Floating through life

Last May, dancer and choreographer Vidura Amranand gave us “Improper Fractions”, a duet with Thanapol Virulhakul that was a subtle yet effective commentary on fragments in Thai society caused by her politics. A few months later, Vidura was at ImPulTanz: Vienna International Dance Festival, with study grants from danceWEB and our Culture Ministry.
She says those five weeks in Vienna inspired her to create this new work. They gave her time to “float” – to feel, rather than to think. Before her residency in the Austrian capital, she adds, she tended to use her head more than her heart.
“When I got back to Bangkok, I started ‘The Floating Project’ to recreate that status through the movements I learned there, to learn to direct the self and to give a chance to the performers to temporarily be without any concepts, characters or questions in their heads, and just to absorb feelings without having to analyse.
“I also want to work with representation – I don’t want to create any symbol or metaphor. This set of movements doesn’t represent anything – it is what it is.”
However, she notes, “I may be implying that I want the audiences to feel what I felt in Vienna. They probably won’t experience the joy or sadness I felt, but I encourage them to release the analytical part of the brain and they might see how space before them is shifting from one state to another—from the present time to a higher, more sensitive existence, to a closed space, and back to the present/open space.”
Vidura calls it “a contemporary dance”, but “when people come to see it, they may say it’s not dance [in the strict and conventional sense of the term] at all. It’s not dancey.
“You can call it ‘contemporary performance’ but I want to open people’s mind about what dance can be [and stick to ‘contemporary dance’ label for this work].”
Vidura says that her role in this piece is a director, rather than a choreographer: “I don’t set specific movements, and so it’s dance-making, rather than choreography.”
In her earlier works, she’s both dancing and choreographing, but she’s not dancing in “The Floating Project”.
“I wanted to see what I was doing – it’s easier for me to direct [and not perform].”
Vidura picked four veteran performers with dance and theatre backgrounds – Sumontha Suanpholrat, Nana Dakin, Thanapol Virulhakul and Bo Kittipon.
“It’s an improvisational piece with a structure and the dancers have some freedom in their movement.”
She speaks highly of them. “They are incredibly brave as they are open and willing to open themselves so much that they sometimes create a private space onstage. At these times, the stage is no longer a stage, but their own personal spaces. No one is embodying a character or a concept in this piece, the performers are quite revealing of their true selves. It is not in the nature of a couple of the performers to be so open in revealing their ‘naked’ selves, but in this piece, they are willing to do that when they encounter upon emotionally difficult moments. This group of performers is amazing [to begin with] anyway, but I believe their performance in ‘The Floating Project’ further asserts how incredible they are as performers and human beings.”
As for her previous works, she notes about the audience’s reactions, “People who don’t see shows [regularly] wanted to understand what we’re doing. For ‘The Floating Project’, I want to say ‘It’s not a performance for you to understand. In arts and life in general, sometimes you just have to see it, absorb it and just feel it. And somehow the thought will start to organise itself.’ Of course I can’t stop people from analysing because that’s how our brains work, but I want to ask them to relax more. When we’re too technical, we lose the flow.”
Vidura says the piece has a couple of props – thread and water. “They don’t symbolize anything – they’re just thread and water – but I’m sure people will put meaning to them.”
“The Floating Project” was previously scheduled for December and has been postponed until now – well, you know the reason.
     

TREAD WATER
“The Floating Project” runs from Thursday to Sunda at 7:30pm in the B-Floor Room at the Pridi Banomyong Institute on Soi Thong Lor.
Tickets are Bt 350. Calling (089) 155 2329 or e-mail [email protected].