Southeast Asia - Culture - The Arts

The Arts

The arts of Southeast Asia have no affinity with the arts of other areas. Dance in much of Southeast Asia also includes movement of the hands, as well as the feet to express the emotion and meaning of dance upon the story that the ballerina going to tell the audience. Most of Southeast Asian confirmed the Dance into their court, according to Cambodian royal ballet represent them in earlier of 7th century before Khmer Empire which highly influenced by Indian Hinduism. Apsara Dance, famous for strongly hand and feet movement, is a great example of Hindism symbol dance. Puppetry and shadow plays were also a favoured form of entertainment in past centuries as the famous one known as Wayang from Indonesia. The arts and literature in some of Southeast Asia is quite influenced by Hinduism brought to them centuries ago.

The Tai, coming late into Southeast Asia, brought with them some Chinese artistic traditions, but they soon shed them in favour of the Khmer and Mon traditions, and the only indications of their earlier contact with Chinese arts were in the style of their temples, especially the tapering roof, and in their lacquerware.

In Indonesia, despite conversion to Islam opposed to certain forms of art, has retained many forms of Hindu influenced practices, cultures, arts and literatures. An example will be the *Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppet) and literatures like the Ramayana. This is also true for mainland Southeast Asia (excluding Vietnam). Dance movements, Hindu gods, arts were also fused into Thai, Khmer, Lao and Burmese cultures. It has been pointed out that Khmer and Indonesian classical arts were concerned with depicting the life of the gods, but to the Southeast Asian mind the life of the gods was the life of the peoples themselves—joyous, earthy, yet divine.