1 See www.pklifework.com, last accessed December 2014.

2 See www.theater-an-der-ruhr.de/repertoire/pichet-klunchun-bangkok

3 ‘For the second season of the Ballets Russes in Paris, Diaghilev replaced Le Festin with a new suite of dances, Les Orientales. In this divertissement, Nijinsky appeared twice, in dances choreographed by himself – “La Danse Siamoise”, to music by Sinding, and a “Variation” to music by Grief that Stravinsky orchestrated’. Boris Kochno, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 56. The Parisian audience did not see anything Siamese in the performance, as de Lustrac and Dancre inform us: ‘Effectivement les spectateurs parisiens verront dans la Danse siamoise, qui “du cambodgien”, qui “de l'hindou”, “du javanais” et même “du mongol” – tout sauf “du siamois”’. Philip de Lustrac and Sylvie Dancre, ‘Un danseur siamois’, Danser: Les Ballets russes, numéro spécial (December 2009), pp. 22–6, pp. 42–6, here p. 42.

4 Cf. a short documentary that Pichet made on the ‘making of’ of Nijinsky Siam, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vgbYpo8Yc, last accessed 14 November 2013. As Philippe de Lustrac and Sylvie Dancre argue, ‘c’étaient les mouvements et les gestes si particuliers, les extraordinaires torsions des bras et des mains de la danse siamoise, si opposé à ceux du langage du ballet occidental’. De Lustrac and Dancre, p. 42.

5 ‘It is a fascinating premise: Like the reflections seen in two mirrors that face each other, it bred an infinity pool of thoughts and questions. It felt like the beginnings of a counter-dialogue, and one that is perhaps, the conversation of our generation’. Cf. also de Lustrac and Dancre regarding the Siamese elements in Nijinsky's Danse siamoise: ‘Car, en effet, ce que montrait Nijinsky, dans son costume imitant fidèlement le costume du théâtre siamois, c’étaient les mouvements et les gestes si particuliers, les extraordinaires torsions des bras et des mains de la danse siamoise, si opposé à ceux du langage du ballet occidental’. de Lustrac and Dancre, p. 42.

6 I quote from an email that Philippe de Lustrac sent me in spring 2013: ‘Actually, the performance of Pichet, “Nijinsky/Siam”, was based on the material I discovered in the course of the investigation of the most stunning subject: the relation between Siam and Russia at the time of the Ballets russes, and therefore the influence of Siam on the Ballets russes’.

7 Cf. the Global Theatre Histories collaborative research project at LMU Munich, www.gth.theaterwissenschaft.uni-muenchen.de

8 Bayly, Christopher A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)Google Scholar.

9 Osterhammel, Jürgen, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011)Google Scholar.

10 Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 ‘Cultures are almost always apprehended not as mobile or global or even mixed, but as local’. Greenblatt, Stephen, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 252Google Scholar. See also the Interweaving Performance Cultures international research center at the Free University Berlin, directed by Erika Fischer-Lichte since 2008. The scholarly and artistic study of phenomena and dynamics of interweavings in and by performance cultures takes centre stage here.

12 I borrow the term ‘contact zone’ from Pratt, Mary Louise, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession, 91 (1991), pp. 33–40Google Scholar.

13 McKeown, Adam, ‘Global Migration 1846–1940’, Journal of World History, 15, 2 (June 2004), pp. 155–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

15 Cf. Hannerz, Ulf, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Traces (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar.

16 Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, p. 1.

17 Ibid., p. 250.

18 ‘Mobility often is perceived as a threat – a force by which traditions, rituals, expressions, beliefs are decentered, thinned out, decontextualized, lost. In response to this perceived threat, many groups and individuals have attempted to wall themselves off from the world, or, alternatively, they have resorted to violence.’ Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, p. 252.

