In my paper, I would like to look at dance as an art form within the context of intercultural encounters. Discourses on dance often betray an underlying assumption that dance is universal and can be understood by anyone, everywhere – dance as a global player! But even just a cursory glance at the history and the diversity of forms in different cultures reveals that dance performs culturally specific, regional, and local conceptions of the body, of interaction, and of rhythmic staging. On the one hand, dance performances invite (kinesthetic) identification and an inclusive participation; on the other, they can also induce experiences of difference, exclusion, or transgression. What experience, what specific knowledge is embodied in dance, dance techniques, and choreographic performances? To what extent does this describe a “knowledge of the human being” that can be portrayed only performatively – through body movements, interactions, and space-time-models?

My focus in this paper is to discuss intercultural encounters of dance performances against the backdrop of the dominant theoretical concepts in cultural studies today: questions of cultural transfer, of “third space” ¹, of “contact zones” ² and of “interweaving performance cultures”³. The global exchange of dance performances revolves around such categories and terms as “traditional,” “experimental,” “classical,” and “contemporary.” These categories possess an aesthetic, cultural, and economic potency. And yet, it has become increasingly clear that these categories are hollowed out, even while they still constitute the framework for producing, looking at, and evaluating dance events. I would also like to pose the question, then, whether it isn’t high time for a critical rethinking of these categories and whether, as the following example might illustrate, dance performances don’t themselves play an active part in deconstructing fixed categories – that is to say, in the way in which dance communicates.

Before turning to an example from dance, I would like to put into perspective the use of a term that allows us to formulate questions concerning encounters between cultures in a way that corresponds to the conditions and problems of our current, globalized world. The term I am referring to is that of interweaving. Allow me to take a moment at this point to draw on my own discipline, theatre and dance studies, in mentioning the International Research Centre on the “Interweaving of Performance Cultures” that was established in Berlin two years ago.

The basic idea of this research centre is to explore the ways in which theatrical cultures were or are interwoven either from an historical perspective or in light of today’s globalization: the international composition of ensembles serves as an example here, as does the collaboration between artists from different cultures, or the exchange and circulation of productions at international festivals. Such instances of interweaving raise the question of the extent to which cultural identity, e.g. traditional forms of theatrical presentation or body concepts in dance, is revealed or interferes in the processes of interweaving, and whether it has a stabilizing or destabilizing effect. The hypothesis of the project is that processes of interweaving do not create homogenization (in the sense of theories of globalization or hybridization), but they create increased diversification. The term interweaving, then, describes a complex kind of interaction⁴ that permits all sorts of new differences, indeed produces them and makes them visible.

Seen in this way, theatre, performance and dance could serve as models for the general political and social dimensions of encounters between cultures. Processes of exchange between cultures exist and have long existed on many levels, permanent and asynchronous, so that it seems only appropriate to consider the different courses pursued by modernization and traditionalism (in the fields of religion, society, art and politics) as a dense fabric woven from these encounters. Theatre provides a stage for actors and spectators and, in this public situation, is able to address social phenomena, criticize, change, stylize, or also negate them.

How does this manifest itself? What do we do with dissonance? And what influence do technology and media transfers have on social and aesthetic traditions and values?

Let me explain this with the help of an example from the theatre. I would like to stress, however, that the questions it raises are, in fact, relevant not only to art and the theatre, but also to academic inquiry within and beyond the humanities. The example I would like to present here, and which I assume is familiar to some of you, is a dialogue in and about dance, namely the conversation between the Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun, trained in classical Khon dance, and the French choreographer and performer Jérôme Bel. The onstage dialogue continues what began in 2004, when the two met in Bangkok on the occasion of a guest performance: a conversation about their work as dancers from two different cultures.

