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.

„Two men enter the stage and sit on plain office chairs. One opens a laptop and begins to question the other. That was essentially how ’Pichet Klunchun and myself’ began, two years ago, when Jérôme Bel was invited to a dance festival in Bangkok and proposed a piece with a traditional Thai dancer.

Neither Mr. Bel, who might best be described as a French dance metaphysician, nor Mr. Klunchun, a traditional Thai and contemporary dancer and choreographer, knew much about the other’s work or culture. The two talk a lot and dance a little for each other in the funny, touching and provocative ’Pichet Klunchun and myself’ part of Performa 07, the citywide festival whose focus this year is on live performance.

The piece says a great deal about the subtleties of skilled performing and the nature of dance, and also about dance history, particularly the New York postmodernist movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Mr. Bel has long been interested in that era and what it had to say about art and artifice. But he approaches that often grim terrain with a blessed dash of irreverent humor.

His explanation of why disappointed audiences he has had his share of rebellious ones should never get their money back is one of the highlights of the evening. Another is Mr. Klunchun’s unexpected, poignantly tender response to Mr. Bel’s lip-syncing dance-along to the pop song ’Killing Me Softly.’

The fascination of the must-see ’Pichet Klunchun and myself’ should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Bel’s career as an endearingly rumpled, brilliant enfant terrible and master of wry, sly minimalism. But he has found his perfect complement in Mr. Klunchun, a practitioner of khon, a form of classical Thai masked dance, who wanders serenely with Mr. Bel through a series of cultural collisions until the gentle cataclysm that suddenly and amusingly ends the conversation.”  - (The New York Times)

Jerome Bel lives in Paris, he works worldwide. His first piece, nom donné par l'auteur (1994), is a choreography of objects. The second one, Jerome Bel (1995), is based on the total nudity of the performers. The third one, Shirtology (1997), presents an actor wearing many T-shirts.

The last performance (1998), in quoting several times a solo by the choreographer Susanne Linke, and also Hamlet or André Agassi, tries to define an ontology of the performance. The piece Xavier Le Roy (2000) was claimed by Jérôme Bel as his own, but was actually choreographed by the choreographer Xavier Le Roy. The show must go on (2001) brings toghether a cast of twenty performers, nineteen pop songs and one DJ.

In 2004, he was invited to produce a piece for the Paris Opera ballet : Veronique Doisneau (2004), on the work of the dancer Véronique Doisneau, from the ballet corps of that company. Isabel Torres (2005) for the ballet of the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro is the Brazilian version of the production for the Paris Opera.

Pichet Klunchun and myself (2005) was created in Bangkok with the Thai traditional dancer Pichet Klunchun. In 2009, he produces Lutz Förster (2009) who performed with Pina Bausch, the José Limon Dance Company and Bob Wilson, and Cédric Andrieux (2009) dancer in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and then at the Lyon Opera Ballet. In 2010, he creates with Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker 3Abschied based on The song of the Earth by Gustav Malher.

Jérôme Bel received a Bessie Award for the performances of The show must go on in New York in 2005. In 2008 Jerome Bel and Pichet Klunchun received the Routes Princess Margriet Award for Cultural Diversity (European Cultural Foundation).

Interview about the performance in English

(Photo credit: © association R.B.)

Source: Trafó - House of Contemporary Arts
Address: 1094 Budapest, Liliom utca 41.
Ticket office: (+36-1) 215 1600
(4-8 pm every day, 4-10 pm on performance days)