19 Matthew Cohen briefly mentions the troupe and Pichet's choreography of Nijinsky Siam in his chapter ‘Southeast Asian Performance across Borders’, in Christopher Balme and Nic Leonhardt, eds., Theatrical Trade Routes (in preparation).

20 ‘[L]e Siam sera le seul pays d'Asie (avec le Japon) qui échappera à la mainmise coloniale, essentiellement grâce à l'intervention de Nicolas II qui parviendra à tempérer les convoitises de ses alliés français, lesquels, pendant un quart de siècle n'auront de cesse que de tenter de s'emparer du plus vaste et du plus riche pays d'Indochine.’ De Lustrac and Dancre, p. 44.

21 As were also Prince Heinrich from Prussia (1862–1929), who wrote Des Prinzen Heinrich von Preußen Weltumseglung, a book on his world tour (1878–1880); Prince Waldemar of Denmark (1858–1939), who visited Thailand and met Chulalongkorn around 1900; and others on their world tours, according to their travel reports.

22 ‘Die Siamesische Hoftheater-Truppe. Zum ersten Male in Europa’, reprint of article in Tai Culture, 2, 2 (December 1997), pp. 126–31, here p. 127.

23 Bock, Carl: Temples and Elephants: The Narrative of a Journey of Exploration Through Upper Siam and Lao (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1884)Google Scholar, Im Reiche des weissen Elephanten. Vierzehn Monate im Lande und am Hofe des Königs von Siam (Leipzig: Ferdinand Hirt & Sohn, 1885), Le Royaume de l’éléphant blanc: Quatorze mois au pays et à la cour du roi de Siam, trans. André Tissot (Tours: Alfred Mame et Fils, 1889); Bock is guided through the city of Bangkok by Rai Salomon, a police inspector (probably one of the German or other European policemen and bureaucrats who were hired by the Siamese king in order to ‘modernize’, i.e. ‘Europeanize’, Bangkok). See also Dürwell, Georges, Ma chère Cochinchine: Trente années d'impressions et de souvenirs, février 1881–1910 (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1911)Google Scholar; Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Siam, das Reich des weißen Elefanten (1899).

24 ‘Nous ne voulons pas, en effet, quitter Bangkok sans épuiser tous ses modestes distractions. Un grand mandarin de la cour, le Châu-Phya Mahin, vieux pécheur qui a fait, depuis longtemps, pénitence force et que ses rhumatismes siamois ont assagi, s'est payé un théâtre particulier dont l’élément est exclusivement féminin.’ Dürwell, p. 336.

25 Straits Times, 9 June 1900, p. 2.

26 ‘The streets of the town are crowded and busy at all hours of the day, and in the native quarters at nearly all hours of the night as well … all is bustle and activity. In half-an-hour's walk, a stranger may hear the accents of almost every language and see the features and costume of nearly every race in the world. Amongst the crowds that pass him, he may see, besides Europeans of every nation, Chinese, Malays, Hindus, Madrassees, Sikhs, Japanese, Burmese Siamese, Javanese, Boyanese, Singhalese, Tamils, Arabs, Jews, Parsees, Negroes, &c., &c.’ Reith, G. M., Handbook to Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1985Google Scholar; first published 1907), pp. 35 f. The position of Singapore on the Great Mail Route from Europe to the Far East is favourable for rapid communication with all parts of the world, which makes it an important centre and port city, easily reached by all big steamship liners from Europe, Asia and Great Britain (cf. ibid., p. 96). Europeanization had been on the agenda of the British; ‘In fact, European “society” had diversified and become institutionalized, and it was now conducted as much outside the home as within’, as Frost, Mark Ravinder and Balasingamchow, Yu-Mei write in Singapore: A Biography (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2009)Google Scholar, p. 142.