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In the performance, the stage is empty except for two chairs on which Klunchun and Bel sit down facing each other. Each interrogates the other in this ninety-minute lecture/demonstration⁵ – first the Frenchman the Thai, then vice versa. At first glance the setting is reminiscent of a TV chat show – in the casual manner in which the questions and answers go back and forth. Who are you? Where are you from? Why did you become a dancer? Yet the differences between this and the commonplace format of the chat show (which they both allude to and play with) soon become evident in the intelligent and carefully formulated questions, and in the way they show their art. Each of the two parties to the dialogue demonstrates and comments on the fundamentals of their art: Pichet Klunchun does so by talking about the history of Khon dance, showing the principles of its practice, and demonstrating its basic characters, the man, the woman, the demon, and the monkey, making the differences in balletic structure manifest. Jérôme Bel does this by explaining the ideas behind his performances, which are dedicated to the concept of dance, while also demonstrating parts of individual pieces. One of the most beautiful scenes is when Klunchun shows Bel a short sequence of movements, Bel imitates them, and both men dance the role of the woman in Khon dance in a physical dialogue. In this dialogue made up of words and gestures, difference assumes a visible form both physically – in the movement of the dance – and in the revelation of cultural influences.

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We are not concerned here with the question of whether a very well trained Western dancer can or cannot learn the highly complicated movements of the hands, the subtle turns of the body, and the typical ground contact of the feet; or how the mimesis, the bodily transfer of dance techniques, is part of local and global performance. The problem runs deeper, negotiating attitudes towards expertise and dedication shown by the dance student in undergoing long years of practice. This mental attitude, the unshakeable discipline, the relationship to the master as model and mentor who prescribes every movement and controls it together with the learner, is pivotal to the art of the Khon dance with its highly stylized representations of the body. A few years later, Pichet Klunchun developed a solo performance entitled I Am a Demon,⁶ in which he portrays how he became a Khon dancer. It is also a tribute to his teacher and master with whom he studied for 16 years.

Jérôme Bel is a different case. He explicitly rejects the virtuosity of the classical, the balletic or modern Western dance. In his concept of art he systematically refuses (despite having trained as a dancer) to meet the expectation of his audience, which associates a dance performance with the presentation of beautiful bodies and world-class performances in the art of motion. Bel explains that this reduces dance performances to consumer goods. This is an attitude of expectation that he does not want to indulge – what he wants is for the audience to pay attention to its own attitude of expectation (in rejecting the traditional, in shifting the focus of desire…which Bel directs towards a void). This places Bel in the tradition of Western performance and minimal and conceptual art, which probably began with John Cage’s famous piece, 4’33”, in which the audience expects to hear the announced piano concerto but is instead confronted with the pianist simply sitting at his instrument without playing a single note.⁷ At this point it already becomes very clear that this dialogue between the two dancers from different dance cultures again and again addresses the relationship of tradition and “traditional,” classical dance and innovation or experimental, conceptual dance. The American dance scholar Susan L. Foster critically notes that the differentiation between traditional and experimental “reaffirms and reinvigorates hierarchies of civilisation implemented in Europe’s colonisation of the world,”⁸ and that these concepts thus are gendered. She states that “tradition is aligned with the feminine, experimentation with the masculine.”⁹ This turns Pichet Klunchun into a figure of otherness, “perplexing and unknowable, for persisting in a classical tradition.”¹⁰ The critique raises important questions, which appear throughout the conversation. However, the course of the performance demonstrates that Pichet Klunchun is not “in a distinctly inferior position,”¹¹ as Susan Foster claims. After all, this is also a question of how the audience perceives it. In this performance the performers address each other, but at the same time, they are also always addressing the audience. The spectators become witnesses and observers. Wouldn’t it be possible for a spectator to put forth an interpretation to the contrary, in which Jérôme Bel appears on stage as a ‘typical Westerner,’ sloppily dressed and with a relaxed posture – in one word, ‘feminized.’ By comparison, Pichet Klunchun, even if he is barefoot and dressed in a t-shirt, presents a ‘strong’ and ‘composed’ figure of concentration and integrity. Thus, clear ascriptions are twisted and shifted in the perception of this performance that negotiates cliches of east-west, of tradition-experimentation, and of male-female.

