Ninth for the Ninth

Published on August 31, 2007

Thailand's largest showcase of contemporary dance, opera and ballet, as well as classical and jazz music, Bangkok's International Festival of Dance and Music is back for its ninth consecutive year. Part of the celebration for His Majesty the King's 80th birthday, the line-up is more impressive than ever.

"This is a year of celebration so the programme is quite grand as we want to honour our King," says Egasith Chotpakditrakul, president of Media Transasia Thailand Limited and one of the festival's organising committee members. "Many organisations and agencies are holding special events in this auspicious occasion. As an established festival, we want to outshine them, so we've been planning for this year's festival for almost two years."

Appropriately, the festival opens with "HM's Blues Concert", featuring well-known Thai artists performing songs composed by HM the King.

"Many people may wonder why I rarely promote the works of Thai artists," Egasith says. "The reason is that I didn't get to see it before I buy it. For 'HM's Blues', I got to see it before I bought it. But with the production cost for this performance alone - we'll even construct a new set design for it - we're losing money, even though all tickets are sold."

Though this year's festival is a departure from past years, by having a Thai musical variety show as the opener, one criticism of the festival is that it always seems the same, opening with opera, followed by ballet, symphony concert, then jazz concert, and contemporary dance.

"It's not necessary that we start with opera or ballet," Egasith says. "We just want the festival to open and close on a grand scale. That's the general principal."

Another criticism is that the programmes seem repetitive, having presented classical ballets like "Swan Lake", "The Nutcracker" and "Romeo and Juliet" more than once. Egasith explains, "It's not really repetitive. Some shows may be the same, but they're different companies and hence different interpretations and production designs. In the past eight years, we only repeated a few times. Every year, we have made contacts with hundreds of companies worldwide." 

And, the festival has worked to make the performances exclusive to Bangkok, Egasith says. "By condition, we request they not perform the same show in other cities in this region," he explains. After its Bangkok show, the  Zurich Ballet heads down to Singapore's Esplanade Dance Festival, but the show will be smaller, with 70 per cent of the artists returning to Europe.

The sheer cost of enforcing this policy is one of the difficulties of running the show in Bangkok.

"After this year, we can't use this policy, Egasith says. "As the budget keeps rising year after year, we'll have to share cost with organisers in Singapore and Malaysia."

Lack of financial support from the government is the major problem in holding the event.

"Our counterparts in Singapore, Macau, and Hong Kong don't have to seek corporate sponsorship like us. When you're a private organisation holding an arts event, which is not a pop concert, you get governmental support [in other countries]," Egasith says.

"In such an auspicious year like this, we thought fund-raising would be easy. We're wrong. Two of our main sponsors, one of which has been with us from the first festival, withdrew. It's interesting to note that their decision makers are in the head offices in Singapore. I wouldn't want to think why they backed off," Egasith says.

"Without the help of sponsorship money, this event will never be possible. Well, with it, we're still running on the red figures," Egasith says. "It's much easier [to gain profit] in organising a pop concert like Rain's.

"We don't even know who our target group is ... Organising arts and cultural events is very difficult and complicated. Well, trying to cater them to the tastes of all our audiences is also difficult. Fortunately, from the past festivals, we've had more positive than negative feedback."

Bangkok's Ninth International Festival of Dance and Music is from September 9 to October 11 at Thailand Cultural Centre. A complimentary shuttle bus runs from the MRT station from 5.30pm to 7.30pm on performance nights. Tickets can be purchased at Thaiticketmajor. For more information, call (02) 661 6835-7 or see www.bangkokfestivals.com.

Pawit Mahasarinand  

The writer can be contacted at Pawit.M@chula.ac.th.