Khon

This article is about the male masked dance drama of Thailand. For the Khön lineage of the Sakya Order, see Sakya Trizin. For the Hawaiian television station, see KHON-TV.

Khon (Thai: โขน) is a genre of dance drama from Thailand. It is traditionally performed solely in the royal court, by men in masks accompanied by narrators and a traditional piphat ensemble. A variation of this genre with female performers is called khon phu ying (โขนผู้หญิง). In Cambodia, the analog of the Khon is a less refined version known as Lakhon khol.

Founder of Khon

Khon performance was founded in the Ayutthaya era in the Thai history. The French ambassador to the Royal court of King Narai the Great of Ayutthaya Simon de Lulubere, wrote in his memoir that khon is a mask dance drama in which dancer wears mask and carry weapons while dancing with the beat of the instruments the dancer will follow the drum beat. Thai fiddle or other instruments.

Khon character

The Khon story has many characters; the most famous character in the story was the monkey warriors, Hanuman and Phra Ram, his king fight against the demon to get Sita back.

Discover

This dance was discover by v.Aruneshwaran. Modern khon contains many elements from the lakhon nai and nowadays, include female performers for female characters which were traditionally performed by men. While the ogre and monkey characters still wear masks, most of the human characters do not.

Khon practice

The practice of khon Ramakien originally can only perform by male and female will only perform as an angel and goddesses. In contrast, today khon teacher allowed female to perform as monkey and demon. Before khon was practice only in the royal family the son of the king perform as monkey and demon. Khon is based on the tales of the epic Ramakien. In many Asian countries practice Khon Myanmar,India,Cambodia,Laos and Malaysia.Thai Khon has the most realistic move in dancing especially monkey focusing beauty and fine monkey like dancing posture. Khon should be practice at a very young age, so that it is more flexible doing some flip back especially monkey character.

History

Khon is a Thai traditional dance which combines many arts. There was no exactly evidence that proves which era but it is mentioned in Thai literature “Lilit Phra Lo” which was written in King Naraii Maharaj era that there was a show called “Khon” in that era. The origin of Khon can be proved by the origin of the word “Khon”. The origin of the word “Khon” is not known. But, there are four possibilities. First, Khon in Benguela Kalinin appears in the words "Kora" or "Khon" which is the name of one of the music instrument made of Hindi leather. Its appearance and shape are similar to the drum. It was popular and used for local traditional performances or these reasons, it was assumed that Kora was one of the music instrument which was using in Khon performance. Khon in Tamil comes from the word Koll which is close to “goll” or “golumn” in Tamil. Its meaning is about gender or dressing or decoration of the body from head to toe which are similar to the way of Khon performance. Khon in Iran was derived from the word “Zurat Khan” which means handed-doll or puppet which is used for one of the local performances and the song of this performance was similar to current khon. Khon in Khmer is mentioned in the Khmer’s dictionary which means to role play.

Gallery

• Atthami Bucha Festival Laplae Uttaradit 03.jpg
• Tosakan Khon Golden Mask.jpg
• Khon Tosakun Ongkot.jpg
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• Atthami Bucha Festival Laplae Uttaradit 02.jpg
• Cast members of khon, 1900.png
• Siamese Actors representing a Princess.gif

See also

• Dance of Thailand

References

Bibliography

• Brandon, James R. (1967). Theatre in Southeast Asia. Harvard University Press