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Even this short excerpt shows that the dialogue takes place on several intersecting levels: the discursive level of verbal communication; the physical level of active demonstration; an unconscious, atmospheric level between the two actors (an atmosphere which embraces performer and audience), and, finally, the level of cultural and artistic codes and their traditions.

In this conversation, in which the gesture of showing and self-showing assumes significance for the spectator, two aspects are noteworthy and often stressed in reviews: the first is the mutual respect that reveals itself in the manner of questioning. According to one reviewer, the “show and tell” format highlights, with humour and interest, “the difference between two cultures, between Western and Eastern ways of thinking” and also touches on “the explosive issue of globalization”.¹² The other aspect of the conversation is just as important: “It is a beautiful meeting,” writes one reviewer about a performance in Lisbon, Portugal, “there isn’t a sign of interpretation, it all looks fresh and honest, nearly genuine.”¹³ It is, of course, clear that we are not dealing with a spontaneous, improvised chat but a rehearsed conversation-performance (which still assumes a different form in each performance). The pretense of the “first encounter” is not a deliberate deception or theatrical illusion but – in an almost Brechtian sense – an indication and demonstration of that primeval scene that stands for the first encounter between members of mutually alien cultures: the “first contact” scene, which goes hand in hand with wonder (to use Stephan Greenblatt’s word) as featured and handed down in the reports, tales, and myths of explorers.¹⁴

At the same time the allusion to these “first encounter scenes” makes clear – with the resources of the theatre – that in our age there is always a pre-history to every “first time,” which means that referencing or quoting it under the conditions of contemporary culture is to transform it. Processes of interweaving cultures have a history that is older and deeper than the discourses on globalization.

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Pichet Klunchun reports that he spent a few years in the West in order to study various Western dance forms, such as flamenco, African dance, step dance, and Contact Improvisation. He says that even though he had acquired these skills, “I don’t understand it.” He knew very well how to execute the movements, but he did not know their purpose, or why he should engage in them. Yet, he also realized that he had learned something from this for his knowledge of Khon dance: the significance of energy and of the body. In this way, says Klunchun, he learned for the first time that he is a Khon dancer, and why it is important to him. He now intends to revive the tradition of classical Khon dance in Thailand for Thai audiences, at a time when popularized versions of it are performed for tourists. Thus, the interweaving of traditional movement patterns and related body concepts between cultures, indeed, in a globalized workshop culture of dance, did, in this case, lead to a transformed and renewed acquisition and continuation of that tradition. It is a story/history meant to gain new relevance through the breakage of tradition and difference.¹⁵

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Allow me to mention two more examples from this performance-dialogue before I close my remarks with questions and arguments of my own. There are two questions on the subject of representation. The first concerns the possibility of portraying death and dying on stage. Death, dying, and the dead (along with love, marriage, birth, and food) are areas which – as ethnologists, sociologists, and historians have exhaustively researched – are marked and handed down by rituals, mental traditions, and social practices in every culture. The significance of these ontological themes (as well as their representation in art) undergoes a gradual change. They are phenomena which the French school of mentality historians have analyzed as being of a “longue durée,” especially when the ways of dealing with death and individual attitudes ostensibly change. Pichet Klunchun says it is not possible to portray death and dying on stage in Khon dance, as this would be considered unlucky. He goes on to show two examples of how “dying” takes place offstage or is stylized into ritual movements: either by having the hero who has been wounded in battle die backstage, or by gestures of sorrow, or, in one of the most moving scenes in the piece, when he performs a via dolorosa right across the stage by walking very, very slowly. As Klunchun asserts to the amazement of Bel, the whole process would last, step by step, about half an hour. For his part, Bel shows how he “dies” on stage: slowly, he lies down on the stage floor and remains lying while the pop song “Killing Me Softly” plays; that is all he does. The equally amazed Pichet Kluchun reacts not with questions, not with an interpretation, but with a recollection: “This reminds me [of] when my mom died”. He describes what moves him in the performance: the period in which a deep rest takes over, the gradual inner departure of the dying woman. – In the spectrum of differences between the performers and their cultures (on- and offstage) there are constant (and sometimes surprising) convergences and similarities, despite the cultural differences, such as the non-representation of death and its rendering by means of different signs and media (that is, “walking” for Pichet Klunchun and music for Jérôme Bel). The conversation between the performers achieves confluence at this point, perhaps “because death is very international,” as Klunchun postulates with a subtle sense of humour.

