The dancing, though different from what it is in the Occident, is not without interest to a Westerner. The motions of the dancers are graceful and spry. Burman amusements last days and nights. The best known secular festival is the pwe.
The entertainment is melodramatic. Comedy and tragedy are introduced, music and dancing are included. The plot of the play is flimsy. The performance includes tricks of clowns who are masters of their art and intensely amusing. The musical instruments in the orchestra consist of a circle of drums, gongs, trumpets, and wooden clappers, and the music out-Wagners Wagner in its deafening noise.
Many religious festivals are celebrated. Probably the occasion when presents are distributed to the priests is the most interesting. The people bring their presents and pile them up outside an alley made of bamboo latticework. One brings candles, another matches, another brass vessels, etc., as though some previous arrangement had been made as to just what each one shall give.
For the most part the donors are women, and all of them are dressed in their best. The monks, attended by a boy carrying a large basket, pass down the bamboo alley in single file, and each basket is filled with presents. A trio of masqueraders with faces blackened, dancing to comic music, follows the procession. Anything that has not been distributed to the priests is gathered up by them.
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