Space and Dance

So many things to write about and pictures to post, so let’s start, shall we?

Thursday evening was the opening of our office’s performance festival that presented dancers from Hong Kong, Cambodia, Japan, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. As the program says, the event gathered some of the best regional performing artists in heritage houses in Bangkok.

I was only able to catch the opening night though coz we left for Pattaya the next day. Last Thursday’s venue was an old complex of teak houses in the middle the Bangkok urban jungle, it was practically under the shadow of skyscrapers.

The houses were composed of bits and parts of old houses that the owner collected from central Thailand and transplanted them right in the middle of city. The compound was owned by a former member of the Thai parliament and was a prolific artist and writer.

Opening the performances was one of my Burmese colleagues who showed his adept puppetry skills. He did this in a small pavilion on the edge of the large lawn.

Afterwards, the audience moved to the centre of the lawn, damp after a heavy downpour, to watch the “monkey dance” of a Cambodian performer.

And then the audience had to transfer to a small performance space done in traditional Thai architecture, with large khon (traditional Thai theatre) masks in the backdrop. Here, one can see a dynamic interplay of heritage space and contemporary dance.

The performances were very experimental and personal, almost verging on the theatrical.

For instance, the Thai dancer dropped pieces of paper from his hand and he watched how the paper fell slowly to the floor. When it landed, he gracefully followed the trajectory of the paper with his hand as he rattled about the flow of energy in his body. It was almost trance-like and meditative.

The Indonesian duo on the other hand, danced to odd sounds ingeniously recorded from things we hear everyday – horns honking, pans crashing, water flowing from the faucet, gunfire, people having sex, a train running along the tracks, etc. The energetic piece is both fascinating and bewildering, which can also be said about the other performances.

A Filipina dancer was in the line up for the next day but I did not see her dance anymore.

And the pictures of course...