Jérôme Bel

Pichet Klunchun and Myself

Pichet Klunchun and Myself is a clever theatrical presentation of an intellectual encounter between two dancers from very different traditions. The piece stages the meeting between conceptual choreographer Jérôme Bel and traditional Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun, a master of “Khon,” a Thai classical dance practice. Through a lively mixture of physical demonstration and spirited verbal debate, the piece documents Bel and Pichet’s lucid, humorous quest for understanding one another. During the piece, both try to find out more about each other, and above all about their respective artistic practices. They present a theatrical report of their original meeting, which evolves into meditations on euro-centrism, inter-culturalism, and cultural globalization.

Jérôme Bel was born in 1964 and lives in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. He studied at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine of Angers (France) in 1984-1985. In 1992, he was assistant for the ceremonies of the XVIth Winter Olympic Games of Albertville and Savoie. His first piece, entitled nom donné par l'auteur (1994), led to a series of intensely personal dances: Jérôme Bel (1995), Shirtology (1997), and The Last Performance (1998), which defines an ontology of performance. His work, The Show Must Go On (2001), received a Bessie Award in 2005.

Funded in part by FUSED: French US Exchange in Dance, a program of the National Dance Project/New England Foundation for the Arts and Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York with lead funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the French American Cultural Exchange and the Florence Gould Foundation.

www.jeromebel.fr

The generous simplicity of Pichet Klunchun, his capacity to dissect his technique, without reducing it but not without humor, are absolutely brilliant. This choreographic experience and explanation reveals, most innocently, the key to a thousand-year-old art. Le Monde