Pichet Klunchun mixes the traditional with the contemporary in beautiful production at Lincoln Center Festival
Lincoln Center Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College
899 Tenth Ave. between 58th & 59th Sts.
Saturday, July 24, 8:00, and Sunday, July 25, 3:00
Tickets: $30-$50
www.lincolncenter.org
The Lincoln Center Festival ends today with the second and final performance of the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company’s gorgeous CHUI CHAI (“Transformation”). Nine dancers tell the Nang Loi story from the Ramayana, in which the demon king Thodsakarn attempts to stop the war with Rama by kidnapping his rival’s wife, Sita, and having demon maiden Benyakai turn into the famed beauty and fake her death. The first half of the show features masked dancers in glittering costumes with elaborate headdresses, moving slowly in the Khon style as an accompanying song relates the tale. At one point Thodsakarn is sitting atop his throne, the back of his outfit casting stars onto a screen behind him as if he is in control of the entire universe. (The screen is also used to project several photographs of old and new Thailand.) After a brief interlude in which, through street interviews, offstage voices discuss the legend of Sita and how it translates to modern society, a bare-chested Klunchun appears as Rama, dressed only in jeans, interacting with the costumed dancers, melding the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary, centered by a breathtaking duet that brings everything together. At first Klunchun moves in the traditional style, eliciting a different emotion from the costumed dancers moving in the same way, but as he incorporates more contemporary movements, the transformation takes over. CHUI CHAI is a dazzling, evocative production that is representative of the breadth and scope of Lincoln Center’s outstanding summer festival.