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The second aspect of representation concerns each performer’s relationship to the Thai or French-European tradition of their dance. Pichet Klunchun refers to the history of Khon dance, which draws its themes from the Ramayana myth, is closely linked to Buddhism, and was founded by the king who first appeared in it. Klunchun laments that it is no longer a living tradition in his country, having been westernized for tourist consumption. As opposed to the Thai Khon dance with its religious roots, Bel argues that contemporary European dance is based on immanence. It is not concerned with humanity’s relation to the divine, but with the relation between the individual body and the body of society. Bel points out that in his case, too, it was the king who danced when classical dance began, namely Louis XIV, who made dance into a symbol of his absolutist rule. But Bel goes on to say that we have beheaded the king and now live in a democracy. It is not the representation of religious or political power that is the basis of the contemporary European concept of dance. Bel’s own intention rather is to make these patterns of “representation” disappear from the stage, to reflect and reveal them: i.e. to turn them into an affair of the audience. When Pichet Klunchun is surprised that Bel – upon being requested to dance – simply performs disco movements to the music of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” a form of dance practised by “everyman,” Bel, quoting Guy Debord, responds by saying that in the West we live in a “society of the spectacle.”¹⁶ Klunchun in turn answers, “I am a dancer, not a thinker.” Bel, on the other hand, renounces “being” a dancer or showing himself on stage as a dancer. Instead he denies the (spectator’s) expectation of a dance evening in order to make the audience aware of its own participation in a performance (as happened for example in The Show Must Go On¹⁷). Bel’s motto is, “The more you kill the performer, the more the audience is alive,” describing a form of “non-acting” that provokes another kind of transmission and energy resonance between the stage and the spectators. Klunchun nods in response to this concept which is so different from his own understanding of a dance performance, and then remarks concerning the closing of this electrical circuit between performer and audience that Bel seeks: “But this is very traditional.” Bel is puzzled – these are questions to which there are no definitive answers, questions that the spectators take home with them.

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The performance spans questions that were not raised in the dialogue on stage and yet still cast a light on such processes of interweaving between cultures: e.g. the medium of communication, the language in which this dialogue is taking place. Neither of the two performers is speaking in his native tongue – they meet in the language of globalization: English.

Is this not also a side-effect of today’s festival culture, of global “tours” of performances and dance events and of English as the language of international conferences in the humanities and the sciences? This makes it all the more evident how difficult and complex the ties between the local (in the history of the body and dance traditions) and the global (in language, in dance techniques, in lifestyles) are.

Another critical question concerns the framework of the performance, which carries the title Pichet Klunchun and Myself. Does this title not show a dialogical asymmetry? Does the ostensible modesty of the European in putting himself in the second place, as represented by the (reflexive) personal pronoun, not reveal the position of the author? It should also be possible to read the title Pichet Klunchun and Myself to include me along with every other member of the audience. In that case, the title and the entire course of the performance seems to invite every spectator to see themselves as a partner in this dialogue on the experiences and the history of their own encounters with (inter)cultural performances. Yet, the question of the setting of this dialogue remains: The performance-conversation and “lecture demonstration” is an artistic format of the Western avant-garde and postmodernist “concept dance.” Here the question once again arises in what way the contrast between traditional and experimental dance is relevant to the aesthetics and experience of cultural difference. In my opinion, the performance itself and the encounter of Pichet Klunchun and Jérôme Bel shows that tradition and experiment are not fixed values. The dialogue between the dancers does not mark positions and statements in their discourse on modernism. Rather, it becomes clear that the concepts of tradition and experiment themselves are loaded with eminently historical traits that take on different profiles in different cultures. Experimental art, too, has its own forked tradition; and the understanding and evaluation of tradition, especially in the work of Pichet Klunchun, in turn displays elements of a resistance towards those aspects of globalization and a culture of the spectacle that Jérôme Bel, albeit in a different manner, also critically reflects in his model of concept dance. Seen from this angle, tradition and experiment are not mutually exclusive categories – on the contrary. As this performance, too, illustrates, the point is to test different possibilities of a productive “as-well-as” scenario. Pichet Klunchun even says at one point he would like to have both: he would like to restore the popularity of traditional Khon dance in his own country, and he would also like to find his own individual type of performance – “like I can design my life.” Individualism, whether in relation to lifestyle or art, is a product of modern society and culture - and yet both kinds of it exist as a feeling somewhere between the acceptance of biographical individuality and artistic individuality.

