
Hindu tales and the Javanese Prince Panji stories became a
basic component of the classical dance traditions of
Southeast Asia. When Angkor Vat was annihilated in 1431, the
kingdom also lost its dance tradition; it was reintroduced
by Thai dancers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Buddhism spread northward through Nepal and Tibet, where
Buddhist dance dramas, respectively. mani-rimdu and ache
lhamostill danced, and on to China, where it became known as
early as the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and gained a
foothold in the 6th century as a dominant philosophy
alongside Confucianism (from 500 BC) and Daoism (from 100
AD). Indian dance and Sanskrit drama followed, but have only
indirectly, through Buddhism, had an impact on Chinese
theater. The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was an open,
cosmopolitan regime that received artists and trade
travelers from both the north and the south. Musicians,
puppet masters and performers traveled from the Middle East
and South Asia along the Silk Road right into the heart of
China, while Koreans and Japanese came from the north to be
inspired. Several dance forms such as Korean kiak, which
came to Japan as a gigaku, were originally Indian temple
dances that accompanied Buddhism through East Asia just as
Japanese bugaku originated in China during the Tang Dynasty.
Centuries later, in 1285, Kublai Khan took over northern
Vietnam, bringing with him Chinese actors and musicians who
laid the foundations of the Vietnamese court theater, the
hat boi.
At the turn of the 20th century, all of Southeast Asia,
with the exception of Thailand, was colonized. Missionary
Christians and influences from Western culture throughout A
made serious attacks on traditional art, which is still
fighting a daily battle for survival and not to end up as a
museum theater. Naturalism and Western word theater continue
to have narrow terms; the young artists work to connect
tradition and renewal in new forms of behavior, where not
least interculturalism, as a millennium-old tradition in A,
is central. |
