If New Yorkers were scrabbling for tickets to see Pichet Klunchun's latest show, surely it will get a warm welcome back
Bangkok and Hua Hin audiences will soon be watching Pichet Klunchun's "Chui Chai", the dance spectacular that sold out three performances at last month's Lincoln Centre Festival in New York.
A Thai who runs a restaurant in the Big Apple says he declined to sell his tickets despite being offered triple the price he paid.
And the New York Times critic was thrilled at "the range of movement [which] includes some crashing falls to the floor and suggestive sways of the pelvis".
Pichet says he worked on the show, "on and off, since 2001", when the Asian Cultural Council got him a residency at the University of California LA.
The director of its Centre of Intercultural Performance, Judy Mitoma, "came up with the idea and asked me to create a solo work explaining who I am", he says.
"When I came back to Thailand the work developed further. In 2003 we used 22 dancers. Chui chai means 'transformation', so it was evident that we needed two groups of dancers, one trained traditionally and the other contemporary."
In 2008 there were only seven dancers for the New York City Centre's Fall for Dance festival, and the choreography was radically different.
"I guess I'm getting older," Pichet jests, "so instead of youthful energy I opt for calmness, subtlety and purity.
"Although the choreography has changed over the years, the main theme remains intact - that change brings suffering in our life.
"I'm looking at a simple story," he says. "Many dancers trained in classical dance can't make a decent living. They have to change, but when they do, it's not 'them' anymore, and that's painful."
Pichet says he came to realise that the show was so abstract that there was "very little the audience could grasp, so I added information about how Thai society has changed since the Ayutthaya period, with the Nang Loi episode of the Ramakien as the background story."
"At the start," wrote Alastair Macauley of the New York Times, "we see the gorgeous costumes, the masks, the pagoda-like headdresses and the slow-motion, elaborate gestures of Thai classical dance, as the company plunges into a tale from the epic Ramayana about demons, kidnapping and counterfeiting a human being.
"By the end, two of the dancers are in blue jeans (and one in denim hot pants).
"A Western eye is likely to feast most on the features of traditional Thai classical dance, since it's seldom seen here," Macauley observed. "The use of the hands and feet is particularly fascinating. The fingers, all articulated individually, are frequently arched back at angles unknown in most other dance forms.
"The feet are all planted carefully in slow-motion movements. (Mr Klunchun's toes arch upward with something of the elaboration of his fellow dancers' fingers.) And the demon Thodsakarn, while keeping one leg bent sideways, sometimes hops powerfully on the spot as if stamping sculpturally."
But for the Times critic, in the end, even these "pleasures" were "monotonously developed".
Let's see if Thais and expatriates who are familiar with the culture will view it differently. Thanks to Patravadi Mejudhon, who - unlike many other producers who believe we won't buy tickets to see Pichet's work here - we can watch a show about Thailand that American audiences have already seen.
TICKETS ARE EVAPORATING
See "Chui Chai" at the Patravadi Theatre tomorrow and Sunday (Saturday is sold out) and on August 14 and 15.
The show moves to the Vic Hua Hin every Saturday from September 11 to 25.
Tickets cost Bt500 to Bt1,000 (half price for students) at Total Reservation.
Find out more at www.PKLifeWork.com and www.PatravadiTheatre.com.