| People in Myanmar enjoy watching a pwe(show)
on any occasion, be it a religious festival or a wedding. Pwes range
from slapstick to religious plays. They are performed on a portable stage
and may last an entire night. The action is often accompanied by people
playing drums, gongs and cymbals. Zat pwe is a religious play, while
anyei pwe is a comedy. Yein pwe involves singing and dancing.
Yok thei pwe is a play with marionettes. Nat pwes pay homage
to the members of the spirit world and are performed at nat festivals.
There are special dances at nat festivals, when the dancers invite the nats to possess their bodies. There are also more formal dances, often performed by women, that involve precise movements and stylized gestures. Some of these classical dances depict stories from the life of the Buddha. Myanmar music uses many unique instruments, such as the saung kauk (a 13-stringed harp shaped like a boat), the hne (a wind instrument) and the kyay naung (a set of brass gongs). In the country, people sing folk songs to relieve the monotony of tasks such as pounding rice or weaving. |
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| Lacquerware is an important art form, and Bagan
and Pyay are Myanmar's main lacquerware centres. Mandalay is known for
metal work. Woodcarving and embroidered textiles are also important. A
traditional Myanmar art is weaving silk into a cloth called cheik
that has wavy or twisted patterns.
Myanmar is a country of beautiful pagodas and temples. There are two main types of religious buildings. A zedi is the shrine of a holy relic. The relic may be a fragment from the body of the Buddha or something that the Buddha touched or used in his lifetime. Zedis are usually bell-shaped. Pahtos are places of meditation built in a square shape. The zedis and pahtos may be decorated with elaborate carvings, precious metals and gemstones, or paintings. Many have statues of the Buddha in wood, stone or bronze. |
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The Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, described as a
"beautiful winking wonder" by the British writer Rudyard Kipling, has a
dome that rises to a height of 98 metres above the base. The dome is covered
with 87 slabs of gold, 1,500 gold and silver bells, 5,445 diamonds, and
2,325 rubies, sapphires, topazes and emeralds. The tiny Kyaik-tyo Pagoda
in southeast Myanmar is built on a gold-plated boulder on the edge of a
cliff. It is seven metres high and contains a hair of the Buddha. It is
perched in a precarious position that makes it appear that it is about
to fall into the valley below.
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