The Ritual Dance ‘Nora Rong Kru’

Abstract

The article on The Ritual Dance ‘Nora Rong Kru’ aims to examine the dancing patterns of the ritual dance Nora Rong Kru created by the Nora expert and national artist, Yok Chubua. The study gathers all the information from the relevant academic articles, structured interviews from Nora Dance experts, as well as participant observations and implemented the authors' experiences to analyze the data.The result of the study shows that the Thai traditional praise dancing will be performed only after the crowning ceremony and the most obvious characteristic is the mixing of dance and sung poetry which contains both sitting and standing dances. The choreography consists of three main features which are 12-lesson, 12-song and 12-chapter section of dancing respectively. The 12-lesson section of dancing has a characteristic of dancing by using gesture language in order to convey meaning, whilst the 12-song section is dancing along with the melodies without any vocalization. The 12-chapter section of dancing is an continuous 12-part drama series with only 2 main characters which are two Nora leading performers and a joker

Thai traditional praise dancing for Nora teacher is considered a national cultural heritage educating morals and ethics such as gratitude, impermanent, the value of nature and living at both family and social levels to people through the process of ritual and beliefs. This is the heart of the southern people of Thailand and it goes without saying that this should be protect, conserve and pass on to the next generations.