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Visit the Grand Palace in Bangkok and, as well as entry to the complex of classical Thai buildings, your ticket gives you access to a theatre in the Old Town. The package deal encourages tourists to enjoy a traditional Khon performance. The country has long been proud of its masked dance drama; in 2018 unesco added the art form to a list of intangible cultural heritage. Dancers in masks and ornate costumes act out episodes from the life of Rama, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, and scenes that were originally performed in royal courts to suggest that the ruler belonged to a divine lineage. To authoritarians in power, Khon has been sacred.
Thailand’s culture war between ancient and progressive values is playing out on dance stages as well as in the streets (there have been regular protests and calls for constitutional reform since 2020). Across the city from the Khon showcase, at a chic venue called Noble Play, young Thais are enjoying a radical new take on the dance. “Evolution”, an exhibition, explores the 21-year career of Pichet Klunchun, an innovative performer. Unlike the Khon artefacts in the National Museum in Bangkok, the artefacts on display here are interactive and futuristic. Visitors can wear a virtual-reality headset and move around in fantastical digital worlds.
For the show Pichet has restaged some of his most famous dances, such as “I am a Demon”, a solo performance from 2005. The title refers to the way in which Khon dancers are cast by body type: demons are stocky, heroes willowy and monkey warriors spry. Pichet recreated the rehearsal sessions of his master, Chaiyot Khummanee, an independent teacher who instilled the fundamentals of Khon in a less rigid way that left scope for interpretation.
Pichet was brought up by fisherfolk in Chachoengsao province; when he went to high school in Bangkok he fell into delinquency. At the age of 16 he was invited into a music club, where he met Chaiyot. “I spent many years at his house as if I was his son, training in the old way,” he recalls. “I stopped being a troubled teen and became a tamed person with focus in life.” He received a degree in Thai classical dance and travelled to America to study further—it was there that he developed an interest in modern styles.
The dancer says he loves “the restriction of tradition”, but mastered the classical form in order to deconstruct it. His shows typically explore an aspect of Khon’s “grammar” before combining it with contemporary choreography. Rather than wearing the customary silk and brocade outfits, Pichet’s company often performs in tight-fitting lycra, to better reveal the movements involved. Khon outfits are embellished with divine motifs, so removing them also outrages the gatekeepers, as does his flexible approach to masks and characters. He argues that he is telling new stories and therefore requires new masks.
His analytical approach to the art form has not been welcomed by the guardians of Thainess. “I was blamed as a ‘destroyer of tradition’,” he says. (“I am a Demon” took on another meaning amid such accusations.) “I was an outcast. Conservatives cursed that I insulted Khon. Some even told me to leave the country.” He argues, however, “that I know the traditional arts no less than they do.”
Like some other Thai mavericks, such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a film-maker, Pichet has enjoyed respect abroad. The performer has staged 20 productions at more than 100 festivals worldwide and received major honours, including the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. He has found an audience among compatriots turned off by the time-honoured form and was able to build his own venue, the Chang Theatre, in Bangkok.
He has often collaborated with a Singaporean dramaturg, Tang Fu Kuen, who is the artistic director of the Taipei Arts Festival. Tang paired him with a French dancer, Jérôme Bel, for “Pichet Klunchun and Myself”, a piece about understanding the other’s dance heritage; in “Nijinsky Siam” Pichet and Tang probed Khon’s influence on ballet. “He is fiercely independent and unafraid to be different from his peers and predecessors,” Tang says. “Pichet combines practice with theory and history, devoting his life to scrutinising his art form to reinvent its image and kinetics.”
That scrutiny is clear in the exhibition. There are 59 key poses and movements in Khon (which originated as a martial art); Pichet has studied each and created diagrams analysing their effect on the body. He reckons that technology can improve this study, connect with the young and build a global audience through the metaverse. He has worked with Pat Pataranutaporn, a researcher at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to further explore the science of cybernetics. “My work is to research a traditional art, then develop it into an innovative art,” Klunchun says. At the same time, “what I am doing is a part of preserving it.”
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Hi, hi, hi. So, it's been a while for the last couple of weeks since I have considered buying a cargo bike. The reason is that I am often trapped in a traffic jam because I can't get faster in my car.
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