Asia Dance Channel

Last August, Pichet Klunchun and I were invited by the Goethe Institut to a four-day regional dance summit in Jakarta. Towards the end, the Silpathorn Award artist made an intriguing comment on the summit’s title "Transforming Tradition", and many colleagues have since asked him to elaborate on this.

"I think ‘transforming’ may not be the right word to use. It’s more like ‘developing’. Arts always progress in accordance with the relevant society. But when you use the word ‘transforming’, it sounds as if we don’t have to think about the past but just create new culture.”

"Many people are bored with the rules and restrictions of tradition and so grab something else in their creation of new cultures. This creates a gap between the past and the present: there’s no link. Unfortunately, this happens a lot these days.”

"We live in a technological age and some works are overwhelmed by technology. I think we should take a more delicate approach and find how all these technological advances are linked to our roots. In our society, there are still many people who grew up without much technology—our parents, for example. If we create arts then overfill them with technology, we are simply ignoring these people and walking only on new paths.”

"I continue dragging the line of tradition. And when new creations occur, they’re like the offspring of that tradition, which may one day develop into something that is reminiscent of the tradition from which they come. By following this path, we can see the strength and the development of arts.”

"Saying that the young generation lives their lives further away from tradition is not true. When they go to the temple, they can still hear traditional Thai music. When they turn on the TV, they can hear luk thung music, which has developed from our traditional arts. When they walk along the street, they can still see traditional houses or old buildings. The problem is whether they can see the links. It seems like they’re separating one from the other—viewing this as new and that as old.”

"As artists, we can address this important issue in our works. The audience may have already noted that I usually present ‘myself’ not ‘characters’ in my works. This is to show that I, and they as the audience, are already related to the tradition, and so there’s no need for characters to draw the connection.”

"For example, in I Am a Demon [in which a video recording shows how Pichet was trained by his teacher, the late khon master Khru Chaiyot Khummanee], the culture of teacher and student, which is deeply rooted in our society, is evident. In Pichet Klunchun and Myself, when I speak of the architecture of Thai temples [and its relation to classical Thai dance movements], the audience can understand very well.”

"And so I think if we put more effort into showing these links to the audience, the effects would not just be on the national level, but also regional. The cultures of Southeast Asian countries are related—for example, there are cultural links between southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.”

"This has to start from our educational system, and we should hope that relevant government agencies do more than just allocate budgets. Of course, artists, through their works, can help the audience make the links as well. Actually some TV programmes are already performing this task—like [Modern Nine TV’s] ‘Phaendin Suvarnabhumi’. It’s a very interesting programme in which connectivity in this region is shown. Another programme is [Thai PBS’s] ‘Phan Saeng Rung’. There’s an episode on Thai song dam, explaing who they are, where they’re from, and how they can live in the contemporary society. A fashion design student watched it, was inspired, and then based the new design on these people’s concept. This way, the art can continue.”

“I think everybody has already realized that part of the problem is the teachers’ attitude. They only focus on the narrow perspectives, and then go deeper and deeper without drawing the links. They teach students to memorize, not to understand.”

“The curriculum states that classical Thai dance beginners must be able to dance both Phleng Cha and Phleng Reo. A teacher teaches them how to do that, and mission is completed. Another teacher also explains the origins and meanings of each gesture. I think the former does just that because he doesn’t really understand it.”

“Another matter is that Thai dance teachers usually say that Thai dance is a culture, and that we must join hands in preserving it. They never say that it’s also a dance form, and the students are never trained to become dancers, but preservers of arts and culture. If we regard it as a dance form, we’ll have to make sure that they first understand themselves, then the art and the language [of Thai dance].”

“I always say that we probably cannot change how Thai dance is taught. What we can do, and that’s what I’m doing, is to create an alternative and to prove that another way of thinking can lead to a concrete result that will communicate with a wider public."

"And that’s part of the reason I started Pichet Klunchun Dance Company. The company members have been trained with a new method, as dancers, and asked to always question what they’re doing. They’ve been trained in the tradition, and they can develop the tradition into a new work. I’m showing that this is also possible and it’s not the demolition of the old methodology—just the development of it.”

Audiences who have followed Pichet’s works in recent years may note that there are two traits—conceptual dance works, like Pichet Klunchun and Myself, I Am a Demon, and About Khon that appeal more to overseas audiences and are rarely staged here; and dance theatre works, like Ganesha and The Battle of Sang Athit which were created with local audiences in mind and filled with either political messages and new dance vocabulary.

