No. 60 is the culmination of two decades of movement language research by Pichet Klunchun. In his choreographic treatise, Klunchun dissects Thai traditional Khon dance, scrutinising the 59 rote-learned poses and movements of the Theppanom canon. Stripping the classical form of its face-mask and sequined costume, he generates six new principles to undergird the 700-year-old system. Immersive projections drape dancers in hand-drawn diagrams, presenting a radical study of bodily geometry revealing the shifting relativity between bodies; between dancer and tradition. Under this new movement philosophy, the young generation inheriting Khon movement have the agency to think and learn rationally, free from mysticism and ideological imposition.

No. 60 composes two choreographic studies that enact Pichet’s philosophy of relativity and fluidity. The first, a cool and contemporary disassembling of form through the logic of abstraction, and the second, a mimetic, affective exploration, closer to the expressive nature of Khon dance. Each study also reflexively breaks down the lexicon that constitutes its choreography, and lets us observe the rigour of an academic approach and the potential of structured improvisation for the contemporary trajectory of Khon dance.

As No. 60 unfixes the rigidity of classicism, it also embraces the sense and soul of the Thai legacy. A complex dialogue unfolds between tradition and innovation as they inhabit and circulate within the same continuum, no longer as binary opposites, to empower individual thought and motility in the times of autocracy.