What questions or clues can we glean from this dialogue between dance forms and dancers from Thailand and Europe – what generalizations can we draw for our discussion? Allow me to summarize a few brief points against this artistic background and in view of the current debate on economic globalization.

A recent paper for the Management International Consulting Group on the principle of “glocality” (a monstrous hybrid coined by combining the words “globality” and “locality”) concluded that there were four paradoxes which must be overcome: companies had to (1) be both globally organized and locally focused (re: growth); (2) apply international standards in acquiring and training staff, while at the same time promoting ties at the local level; (3) distill from their knowledge management both sector-specific and general global trends, while at the same time identifying local market peculiarities; and, finally, (4) face up to the challenge of combining a globally uniform presence with a locally oriented co-operation with customers based on personal trust.

Such paradoxes undoubtedly constitute a challenge. Yet, the dialogue between Pichet Klunchun and Jérôme Bel teaches us that the open questions are more complex and less easy to reduce to a simple opposition between local and global. Isn’t this the same challenge and task faced by scholarly research and critical theories of dance studies? Their work should consist in showing how the complexity of art (and not the reduction of complexity) can serve as a productive resource for society and science; and in what way the experience of difference within the global, cultural processes of interweaving are an enrichment, albeit a difficult one. If so, we might deduce from this the following points for discussion:

1. Differences and shifts in differences are valuable: The encounters that produce amazement, confusion, and perhaps also projected expectations can change the way we see others and ourselves. Theatre and dance provide a model for such processes of differentiation and change – they do not necessarily lead to a global homogenization. It is not a matter of overcoming differences, but of seeing the potential inherent in a close reading and respectful perception of them, for example as we have seen in this performance, in the mutual display of and playing with prejudices.

2. Once again: Dialogue. – I hope it is now clear that this is not meant as a naive metaphor for interculturality, for exchanges and encounters with the Other in a wholesale sense. What is needed – both before and during communication – is a multiform culture of relating to others in respectful encounters. Another important point is: what language? What languages? For a dialogue not only involves multilingual transfers and translations; body, space and imagination form a dense weave in the languages of a dialogue.¹⁸ Appreciating their contribution can teach us to perform in the way mentioned here: to set up a situation of transference!

3. Against Interpretation. – I am quoting this issue from the famous essay by Susan Sontag¹⁹ from the 1970s in order to return to a point within the performance of Pichet Klunchun and Jérôme Bel that was remarkably simple and yet incredibly important: a questioning, answering, and showing that did not lead to a fixed interpretation by the other. Susan Sontag’s text is a pamphlet against the practice of hermeneutics and the violence done to texts and art forms by the rigid tradition of interpretation and its methods. Her plea is for an encounter with art and (alien) cultures in which sensuous perception, openness and pleasure or eroticism (in the sense of Barthes’ “pleasure of the text”²⁰) can have a liberating effect. Of course, this was part of a critical theory in the 1970s, and hermeneutics – in the tradition of Schelling, Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer – still play an important role in the humanities. But what if we rethought Susan Sontag’s manifesto? This would give rise to an understanding that would also respect the failure of understanding, the limits of what can be interpreted, the fact of misunderstanding, and recognize them as productive. – Admittedly this also requires sensitivity, attentiveness, a mobility and flexibility of thinking, and a consideration for others – a dia-logical feat that dance-performance art can show us.

