Pichet Klunchun, whose company will be at the Cloud Gate Theater next weekend, began training in Thailand’s classical Khon mask dance when he was 16, going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Thai classical dance from Chulalongkorn University, the Thai equivalent of National Taiwan University.
He started training at 16, late for a Khon dancer, after a chance meeting with a renowned Khon master, Chaiyot Khummanee. He said studying Khon helped him deal with his loneliness after moving to Bangkok, and later helped him to define himself — the long hours of repeating basic motions gave him time to think about life.
However, it was a stay in New York City when he was 30, thanks to an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2002, that changed his life forever. It opened his eyes up to modern dance world and strengthened his determination to deconstruct Khon and infuse it with contemporary movement — an idea that has meant his works are more widely appreciated and in demand outside of Thailand than at home.
Photo Courtesy of Pichet Kluchun Dance Company
For example, Dancing with Death (靈薄域), the work the Pichet Kluchen Dance Company will perform in Tamsui next weekend, was commissioned by Singapore’s Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay for its da:ns series festival last year, with cosponsorship from festivals in Yokohama, Japan, and Melbourne and Adelaide, Australia. At home, he has admitted in interviews, he struggles to get audiences into the theater he built — and keep them there.
However, Klunchun’s early works drew the attention of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民), who twice invited him to take part in the Novel Hall Dance Series that Lin curated for the now sorely missed Novel Hall theater.
Lin saw Pichet and French choreographer Jerome Bel in a piece that was then called Made in Thailand at a festival in France and invited them to bring the piece to Taipei in 2006, by which time it had been retitled Pichet Klunchun and Myself. Pichet returned on his own the following year for the Novel Hall series themed “Men Dancing,” bringing his I am a demon, an exploration of the four character types in Khon theater.
Pichet counts Lin among his mentors and the two men certainly appear to have much in common, despite the difference in age, culture and training. Like Lin’s company, Pichet’s troupe, established in 2004, is the first professional company in Thailand where dancing is a full-time job, and, like Lin, Pichet creates works that combine his nation’s traditional art forms and motifs with modern dance, contemporizing classical culture.
‘Questioning Culture’
In interviews, Pichet has spoken about the need to keep traditional culture alive so young people can know about their past, but he also insists that culture must be free to be questioned, challenged, changed or even destroyed.
“Questioning means people are curious about culture” and that is a good thing, he said.
That goes to the heart of one of Pichet’s struggles: getting audiences involved and invested in performances. Traditionally, Khon dance has been seen as such a high art form in Thailand that it was not questioned, it was only to be watched, not commented on, he has said.
In one interview he said he feels like he has succeeded even if people are angry enough to walk out of his performances, because it demonstrates that they are questioning what they see.
It is unlikely that anyone is going to walk out of Dancing with Death, which is set on seven dancers, including Pichet.
Inspired by the traditional “Phi Ta Khon” carnival in northeastern Thailand where people wear colorful masks and costumes to honor fertility and death, Pichet explores the Buddhist philosophy that death is but part of the cycle of life, not the end of a life, but the rebirth of a soul, something to be celebrated, not mourned.
The circle that is life is emphasized by the set, a raised, swooping loop that Pichet designed.
“I want to show that death is beautiful,” he said in a short video made to promote the show in Singapore last year. “The aesthetics of this performance are inspired by the freedom found at the heart of folk culture.”
“It allows more ways for me to deconstruct my classical art form,” he said. “And it frees me.”
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