This place we call 'Home'

Sunon Wachirawarakarn, a key member of Pichet Klunchun Dance Company, has returned home with “Home”, his first full-length solo dance production.
And no, the theme of the show, which opens on Thursday in Thonburi, is not homesickness.
Sunon spent six months in the US, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cultural Council. He was never homesick, he says. “Thanks to Skype I was able to talk to my wife and my kid almost every day!
“The generous grant enabled me to join many dance master classes at the American Dance Festival, the largest in North America, and a smaller one called the Bates Festival.
“They expanded my horizons in terms of how to teach modern and contemporary dance, especially the different ways to prepare the body before teaching a given style.”
 Sunon says he was out almost every evening in New York seeing dance performances. He was struck by how cosmopolitan the city is.
“I wondered where all those people’s home countries were, why they now lived in New York, and whether it was only their temporary home, a place to earn some money before they returned home.
“And of course I thought about myself and what exactly home meant to me. That’s the idea behind my dance project.”
While classically trained in khon, Sunon originally studied Western theatre with the Moradok Mai Company.
Pichet Klunchun and other members of his troupe helped Sunon fine-tune his solo show with comments. “They were rehearsing another piece in the same compound and we set a date and time when they could come and watch my piece.”
But don’t expect to see world-famous Silpathorn Award laureate Pichet onstage in “Home”. The masters rarely get so involved with a protege’s work.
“It’s been a personal challenge for me,” Sunon says. “I’m used to following a choreographer’s instructions, and now here I was choreographing the whole piece myself. It certainly involved much more brain exercise!
“It was also pressure. The company has a certain standard I have to make sure I live up to, and the same with people’s expectations. But I took it as positive pressure because it made me work as hard as I could.”
Sunon says the show won’t have “the same flavour” as Pichet’s work. “It’s like the same restaurant, but Pichet and I are two different chefs.”

Feels right

See “Home” this Thursday through Sunday and again from March 22 to 25 at the 40-seat Chang Theatre on Soi Pracha-uthit 59 in Thung Khru, Thonburi.
Tickets cost Bt500 at (080) 924 0002.
Find out more at www.PKLifeCompany.com.