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See also the article “Movement of dance: Space, time, motion and emotion” by the Gabriele Brandstetter.

1. Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture, London 1994; H. K. Bhabha: «Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences», in: B. Ashcroft/G. Griffiths/H. Tiffin: The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, London 2006, pp. 155-157; H. K. Bhabha: «In the Cave of Making. Thoughts on Third Space», in: K. Ikas/G. Wagner: Communicating in the Third Space, New York 2009, pp. IX-XIV.

2. Mary Louise Pratt: Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, London/New York 1992, p. 4; for a more detailed analysis of Bhabha’s and Pratt’s concepts within the context of cultural and performative processes, see Katja Gvozdeva: «Performative Prozesse der Kulturbegegnung und des Kulturkontakts: Hybrider und paradoxer Modus», in: Paragrana. Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie, Kontaktzonen. Dynamik und Performativität kultureller Begegnungen, Volume 19, No. 2, Berlin 2010, pp. 13-20.

3. «Interweaving Performance Cultures» is the title of an International Research Center based at the Freie Universität Berlin and inaugurated in 2008.

4. See the studies of Chetana Nagavajara: Wechselseitige Erhellung der Kulturen. Aufsätze zur Kultur und Literatur, Chian Mai/Würzburg 1999; see also C. Nagavajara: Fervently Mediating. Criticism from a Thai Perspective, Bangkok 2004.

5. «Lecture demonstration» is also the subtitle of Klunchun’s and Bel’s performance «Pichet Klunchun and Myself» which premiered in December 2004 at the Bangkok Fringe Festival, Bangkok (Thailand).

6. «I Am a Demon», 26 August 2006 at the festival «Tanz im August», Berlin (Germany).

7. See Hans-Friedrich Bormann: Verschwiegene Stille. John Cages Performative Ästhetik, Munich 2005.

8. Susan Leigh Foster: Choreographing Empathy. Kinesthesia in Performance, London/New York 2011, p. 197.

9. Ibid.

10. Op. cit. p. 203.

11. Op. cit. p. 200.

12. Alfred S. Maurer,«Pichet Klunchun and Myself», 16.06.2006/03.03.2008, URL: www.formundfunktion.ch /kunstkritik/pages/pichet_ kluchun_and_ myself_261.php.

13. «Jerôme Bel by Pichet Klunchun by Jerôme Bel», 13.06.2006, URL: new-art.blogspot.com/2006/06/ jerme-bel-by-pichet-klunchun-by-jerme.html.

14. See Klaus Scherpe: «First-Contact-Szene. Kulturelle Praktiken bei der Begegnung mit dem Fremden», in: G. Neumann/S. Weigel: Lesbarkeit der Kultur. Literaturwissenschaften zwischen Kulturtechnik und Ethnographie, Munich 2000, pp. 149-166; for further reading, see Gerhard Neumann: «Erkennungs-Szene. Wahrnehmung zwischen den Geschlechtern im literarischen Text», in: K. Röttger/H. Paul: Differenzen in der Geschlechterdifferenz – Differences within Gender Studies. Aktuelle Perspektiven der Geschlechterforschung, Berlin 1999, pp. 202-221.

15. Jérôme Bel comments on the alliance between modernism and tradition, between western and eastern concepts of dance as follows: «Maybe you would not have done your own analysis if you had not studied those ‘western’ techniques.»

16. Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle, translated by F. Perlmann/J. Supak, Detroit 1979, rev. ed. 1977.

17. «The Show Must Go On», premiere on 4 January 2001, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (France).

18. See C. Nagavajara: Wechselseitige Erhellung der Kulturen. Aufsätze zur Kultur und Literatur, p. 15.

19. Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York 1978.

20. Roland Barthes: Le plaisir du texte, Paris 1973. Translated by R. Miller as The Pleasure of the Text, New York 1975.