Kranok Naree: The Creation of Thai Contemporary Dance with Multimedia

Abstract

The creative research project “Kranok Naree” aims to, firstly, choreograph a contemporary Thai dance inspired by the beauty of Thai mural painting, and secondly, create a multimediavisual art display of the resulting dance piece. Thai paintings were generally divided into four categories: Kranok, Naree, Krabi (monkey and giant imagery) and Khacha (animal imagery). Kranok refers to different design patterns, including Krajung and Prajumyam, while Naree alludes to human images. The creative process divided into four steps: 1) studying basic information about Thai painting, especially murals, to conceptualize the choreography; 2) developing the Kranok Naree dance piece, parts of the dance composition were choreographed by incorporating elements from Western movement techniques as well as Thai classical dance, accompanied by contemporary music and costume design inspired by Thai mural paining. The performance combined Thai contemporary dance work and digital media design.; 3) creating the multimedia dance presentation; and 4) presenting and communicating the dance to an audience. Considering from the creation process of this show, the study found that the use of traditional Thai pattern of mural painting becomes a guideline for designing dance movement, which can offer more variety of dance fluidity than can traditionally dance. When dancers improvise by using Thai mural painting patterns as a foundation to guide their body gestures and feeling, it contributes to new dance movements while still maintaining the unique framework of traditional Thai dance.