Pornpim, Our Bangkok Danseuse

It was a most remarkable performance recently at Bangkok’s Festival of Dance and Music:

The performance of the Zurich Ballet’s reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. With a leading danseuse from Bangkok on the stage.

BangkokDan had been flabbergasted. After Saturday’s show (with his wife) he went there again on Sunday (with his son).

The Zurich Ballet’s internationally acclaimed artistic director Heinz Spoerli, himself of Basel, had created a visual and sensual orgasm-from-afar. Unforgettable.

With the exception of the leading danseuse there was not one other Swiss on the stage. But who cares. We Neobangkokians enjoyed with no uncertain satisfaction the presence of Pornpim “Noon” Karchai in the spot light: A 24-year-old Thai dancer who has “The world at her feet”, as The Nation titled.

Competition is hard up there, many lives and dreams fail miserably when you go for broke by trying to become a famous danseuse. Pornpim – second from left – made it.

She learned her craft at Melbourne’s prestigious Australian Ballet School. After two seasons at Zurich’s Junior Ballet she joined the Zurich Ballet under a “Group with Solo” contract.

But as ballet is pure beauty in the eye of the beholder, for Pornpim and co-dancers it’s “quite tough”, says the Bangkok danseuse.

And Spoerli has a reputation for drilling his boys and girls hard. Himself of not the most agile physique, he uses the young bodies from all over the world for classical, neoclassical and contemporary dances in most amazing, hardly ever seen adaptations.

“If you want to be chosen by Spoerli,” says Pornpim, “you have to work really hard to make yourself stand out.”

Artistic director Spoerli on the other hand says about the Thai girl, who looks after the performance dressed in her jeans and shirt like a very young, polite teenager: “Pornpim is very special. She’s a very beautiful girl with some fine qualities for dance. She’s easy to work with – it’s very easy to cast her in different ballets as she’s been trained in many different styles.”

But no pain no gain.

“In the morning,” Pornpim told the Nation, “we have an hour-and-fifteen-minute ballet class and a two-hour rehearsal. After a break we have three more hours of ballet class in the evening. It goes on like this everyday except on performance days, when we have to get ready instead of doing the evening class.”

And each choreographer she has to work with poses new challenges. “It’s hard to dance when you don’t know whether they want you dance softly or push yourself to your limits.”

Pornpim had to live abroad to fulfill her calling of becoming a ballet pro.

As ballet is a newer thing in Bangkok. Which is most surprising. As you can have lived all your life on the moon and immediately see that Thai girls have that certain physique “born-to-ballet”.

BangkokDan nearly every day passes a ballet school – when he doesn’t miss his Aikido class. The tiptoeing girls entering and exiting the school are of the finest nature can create.

Pornpim remains a Bangkokian rarity. But then again: “As far as I know, people in Thailand are getting more interested in ballet. There seems to be more and more ballet students and the parents are more supportive. However, the main probleme here in Bangkok is the lack of professional companies and diversity. What we’ve done here mainly is to copy the classical choreography from DVDs. We need more input.”

One day, says the young migrating bird, she’d like to stage her own production.

For young Thai ballet dancers who want to go professional, she has one advise: “Dancing is really hard work.”

What may be the reason that in a country overwhelmed with physiques predestined for ballet you can count the pros with one hand.

It’s not only a cultural thingy. And yes, it is not cheap.

If it wouldn’t be that “really hard work”, I fear, more than a few talented bar girls could have made it.




Sphere: Related Content

Related posts on absolutelyBangkok.com:

  1. Navigating The Bangkok Night
  2. Bangkok Poetization
  3. Bangkok Sirens: Sonia Couling
  4. Chris Coles’ Bangkok Vanilla Sky
  5. Sorta Henry Miller? Lawrence Osborne’s Vulgar-Prose “Bangkok Days”

October 23, 2007 | Filed Under Culture & Arts 

Comments

Leave a Reply