Dancer Alysia Johnson sits on a plastic stool asking how to say “family” in Thai. Johnson performs mispronunciation onstage— to an untrained ear, the word sounds like“krawb-kua.” In Thai, this word, “family,” roughly translates to “cover the kitchen.” Eight hundred miles away from her hometown in Chicago, choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat gathers woven Thai cookware, plastic stools, and cleaning equipment to cover an imagined kitchen at Baryshnikov Arts Center, inspired by the family restaurant she grew up in. With the help of five performers of various ethnicities cast as restaurant employees, Of Dishes and Dreams takes audiences through 17 chapters that bring Jinakunwiphat’s Thai family and their kitchen to New York City.
Jinakunwiphat walks onstage, placing her body next to a silky, multi-colored textile hanging vertically over a structured pile of used kitchen equipment (the rich textures by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya could have a show of their own). Performers enter this abstracted restaurant, clicking on an imagined string light that slowly illuminates the stage. Work in the kitchen begins with a managerial playfulness, a business seemingly held together byJinakunwiphat’s composed, knowing smirk. The proscenium setting maintains professional distance, diluting the stress and potential for tastes, sounds, and smells of a restaurant – a slight disappointment since her kitchen demands a seat at the table.
Jinkaunwiphat does, however, manage to sneak into the audience’s hands a program that reads like a menu – short titles guiding the audience through bustling vignettes full of cheeky moments, skillful chefs, chaotic accidents, and patient breaths.
“Rice” – Zack Gonder huffs and puffs, dragging a bag of rice. Unimpressed, Ryan Yamauchi snatches the bag up, slinging it over his shoulder. Not missing a beat, Gonder sweeps Yamauchi off his feet. “Knives” – Arms sharpen into blades that slice the air as the employees line up—militant cooks in a precise kitchen. “Chaos” – Performers bump into each other, catching on one another’s clothes, threatening fights; bodies topple over in the hubbub of a kitchen at rush hour. “Patience” – Yamauchi explains “this is how you do things” with tense gesticulations meant to explain what it takes to succeed at the job.
Some scenes proved to be easy recollections of their title. Others, like “Daydream” – left space for daydreaming about which bit of movement matched that description. Had the titles been incorporated onstage, they could have afforded more specific meaning to abstracted scenes. Ridding the program of these titles entirely and leaving the audience to create their own meaning could have also resulted in the same. Perhaps, as with items on a menu, only a few dishes can be tasted in one seating, and that’s okay.
During “Closing,” the bustle of the busy kitchen shuts down. Alone, Jinakunwiphat code-switches, slipping out of Western contemporary dance into memories of Thai dances, never fully losing sight of either form. Her knees bend in a wide-stance, hips jutting out to one side, body upright in a performative presentation. Her hands consider loose mudras before quickly spilling out into practical gestures. Thai instruments play in the background as her petite frame contracts, only to expand effortlessly, gliding through swift, punctuated floorwork. Her body visits the West and the East, uncertain of where to stay, laying claim to both ideas.
Yet, hers is not a body lost in translation. A master of texture and physical instrumentation, Jinakunwiphat moves seamlessly between the new languages she has found and the old ones her body remembers. Yet, at the end of the day, she still needs rest. When the shop closes, she can stop speaking a second language. Her body can return home to a quiet kitchen, alone, drinking from the source of her own culture.
Jinakunwiphat captures the ancestral, immigrant memories that a child can sometimes only lay claim to imagining – a parent nervous as they build new dreams in new lands, a restaurant owner trying to argue with their employee in a second language, a person holding on to old homes through food – a negotiation of proximity to the American Dream. When the restaurant opens, Jinakunwiphat allows for learning, service, consumption, and exchange. When creaking doors finally close, what she remembers remains for her and her family alone.
Of Dishes and Dreams, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, Baryshnikov Arts Center, October 17.