Pichet explained, “From this year onwards, you’ll see that these two traits will merge—this year’s new works Nijinsky and Chui Chai, for example. I think for the past few years, I’ve been informing audiences overseas what our art is like, giving them a wider perspective on its language and symbols. After this, I can create works like they should be.”

Inarguably his most successful work, Pichet Klunchun and Myself has now been staged more than 120 times in various cities and countries in three continents. Oftentimes, dance and theatre scholars critically analyze it in terms of Post-Colonialism, gender studies, etc., and were able to extract messages that Pichet and Jerome didn’t intend to convey.

To this he responded, “I take them as my profit, and actually I’ve been discussing this with Jerome very often. When we performed this work in Asia, I told him that Asian audiences didn’t like him as they’re not happy with the fact that in the performance I [an Asian] looked inferior to him [a European]. In fact, as a co-creator, I didn’t care. I was just on stage doing my job.”

“What’s also interesting about this work was that many audiences didn’t think that it’s a performance, but more like a conversation of two artists who met each other for the first time. I always emphasized that it’s a performance the script of which had been edited many times for the past few years, and that it had a hero and a villain, dramatic situations, heartbreaking moments, comic relief, etc. Plus, many thought that it’s not my work, but Jerome’s, while I Am a Demon was clearly mine, and About Khon was something in between. And so after watching Pichet Klunchun and Myself, they wanted to see what my true work would be like.”

“On that note, after I performed two versions [contemporary and traditional] of Ganesha here last year, people suggested that the traditional one be re-staged overseas. No, I don’t like it as much. It’s beautiful, but I performed it so that audiences could compare it to the new creation. If I followed their suggestion, I’d just fall prey to the notion that traditional Asian dance always looks exotic on European and American stages. Well, I cannot be sure which one foreign producers and presenters would choose in the end. I always tell them that the contemporary one is truly my work, even though I’m not performing khon.

Pichet now has a busy year ahead of him. In late February, after Hua Hin, he flew to the Netherlands to perform I Am a Demon in three cities. In March, he performed his politically charged solo work Ganesha, the contemporary version, in France. In late May, his company’s newest work Nijinsky will be a highlight of the Singapore Arts Festival 2010, and he’ll also join other Asian performing arts masters—Taiwan’s Lin Hwai Min and Hong Kong’s Danny Yung, among them —in "Converasians" at the Esplanade. This work will then have the European premiere in Germany in July.

Also in July, Pichet Klunchun Dance Company is US-bound as another work Chui Chai will have its US premiere at the 2010 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, before being restaged at Lincoln Centre Festival the following weekend.

Unfortunately, no Thai producers, festival organisers or creative economy schemers have picked up any of these works yet. In the meantime, we can follow every step of this demon, and the intracultural links he’s making, at www.PKLifeWork.com.

Special thanks to Sojirat Singholka for her assistance in this interview.

Pichet Klunchun WITHOUT Myself

Pichet Klunchun and Myself, the intercultural collaboration between Pichet and French choreographer/performance artist Jerome Bel and which went on to bring Pichet international fame, had its world premiere at Patravadi Theatre’s Studio 1 as part of the Fringe Festival 2004.

So it’s fitting that the dancer is now returning to the festival, albeit at a new location, with a work that seems a natural development from the trilogy that has evolved over the past six years and which adds I Am a Demon and About Khon.

The performance premiered at Tanzconnexions last August as About Khon, the first time he’s performed this conceptual dance without Bel. German dance scholar, critic and webmaster of Tanzxonnexions website (www.Goethe.de/Tanzconnexions), Constanze Klementz raved about the performance at the Asia Dance Channel, an online dance magazine (www.AsiaDanceChannel.com), calling it "one of the most remarkable performances" at the dance summit.

Klementz wrote, "Without Bel on stage, Klunchun now addresses the auditorium and 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 holds eye contact with his listeners and spectators, who become more active watchers than passive consumers, being constantly asked to challenge their capacity for understanding, to really follow what is going on onstage and to realise that to follow and to understand needs effort, interest and commitment."

Now that Pichet has renamed the performance Pichet Klunchun and is performing this solo for the first time in Thailand, many wonder whether he’ll switch back to his mother tongue.

"I tried it [at some rehearsals] but it just didn’t work," he muses. "This is probably because I’ve been saying these lines in English for many years."

That’s perhaps good news for expat and tourist audiences attending the performance this weekend. But Thai audiences shouldn’t be turned off. After all, at university, Pichet majored in dance, not English.