27 As G. M. Reith's Handbook to Singapore, p. 67 f. has it, the Town Hall ‘is devoted to public purposes in Singapore, and is under the control of the Municipal Commissioners. The original Town Hall was built in 1854 and then consisted of an upper room for concerts, balls, &c., and lower hall with a small stage that could be used as a theatre. When the Victoria Memorial Hall was completed, the Town Hall was reconstructed, with a facade to harmonise with the new building, the upper and lower halls were thrown into one to form a large and commodious theatre, with side rooms’.

28 Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 9 June 1900, p. 2.

29 Straits Times, 9 June 1900, p. 2.

30 In 1889, at the earlier Expo in Paris, composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918) heard the music of Javanese musicians for the first time, and, as is well known, he was strongly struck by the metallic and wooden percussion instruments and sounds. This cultural encounter was doubtless influential (if in a unilateral way in this case), but there is another aspect I would like to stress here: how did the Javanese group of musicians come to Paris? John Joyce, in ‘The Globalization of Music’, in Mazlish, Bruce and Iriye, Akira, eds., The Global History Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar, pp. 222–31, here p. 226, explains: ‘The appearance of the Javanese musicians … was only possible because a shortened steamship route to Asia, through the Suez Canal, had been completed just twenty years before. The era of international music tours had begun’.

31 As Miyao, Daisuke writes in Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Sada Yacco, the Japanese actress, and her partner Otojiro Kawakami were sponsored by Loïe Fuller in the 1900 Exposition in Paris. Kawakami ‘tried to modernize Japanese theater by dissociating it from the dominant world of kabuki and pleasure quarters’. The geisha dance and Kawakami's performing of hara-kiri ‘were in fact added at the request of Fuller, [and] were sensationally received not only by the popular audience, but by some intellectuals and artists, including the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin. Moreover, their acts were captured by a motion picture camera, which was another sensational form of entertainment at the Paris Exposition. After the Kawakami troupe returned to Japan, even Japanese-style dresses became fashionable in Paris. They were called “Yacco” style because Sadayakko always wore a kimono at parties’.

32 Petzold, Bruno, ‘Die Theater und Cabarets der Pariser Weltausstellung’, Bühne und Welt, III (October 1900–March 1901), pp. 91–5Google Scholar, here p. 95. As global art historian Falser, Michael S., ‘From a Colonial Reinvention to Postcolonial Heritage and a Global Commodity: Performing and Re-enacting Angkor Wat and the Royal Khmer Ballet’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20, 7–8 (2014), pp. 702CrossRefGoogle Scholar–23, here p. 705, points out, visitors to the Paris Expo could in fact witness ‘how the architectural and performative elements from an imagined colonial Far East became exchangeable and even combinable in European spectacles’ by watching ‘the indoor installation of the Tour-du-Monde […]… where the painted architectural panorama of Angkor Wat was enhanced (re-enacted) with living Javanese dance performers’.

33 Capt. van Beeker, in the Illustrierte Zeitung, writes, ‘100,000 marks’, in Illustrierte Zeitung, 6 September 1900.

34 Original: ‘offeriere siamesische Theatergruppe 23 madchen 12 manner mit orchester soeben von Bangkok eingelangt für august oder september drahtet noch sonnabend ob principiell geneigt – bamberger continental paris’. Cablegram by Victor Bamberger 3 August, 1900. Quoted from Hans Frädrich, ‘Von Bangkok nach Berlin: Ein [sic] tiergärtnerische Chronologie’, Thailand-Rundschau, 1 (2001), pp. 10–18, here p. 12. According to this article, Bamberger's notes are available at the archive of the Berlin Zoological Garden. Despite my repeated requests, the archivists could not retrieve the material and referred me to the private collection of the zoo's former director, Heiner Klös, who never replied to my queries.

35 Cf. www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=2565, last accessed 2 December 2013. Next to the Ferris wheel, Venice in Vienna was the most popular attraction in Vienna; they were located in an English Garden (formerly a wooded area owned by Russian ambassador Demeter Galitzin until 1891, then bought by a British company that moulded it into an English Garden) close to the Prater area. When Gabor Steiner leased the English Garden for a period of ten years in 1894, he had just returned from a visit to London, where he had seen Venice in London at the Olympia Hall. Cf. Bartel Sinhuber, Unterm Riesenrad: Geschichten aus dem alten Prater (Vienna and Munich: Amalthea, 2000), pp. 139 f.

