For the fairy, the quest is to learn to fly again. For Karttunen the creation of Keiju was also a quest over the four-month production period.
"My vision of the world today is very chaotic ... we are losing the ability to be alone, quiet, silent," he said. "I learned to be quiet, silent — without getting depressed."
Next weekend's program — which begins with a Saturday matinee instead of a Friday night show — will shift the focus of the Novel series to the role of Asian men in contemporary dance, with performances by Pichet, Sang and Cheng.
Pichet, 35, will lead off the program with his half-hour long work I am a demon, which is a meditation on one of the four characters types — male, female, demon and monkey — in the traditional Thai masked dance theater known as Khon.
Pichet began training with one of the most famous masters of the demon form when he was 16, before going on to earn a bachelor's degree in Thai classical dance from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand's top school. In I am a demon, Pichet explains what makes a good demon dancer as he explores the structures and movements of the character.
Pichet appeared at Novel Hall last year with French choreographer Jerome Bel as the two men talked about — and demonstrated — their training, work and philosophy of dance. In that show, Pichet spoke about the frustration of trying to meld Khon with contemporary dance, a fusion that has been well received internationally but that has left many people in Thailand cold.
Following Pichet will be Gansu Province-born Sang, who will be performing Sheng You. A former dancer with China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the 33-year old Sang is also a former recipient of a Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Iniative scholarship to study with William Forsythe at the Frankfurt Ballet.
Capping off the bill will be Cheng with Tete Bech, which won the bronze medal at the 1st International Choreography Competition Ludwigshafen 2006, beating out hundreds of competitors. Cheng, a 2002 graduate of the Taipei National University of the Arts, is the only Taiwanese to win a medal in this competition and that was obviously a key factor in his inclusion in the program. At 20, he is also the youngest performer in the series, but he already has eight works to his credit.
For the third weekend, Novel fans will be happy to welcome back Saburo Teshigawara, who will be performing his 55-minute Pages in Bones, which was created at the Theatre am Turm in Frankfurt in 1991. It really is almost a one-man show (two female dancers make a brief appearance). Not only is Teshigawara the choreographer and dancer, he designed the lighting, costumes and worked with Kei Miyata on the score.
Like Karttunen's Keiju, the Bones tells the story of a man's search for his position in space and time, and while Teshigawara is very different in looks and approach from the Finn, he is equally a magician of movement, frequently appearing to be suspended in air rather than dancing through it.
The Men Dancing series will wrap up in September with Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Khan's Zero Point, something that people who met him or heard him speak when he was here earlier this year working with Cloud Gate on Lost Shadows are eagerly looking forward to.
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