Jérôme Bel is a French chore­o­g­ra­pher well known as a provocateur of the con­tem­po­rary form. He lives in Paris and works through­out Europe. Pichet Klunchun is a Thai clas­si­cal dance artist and one of the best known Khon (Thai clas­si­cal male dance) mas­ters in Thai­land. Jérôme Bel had only a vague idea of what tra­di­tional Thai dance was and Pichet Klunchun was not at all famil­iar with Bel’s work when the two came together in Bangkok to col­lab­o­rate. 

Pichet Klunchun and Myself is the result of that col­lab­o­ra­tion, a dance dia­logue between these two very dif­fer­ent artists about their respec­tive chore­o­graphic prac­tices. On stage the two dancers recon­struct a kind of the­atri­cal report of their expe­ri­ence of work­ing together. Through­out the piece they alter­nate between asking ques­tions of one another and offer­ing each other and the audi­ence short dance demonstrations.

The obvi­ous cul­tural divide between Pichet Klunchun and Jérôme Bel and the pre­sen­ta­tion of their very dif­fer­ent artis­tic prac­tices is an inten­tional ele­ment of Pichet Klunchun and Myself. The suc­cess of this most orig­i­nal dance doc­u­men­tary per­for­mance is that it brings together two artists who, although worlds apart in so many ways, share humour, sen­si­bil­ity and a great open-​mindedness.

“The cir­cum­stances of our meet­ing deter­mined the nature and the form of the result we obtained. The jet lag, the fas­ci­na­tion that the city of Bangkok and its inhab­i­tants exerted on me, the mon­strous traf­fic jams which did not permit to do all the rehearsals, the con­text of the Bangkok Fringe Fes­ti­val where the piece had to be pre­miered, led us to present to the audi­ence a kind of the­atri­cal report of our expe­ri­ence.

We hap­pened to pro­duce a kind of the­atri­cal and chore­o­graphic doc­u­men­tary on our real sit­u­a­tion. The piece puts two artists face to face who know noth­ing about each other, who have very dif­fer­ent aes­thet­i­cal prac­tices and who both try to know more about the other, and above all about their respec­tive artis­tic prac­tices, despite the abyssal cul­tural gap divid­ing them.

Some very prob­lem­atic notions such as the euro-​centrism, the inter-​culturalism, or the cul­tural glob­al­iza­tion, are at stake all along the piece. These notions so del­i­cate to dis­cuss can’t be left apart.

The his­tor­i­cal moment doesn’t allow to skip these stakes over.”

Jérôme Bel, Seoul, June 1st 2005