Sleight of hand, fleer of foot

Bangkok’s 14th International Festival of Dance and Music scored high with Thai audiences last week, drawing almost capacity crowds to the Thailand Cultural Centre for shows on Tuesday and Wednesday night by Swiss illusionist Peter Marvey.
Building slowly from sleight-of-hand tricks to his signature flying moves that included the razzmatazz climax, and his latest creation, “Diamond Illusion”, Marvey’s “Magic Mania” was a fun show and most audience members had a good time. It was also a reminder of how difficult it has become for illusionists to make a good living now that TV and YouTube clips reveal their secrets. One young audience member near me was heard to boast in an unreasonably loud voice, “I know how he could do that” quite a few times. And that reminded me of David Copperfield’s shows at Impact Arena many years ago. I recall saying, albeit to myself, “Surely he must have had either a stunt double or a twin to be able to pull this trick off.”
Video clips of Marvey’s stunning tricks in Japan – when he made people fly – and Switzerland – when he made a stagecoach fly – were shown. They were good build-ups to his climax but they also showed what we didn’t get to see live here – and besides, they’re video clips, not live performance. Another problem is that most of us are not going to travel to Zurich to see how he magically makes the stagecoach fly. Mr Harvey, please make a tuk-tuk fly for us here.
Judging from his tour schedule mostly in Switzerland, Marvey, though, seems to be doing well – he was also in Bangkok last November performing for free at Parc Paragon. And that leads to another question why “a magic show”, ticketed, was included in this year’s line-up, for the first time in the 14 years of the festival.
The tone shifted two days later on Friday when Limon Dance Company, founded by American choreographer Jose Limon, made its long overdue Bangkok debut, thanks to the US Embassy. Unlike for the magic show, finding a parking space at the Thailand Cultural Centre was very easy, which is always the case when modern dance or contemporary dance is on stage.
The opening group piece “There Is a Time”, set to the Pulitzer Prize-winning score by Norman Dello Joio, gave a good introduction to Limon as well as his current company members. The solo dance “Chaconne”, set to Bach’s music that succeeded it after a 20-minute interval, provided a good contrast and Raphal Boumaela commanded the movement and the stage. After a brief pause, the temperature dipped as we were treated by a visually and dramatically mundane reinterpretation of “Othello” in “The Moor’s Pavane”.
At the second interval, I heard a VIP in the audience say, “I have to call it an evening: this is not my cup of tea”. She missed the best part of the evening. “Come with Me” is a new work, world premiered earlier this year, by Brazilian choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras, who’s worked with Grupo Corpo, one of my favourite dance companies (I’m still waiting for their Bangkok debut). Filled with verve and playfulness and not withstanding some repetition, it’s a fine blend of jazz and classical dance techniques and Latin tone.
The major setback was the balancing of the programme – the first three pieces in this quadruple bill were by the late Lim