The aesthetics courtship of Laos Kham Hom Dance

Abstract

This academic article intents to study and examine the pattern and the aesthetic courtship of the newly developed performance “Laos Kham Hom Dance” by gathering relevant documents, a number of interviews and consultations, observations, and the hands-on experience of the group of authors in order to comprehend and analyze the collected data. The study found that there are 2 different recent choreographies being developed from the referred song, Laos Kham Hom, which are detailed as female dancing style and other is mixed-gender one. The dancing pattern in this performance is presenting the emotions and affection through the artistic style of the two main characters, also known as Phra and Nang. There are also 3 disparate dancing characteristics being involved, including lyrics-dominated, song-dominated, and melody-dominated dancing. In the more romantic scenes, there are 8 more specific acting-related dancing patterns performed in this performance, namely shoulder-bump, shoulder-touching, cheek-kiss, chest touching, hands-fondle, chasing, holding hands and chucking under chin. This performance is considered highly valued in terms of audiovisual art experience since the audiences will be listening to the great music with the great songs and lyrics as well as watching the beauty movements through the characters and personalities of the actors with the attractive costumes. Moreover, the most essential part presented in this show is the ability of the performers reflecting the deeper meaning of the lyrics thoroughly through the process of dancing which are combined between Thai traditional dance and natural gesture so as to imply the emotional and expression in the amorous scene.