Careful Whispers

For a dance and performance form that’s been staged in Thailand for the best part of two decades and even has an annual festival devoted to it, butoh’s lack of popularity among dance and theatre goers is staggering. Some argue that this is because it doesn’t quite fit right in with our sanook culture while others are of the opinion that that many local self-proclaimed butoh artists can’t pull off the same level of performance as their foreign counterparts. And indeed many dance and theatre artists who have taken butoh workshops adapt its techniques to fit their works rather than performing the genre in its true form. And so butoh performances here in Thailand are scarce. When they are staged, it is at very small venues for very a limited audience.
Bo Kittiphon is one of very few Thai artists to have seriously studied and performed butoh over the years. Her latest work “Whispers of the Shadow of a Quivering Leaf”, seen at the Pridi Banomyong Institute earlier this month, proved that she should continue on this path – notwithstanding the minimal attention from the media and theatre-goers.
The performance started with low-key lighting and Bo moving behind the off-white fabrics. For a while, we could only see the shadows of her limbs and long hair moving slowly but powerfully. Later, when she moved a little downstage and, in one part, closer to the studio’s window unobstructed by any curtain, the lighting almost fully exposed her. Unlike many butoh performances seen in Bangkok, Bo wore neither white face and body make-up nor a pure white costume, and her physical movements made up for the lack of facial expression. Perhaps she was reminding us that wearing white on the face and body does not a butoh artist make.
“Whispers” finished on a less-sombre tone, with her movements becoming less slow towards the end, signifying perhaps that amidst all the suffering in life is hope, no matter how slight. Overall, the performance was well complemented by the soundscape, which didn’t draw too much attention to itself but always supported her movements.
At the beginning of the performance when the stage was still dark, I glanced out of the windows and noticed the shadows of branches moving in the wind against a street lamp. Whether this was the lighting designer’s intention – and he had no control over the summer evening breeze of course – the effect was astounding. It made me think of how nature controls our lives, no matter how hard we try to fight against it.
Before watching “Whispers”, I visited, with a great deal of curiosity and enthusiasm, the adjacent studio where photographs and videos of Bo’s previous works were on display in the exhibition “Pathways and Memories”. I ended up spending less than a few minutes there. I had planned to take in the visual artefacts of her life, as a person and as a artist, and then link them to her “Whispers”, but the exhibits were arranged without any clear curatorial direction. The only link I made was that the off-white fabric sheets to which the photographs were attached were the same as those hung from the dance venue’s ceiling! And so instead of thinking of Bo’s life while watching her performance, I was recollecting mine, which has also been filled with ups and downs, albeit the latter more than the former.
Despite the potential for linking the visual images in one room to the physical movements in the other, it seems that the bridge between contemporary visual arts and performing arts in this country, unlike in many other countries around the world, still awaits a reliable construction worker.
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