When cultures mingle

Over the past decades, I’ve been to many international arts festival in Europe, Asia and Australia but have never encountered one like Toki International Arts Festival held in Nanjing last month. Instead of focusing on international works or showing what the world of dance and theatre is up to at the moment, this unique festival was devoted to interaction between local and international artists.
Part of the “Toki Experimental Project – Preservation and Development of the Traditional Performing Arts”, which also includes ongoing academic research projects, the Toki Festival is the brainchild of Danny Yung and Makoto Sato. Yung is Hong Kong’s most revered stage director and experimental art pioneer and artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron while Sato, his Tokyo counterpart, is the first artistic director of the Setagaya Public Theatre and currently the artistic director of Za-Koenji. The project stems from the pair’s collaboration for Japan’s pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 in which they experimented with Kunqu, or Kun opera, and Noh.
Last month in Nanjing, the hub of Kunqu, the project expanded significantly as artists and scholars, who also gave lectures and workshops to local students, from Bangkok, Singapore and Denpasar also participated.
At the Jiangnan and Lanyuan Theatres, both Kunqu venues, the audience witnessed, in the first part, five works in which Kunqu artists worked with foreign artists. Each lasted about 20 minutes and featured only one table and two chairs.
In one piece, Balinese classical dance master I Wayan Dibia – seen in Bangkok last year at “Our Roots Right Now” festival – collaborated with Liu Xiaoyun, Yangyang and Zhao Yutao in “King and Mask” and the audience saw how the Chinese artists could master the use of masks. In another, Noh master Kanji Shimizu and Kun opera artist Xu Sijia reminded us in their “Station 2013” how Noh and Kunqu share similar roots
Manop Meejamrat, a dancer trained in both classical Thai dance and Western modern dance, worked with Sun Jing and their “Bridge” brought Thai sensibility marked by serenity and beauty to the stage.
The second part of the programme “Toki Letter #2: Contempt” had the nine Kunqu artists, through physical movements and spoken words, further discussing the idea of the preservation of traditional performing arts connecting to the “Toki” symbol.
After almost three hours with one intermission, both parts of the programme provided solid evidence of how traditional artists can further develop their work by simply stepping out of their limits, or comfort zones.
And just like the name of the project, these young Kunqu artists are like the toki, also known as the crested ibis, an endangered species of bird whose white wings turn pink when they fly towards the sun, except that they are migrating out of their safe zones and finding other possibilities for habitation. I only wish that the programme had boasted English surtitles and that post-show talks had been organised to hear the local audience’s opinion on these works, which are very different from the Kun opera performances they have watched at these same venues.
Reflecting on his Toki experience, Manop tells me that he got to know his Kunqu counterpart Sun Jing, who specialises in Hualian or “painted face” roles, a few months ago while giving lecture and workshops at the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture.
“His strong energy was the first thing that struck me and I felt right away that we would be a good match. As, following surgery on my knee, my works had been focusing more on slower movements, I was expecting to learn acrobatic movements from him. He’s very open-minded and learns very quickly.
“When I returned to Hong Kong again in November, we got to know each other better and continued to develop our work. I sensed that Yung wanted me to minimise the movements and retain only the core or the heart of classical Thai dance. That helped me return to basics and not worry too much about the finished product but rather focus on the collaborative path we were following and the obstacles along the way.”
Manop says he learned a lot by working with Yung. “While he has a clear structure of the work in mind, for example his format of one table and two chairs, he always welcomes his performers’ input and never sets himself at the centre of the work. Besides, the fact that we needed to wait for translation – Sun Jing was using his iPhone as his translator –made me more patient and those moments of silence and calmness brought me intelligence.
“This cultural exchange is not merely about teaching each other what we’re doing. For me, having noodles with Sun Jing was also part of our cultural exchange. I used the title ‘Bridge’ because it’s simple and makes sense – we can cross back and forth as long as we’re willing to do so.
“Kunqu is as rigid as our classical Thai dance and its masters are also as strict. Yung is right to give this young generation of Kunqu artists opportunity to connect to and learn from modern artists from other cultures so that they can develop their Kunqu performance.”
The Toki experience also gave Manop an idea. “We in Thailand should find more opportunities for traditional and modern artists to work together. For example, I can work with [Nora master] Thammanit Nikhomrat and Pichet Klunchun with [National Artist] Suphachai Jansuwan. Each of us can switch between the roles of director and performer in creating four different solo works and the process can be observed by younger artists,” he says.
The Toki International Arts Festival, which also travelled to Shanghai earlier this month, will be part of the cultural activities during the Youth Olympic Games 2014, which Nanjing will soon host.
Next year, Toki will be in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou and hopefully Bangkok, further proving that the toki may be endangered but it will never be extinct.

The writer’s trip was supported by the Toki International Arts Festival, Zuni Icosahedron and Southeast University.