ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore some current trends of Nora performance culture in southern Thai communities. Working beyond Nora ritual performances for ancestral worship and entertainment, performances have become embedded in dance schools and university curricula. This has helped to make Nora both more popular and become recognized as a key aspect of southern Thai cultural identity. Nora has been reshaped, reformed, and rechoreographed to fulfill community needs dynamically within contemporary contexts. Both Nora masters and the Thai Culture Ministry now normally distinguish two types of Nora performance: ritual Nora done for a Nora family’s lineage and entertainment Nora for public audiences. While focusing on the former type, the chapter will examine several case studies of Nora entertainment to show some ways that Nora in southern Thailand has adapted to contemporary contexts and global processes: (1) intensive Nora classes have shortened the process of traditional learning to —one- to two-hour weekly classes; (2) new choreography for contemporary and creative Nora; (3) business Nora. Together, these cases show how Nora masters use their social networks and media as platforms to promote their dance troupes and to collaborate or create translocal networks with one another.
