Cross material and virtual worlds with up-and-coming choreographer Kornkarn Rungsawang in a performance that combines dance, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Mali Bucha: Dance Offering is inspired by the 400-year-old Thai ritual Rum-Kea-Bon, where dance is a negotiation tool between human and higher beings: the most charming dancer—hired as a messenger from the people to the spirits’ realm—is able to enhance the likelihood of one’s wish fulfilment. This vernacular practice, commonly taking place at street corners, has constantly evolved and adapted itself as a social and cultural practice in Thailand. Drawing from what is effectively a ‘people’s dance’ and a space of aspiration and spirituality, Kornkarn offers an immersive and participatory iteration of Rum Kea Bon, in which she acts as a choreographic interface between the material plane of the audience and the digital shrine.
Flowing as a current throughout Mali Bucha: Dance Offering is a belief system that concerns itself with duality: economics and ecology, image and sound, old and new, the mundane and the transcendent.