Waewdao’s new ensemble performance, Lanna Rebel, follows in the footsteps of her last major work, Lanna Dream, which addressed the exotification and commercialization of Lanna culture, especially among dancers, and which was performed in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and Los Angeles. Lanna Rebel is a dance theater performance that reflects perception, thought, and behavior in an environment where cultural identity is judged, praised, and punished in every moment. Working with a cast of queer and straight performers and drawing from personal narratives, Waewdao depicts a range of characters competing for identity, from a seemingly harmless traditional dancer to a “cultural police” busybody (dtum ruawj watthanathan) to a protest performer with an acid sense of humor. Lanna Rebel asks what it means to perform one’s identity and way of life and reinvent freedom of expression in today’s society.
“The title of the performance comes from my belief that we need to check ourselves,” says Waewdao. “We’ve been through a period of time when we’ve rebelled against other mainstream cultures, other patterns and restrictions. And we can say we succeeded, but then we built up and got stuck on expectations and standards for what Lanna is, the ‘real’ or ‘correct’ Lanna. So now we have to rebel again, but against ourselves. Because if we stick to what we think we know, then we won’t advance. We’ll just keep moving in place and end up like the cultures we resisted in the first place.”
Waewdao’s new ensemble performance, Lanna Rebel, follows in the footsteps of her last major work, Lanna Dream, which addressed the exotification and commercialization of Lanna culture, especially among dancers, and which was performed in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and Los Angeles. Lanna Rebel is a dance theater performance that reflects perception, thought, and behavior in an environment where cultural identity is judged, praised, and punished in every moment. Working with a cast of queer and straight performers and drawing from personal narratives, Waewdao depicts a range of characters competing for identity, from a seemingly harmless traditional dancer to a “cultural police” busybody (dtum ruawj watthanathan) to a protest performer with an acid sense of humor. Lanna Rebel asks what it means to perform one’s identity and way of life and reinvent freedom of expression in today’s society.“The title of the performance comes from my belief that we need to check ourselves,” says Waewdao. “We’ve been through a period of time when we’ve rebelled against other mainstream cultures, other patterns and restrictions. And we can say we succeeded, but then we built up and got stuck on expectations and standards for what Lanna is, the ‘real’ or ‘correct’ Lanna. So now we have to rebel again, but against ourselves. Because if we stick to what we think we know, then we won’t advance. We’ll just keep moving in place and end up like the cultures we resisted in the first place.”
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