Shwe Man Tin Maung

Burmese dancer

Alinga Kyaw Swa

Shwe Man Tin Maung

Born|

Tin Maung

21 December 1918

Mandalay, Burma

Died| 29 November 1969 (1969-11-30) (aged 50)

Minhla, Magway

Nationality| Burmese
Organization| Shwe Man Thabin (ရွှေမန်းသဘင်)
Known for| Burmese dance
Spouse| Daw Thein Nyunt
Children| Nyunt Win
Win Bo
San Win
Khin Chit Win
Khin Win Kyi
Win Maung
Chan Thar
Parent(s)| U Pya (father)
Daw May (mother)
Awards| Alinkar Kyawswa (1953)

Shwe Man Tin Maung (Burmese: ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်, 21 December 1918 – 29 November 1969) was an influential Burmese dancer and founder of the Shwe Man Thabin family dance troupe, the last of its kind in Burma.[1][2] He was considered one of the three most skilled zat pwe performers of his day, along with Kenneth Sein and Sein Aung Min,[3] and led the Burmese Zat Thabin industry, following the example of Po Sein.[4]

A bronze statue of Tin Maung stands before the National Theatre of Mandalay.[5] His oratorical skills gave rise to the Burmese saying "Talking like Shwe Man."[6]

## Early life

[edit]

Tin Maung, the youngest of nine siblings, was born in Mandalay in 1918 to U Pya and Daw May. His father died when he was eight years old. He became interested in singing and dancing and started performing as a Zeetheekauk Minthale at his uncle's marionette show.

## Career

[edit]

Bronze figure of Shwe Man Tin Maung at the National Theatre of Mandalay

After studying traditional drama under Mya Chay Gyin Ma Ngwe Myaing for three years, he founded the Shwe Man Thabin dance troupe in 1933.[7] Four generations of his family would eventually become members.[8][9]

He was the first to use a searchlight on stage, breaking away from older lighting traditions, and introduced half-night dances, which included a dance duet and an opera, instead of the usual all-night performances. He was awarded the title of Alinkar Kyawswa by the Burmese government in 1953.[10] In 1959, he was invited to the United States as a representative of the Myanmar dance troupe tradition.[10]

He performed well-known songs, such as "Aungbaze" and "Shwekyayzi", and in operas, including Ywekonthe, Htwatyatlan, Maung Mhue and Gitayoo.[11] The Buddhist Jataka operas he performed are still remembered in rural traditional festival circles.[12]

## Death

[edit]

On the night of 29 November 1969, Tin Maung died of hypertension while dancing on stage during the Mahapeinne pagoda festival near Minhla, Magway.[6][10]

## Family

[edit]

He and his wife Daw Thein Nyunt had seven children: Nyunt Win, Win Bo, San Win, Khin Chit Win, Khin Win Kyi, Win Maung and Chan Thar.[13] Nyunt Win became a performer and earned seven Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards. His other four sons are dancers,[14] and his grandchildren Tin Maung San Min Win and Kyaw Kyaw Bo are also artists.[11][15]

## See also

[edit]

* Burmese dance

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Myay, Chan (13 August 2013). "Traditional Burmese Dance Troupe Returns to National Stage". The Irrawaddy.
2. ^ "Myanmar's Shwe Man Thabin". Asia Society.
3. ^ ""မာလာမြိုင် ဟေမာန်ရာသီ သဘင်ပွဲ တော်" တွင် သရုပ်ဆောင် ဦးဝင်းဦး ကွယ်လွန်ခြင်း ၃၂နှစ်ပြည့် အစီအစဉ် ပါဝင်မည်". lotaya.mpt.com.mm.
4. ^ "သဘင့်ဥသျှောင် အလင်္ကာ့ဂုဏ်ဆောင် ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်". Myanma Radio and Television.
5. ^ "အလင်္ကာကျော်စွာ ရွှေမန်း တင်မောင်ရုပ်တု အမျိုးသား ကဇာတ်ရုံတွင် စိုက်ထူမည်". The Myanmar Times. 5 June 2014.
6. ^ a b "အတိတ်နှင့်ပစ္စုပ္ပန်ကို ချိန်ထိုးကြည့်ခြင်း". Real Power Online Media (Myanmar). 2 July 2020.
7. ^ "Family talents on stage commemorate 80 years of Shwe Man Tha Bin". The Myanmar Times. 17 June 2013.
8. ^ Kourlas, Gia (12 April 2015). "Review: Shwe Man Thabin at Asia Society (Published 2015)". The New York Times.
9. ^ "သဘင်ပညာတွင် ဘဝမြှုပ်နှံထားသူ". 7Day Daily - ၇ ရက် နေ့စဉ် သတင်းစာ. 20 September 2017.
10. ^ a b c "Alinga Kyaw Swa Shwe Man Tin Maung". mdep.moe.edu.mm.
11. ^ a b "ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်ရဲ့ ဇာတ်ထုပ်တွေကို အော်ပရာအဖြစ် ပြန်ဖော်ထုတ်မယ့် တင်မောင်ဆန်းမင်းဝင်း". ဧရာဝတီ. 17 July 2019.
12. ^ MediaGroup, AsianFame (10 January 2018). "ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်ရဲ့ လေးတော်တင်ခန်းဇာတ်တော်ကြီးကို ပြန်လည်ကပြဖို့ စီစဥ်နေတဲ့ တင်မောင်ဆန်းမင်းဝင်း". Popular.
13. ^ "အလင်္ကာ အလွမ်းမှတ်တမ်းနှင့် ရွှေမန်း မျိုးဆက်များ၏ ရင်တွင်း စကားသံများ". ဧရာဝတီ. 14 June 2013.
14. ^ Fame, Asian (8 January 2018). "ရန်ကုန်မှာလုပ်မယ့် အလင်္ကာကျော်စွာ ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်ရဲ့ နှစ် ၁ဝဝ ပြည့် သဘင်ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ". Popular.
15. ^ "အလင်္ကာကျော်စွာ ရွှေမန်းတင်မောင်ရဲ့မြေးဖြစ်ရတာ ဂုဏ်ယူတဲ့ ကျော်ကျော်ဗို". 7Day News - ၇ ရက်နေ့စဉ် သတင်း.