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Pitchet Klunchun: “About Khon”
Extracts performed at the Regional Dance Summit “Transforming Tradition” in Jakarta
By Constanze Klementz
One could call this piece a spin-off from another show. But in fact it turned out to be much more than that. When Pitchet Klunchun presented “About Khon” at the Regional Dance Summit in Jakarta several people in the audience that mainly consisted of people working in the dance field must have had a real déjà-vu experience.
It is true: In „About Khon“ Thai choreographer Pitchet Klunchun reframes and revisits some scenes he normally performs in a highly successful duet created together with his French colleague Jerôme Bel. Since that piece premiered in 2005 it has toured extensively all over the globe with huge success.
“Pitchet Klunchun and Myself”, so the title of that collaboration, has its undeniable qualities. It is clever, simple and very entertaining - “a kind of theatrical and choreographic documentary on the artistic and aesthetical practices of two artists who know nothing about each other”. This is how the project is described on Bel’s remarkable website ‘Catalogue raisonné’, where he is self-archiving his main works from 1994 up to 2005 (http://www.catalogueraisonne-jeromebel.com).
Bel and Klunchun face each other on stage, talking and demonstrating each other the principles and convictions their choreographic work is based upon. What becomes obvious is that the highly conceptual approach Jerôme Bel has become so famous for in Europe is neither an intellectual spleen nor a contemporary fashion. It is a strategy to deal with the potential and the political implications of ‘form’ and ‘structure’ in the arts. A strategy that such current European choreographic visions share with an Asian art form thousands of years old.
Pitchet Klunchun, who was educated in Khon dance by one of the great Thai masters, runs a studio and a company of his own. His aim is, as he is explaining in “Pitchet Klunchun and Myself” and now also in “About Khon” to make the traditional dance-form of “Khon” an artistic language that would be able to communicate here and now again. Therefore, he says, it is necessary to explain the system of Khon, or you could also say: the philosophy behind it. To know the signs is the precondition to make people read the dance. The energy of Klunchuns dialogue with his spectators is not only playful, but deeply serious. He is convinced that there is the need to re-alphabetisize his audience.
Without Bel on stage to whom Klunchun previously addressed his talk and his dancing, the act of explanation itself, now addressed in “About Khon” directly at the auditorium, wins in plausibility, simply because there are indeed other people in the audience each night to talk to. Sitting on a chair next to a bottle of water, the dancer ignores the forth wall. He holds eye contact with his listeners and spectators who become more observers: more active watchers than passive consumers, being constantly asked to challenge their capacity for understanding, to really follow what is going on on stage and to realise that to follow, to understand needs effort, interest and commitment.
When the refined performer demonstrates different ways how to represent death on stage in the classical dance without ever showing the dying itself, or when he introduces the basic characters in Khon, what gives the piece such a strong second level is that it becomes almost as a side effect a touchingly honest and determined self-portrait of a maker. There are few that modest and decent solo-performers to be seen than Pitchet Klunchun. It is thus the true ‘physicality’ of a modest and decent mind that makes “About Khon” not just a lecture talk with some movement demonstrations but frames it overall as choreography, a giving a body and bringing to movement of personal artistic concerns.
The piece is strong in its wish to relate the stage back to the audience, testing out different forms of addressing and keeping contact. It will be interesting to watch the next steps of this artist, especially when it comes to actualising the body-language of Khon in acts of speech here and now, observing how it will or will not be able to talk about contemporary issues. At the Dance Summit “About Khon” was justly considered one of the most remarkable performances.
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