36 Neue freie Presse, 3 August 1900, p. 7.

37 Cf. letter by Victor Bamberger to ‘erl. Vorstandsbureau des zoolog. Gartens Berlin’, 6 August 1900, quoted in Frädrich, ‘Von Bangkok nach Berlin’, p. 12.

38 Ibid.

39 He was said to have become a ‘real Wagnerian’ once he returned to Bangkok. Cf. Stoffel, Andreas, Im Lande des weißen Elefanten: Die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Thailand von den Anfängen bis 1962 (Bonn: Dt.-Thailändische Gesellschaft e.V., 1995)Google Scholar.

40 Frädrich, ‘Von Bangkok nach Berlin’, p. 12.

41 Ramahsoon: Ein alt-siamesisches Märchen. Dargestellt vom Ensemble des Siamesischen Hof-theaters unter der Direction von Boosra Mahin. Programme of the show, collection of Deutsches Theatermuseum München, reference number DTM 1813.

42 Capt. van Beeker in Illustrierte Zeitung, 6 September 1900.

43 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, 36, 26 August 1900, p. 567. The original reads, ‘Sie tanzen Fächer-, Fackel- und Schwertertänze in ganz sonderbaren Rhythmen, die befremden aber dennoch entzücken. Ganz einzig dastehend ist die Mimik der Finger Handflächen, keine Europäerin wird ihnen das nachmachen’.

44 Hans Heinrich XIV Bolko Graf von Hochberg (1843–1926) was a German diplomat and composer, and artistic director of the Königliche Schauspiele in Berlin (from 1886).

45 ‘Wir haben uns lange nicht so ergötzt. Eine ähnliche Freude würden wir nur empfinden, wenn unser Hoftheater nach Siam ginge’. Alfred Kerr, Wo liegt Berlin? Briefe aus der Reichshauptstadt 1895–1900. ed. Günther Rühle (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1997), pp. 613–15, entry from 9 September 1900, p. 615.

46 Joyce, p. 227.

47 ‘Die Gefahr ist groß, daß die rapide Ausbreitung der europäischen Kultur auch die letzten Spuren fremden Singens und Sagens vertilgt. Wir müssen retten, was noch zu retten ist.’ von Hornbostel, Erich Moritz, Tonart und Ethos: Aufsätze zur Musikethnologie und Musikpsychologie (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 1999), p.Google Scholar 270. See also Ziegler, Susanne: Die Wachszylinder des Berliner Phonogramm-Archivs (Berlin: Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 2006)Google Scholar.

48 Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, 36, p. 567.

49 Cf. Stumpf, Carl, ‘Tonsystem und Musik der Siamesen’, Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, 3 (1901), pp. 69–138Google Scholar.

50 Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, 29 August 1900.

51 Chulalongkorn travelled via Singapore, Colombo, Aden and Port Said on board the royal steamer Mahachakri; arrived on 14 May 1897 at Venice; visited Italy, Switzerland, the Vatican, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria–Hungary, Germany; at the end of July 1897 he headed for Paris and England; by the end of August he was in Berlin, where he met Kaiser Wilhelm on 27 August. Cf. Stoffel, Im Lande des weißen Elefanten.

52 Quoted from de Lustrac and Dancre, p. 44.

53 Spencer, Charles, Leon Bakst and the Ballets Russes (London: Academy Editions, 1995), p. 220Google Scholar, reads the picture as ‘an early example of Bakst's interest in oriental dance. The company influenced the choreographer Fokine. Lifar believed that Russian ballet received its two most important influences from [Isadora Duncan and] the Siamese dancers’.