Re-writing, Re-moving, Re-examining: Pichet Klunchun's 'No.60'
- Lizzy Tan
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Pichet Klunchun's No. 60 is a dance lesson that doubles as a manifesto. Its central provocation: 'contemporary dance' is defined not by rejecting or deconstructing a particular classical tradition, but by the act of structural interrogation itself. Klunchun conducts a forensic analysis of the Theppanom canon, the foundational vocabulary of Thai classical dance. He has spent two decades studying its fifty-nine poses and movements, which all Thai classical dancers acquire through rigorous repetition. No. 60 proposes that ‘contemporary dance’ can emerge from any classical form – if someone is willing to examine the dance’s own internal logic.
The Place’s theatre is set with a shimmering, silver sequin canopy. Projections flicker across the back wall: sepia photographs of dancers in stop-motion succession. Through a hole in the canopy, a circle appears on the stage floor – almost Vitruvian in its markings and alluding to Klunchun's analytical diagrams, which feature throughout the work. Two dancers (Klunchun and Kornkarn 'Gade' Rungsawang) enter in minimalist teal tops and leggings, diametrically positioned across the circle. They ritually press their palms to the floor, then settle into the centre.
Text appears: ‘6 Elements Realizing No. 60.’ These elements – energy, circle and curve, synchronic limbs, axis points, external body space, and shifting relation – are demonstrated against a backdrop of directional diagrams and annotations. The format is pedagogical, a lecture-demonstration that treats the fifty-nine core poses like a vocabulary. Klunchun is teaching us the underlying grammar, the syntactic rules that allow new 'sentences' to be formed. When Klunchun and Rungsawang flip through the positions of Mae Bot Yae, demonstrating poses like No. 31 ('drumming') or increasingly illustrative gestures ('dragon playing in water'), they're not only educating the audience on the dance, but setting up a question: What else can fit in its vocabulary?
Klunchun and Rungsawang answer through practice. Hands writhe like twin snakes faster, then slower. Angled torsos and joints are shifted on their axes to reveal new poses that meet the form's grammar. Through these explorations, Klunchun and Rungsawang demonstrate that structural principles can function as reference points across traditions, independent of the narratives each pose originally carried.
Toward the end, the didactic tone fractures into something more abstract. The canopy shudders and drops to a meter above the stage – only the dancers' legs remain visible beneath the hanging fabric. The ambient electronic music intensifies as music and sound designer Zai Tang runs frantically from stage right to left, shouting into a bleating megaphone. Klunchun drops to the floor, convulsing. Rungsawang whirls upstage and downstage, rippling the canopy so its sequins cast scattered starlight across the ceiling. She too collapses. A floor-level strobe flashes, and the two bodies jerk in its white light like fried machines. The piece ends as it began: projections slip away to focus our attention on a lone silhouette moving through poses – fluent in the dance’s history yet transforming its future, a reminder that 'contemporary' is always a moving target.
No. 60 proves that ‘contemporary dance’ emerges from any rigorous interrogation of classical form, wherever that form originates.
Credits
Artistic Director and Choreographer: Pichet Klunchun
Dancers: Kornkarn Rungsawang and Pichet Klunchun
CG Artist: Jaturakorn Pinpech
Music and Sound Designer: Zai Tang
Dramaturge: Tang Fu Kuen
Set Concept and Lighting Design: Ray Tseng
Production and Stage Manager: Cindy Yeong
Producer: Sojirat Singholka / PKDC
Company Manager: Kanpong Thaweesuk / PKDC
International Distribution: Stéphane Noël / Materialise
