Pichet Klunchun

Artistic Director

Pichet is a Thai dancer, choreographer, and contemporary artist known for pioneering a new vocabulary of movement that bridges classical Thai dance with global contemporary performance. His work challenges traditional hierarchies, reimagines cultural identity, and confronts social and political structures through the language of the body.

Trained in Khon (Thai classical masked dance) since the age of 16 under Master Chaiyot Khummanee of Thailand’s The College of Dramatic Arts, Pichet later earned his degree from the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts at Chulalongkorn University. He also gained formative experience in theater through collaborations with Moradokmai Theater Troupe and the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. After a brief academic career, he left his university position in 2003 to become a full-time independent artist.

In 2001, he was awarded a fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council (ACC), funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, to study and work in the United States. During this time, he served as a guest instructor in Thai dance at UCLA and participated in the American Dance Festival at Duke University as an emerging choreographer. This experience catalyzed his lifelong mission: to evolve traditional Thai movement into a contemporary and critical language.

International acclaim followed with Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2004), a genre-defying dialogue performance with French choreographer Jérôme Bel that juxtaposed Thai classical dance with Western conceptual choreography. This was followed by I Am a Demon (2005), a solo work that deconstructed the foundations of Khon through a contemporary lens. His works have since been presented at major festivals such as Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Belgium), Tanzplattform (Germany), Vienna Festival (Austria), and the Singapore Arts Festival.

In 2010, he founded Pichet Klunchun Dance Company (PKDC), now rebranded as PKDC, to develop contemporary performance grounded in Thai artistic knowledge. Through this platform, he has created and toured major works including Nijinsky Siam (2010), Black and White (2011), Tam kai (2013), Nay Nai (2014), Dancing with Death (2016), Bird (2018), No.60 (2020).

In his recent work Cyber Subin (2024), Pichet explores the interface between tradition and artificial intelligence. Collaborating with digital technologists and AI systems, the project interrogates the future of dance, embodiment, and authorship — extending his inquiry into how the past can inform not only the present but the post-human future.