Workshop: Thanapol Virulhakul

Workshop Info.

Date｜2025/11/10 (Mon.) - 11/14 (Fri.) 
Language of Instruction｜English
 

Workshop Description

My Body Is Almost Here

This workshop begins with marking — the act of moving through choreography without full execution. Often treated as a preparatory tool, marking is explored here as a choreographic method in itself.

Through improvised scores, shared tasks, and compositional structures, we observe how incompletion, delay, and elastic timing open ways of movement. The body is invited not to perform or produce, but to pause, hold back, and stay with what is almost here.

Rather than building toward resolution, subtlety, process, and the space between what has emerged and what might still emerge are valued. 

About the Artist

Thanapol Virulhakul is a Bangkok-based choreographer whose work explores how the body registers, resists, and reveals social and political forces. With a background in film and photography from Thammasat University, he approaches choreography not just as the composition of movement, but as a practice and strategy for questioning established structures, unsettling perceptions, and cultivating collective imagination. His performances often challenge conventional frameworks, creating shared spaces of tension, relation, and perceptual shift.

His work has been presented internationally at festivals such as Theaterformen (Germany), TPAM – Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, Offene Welt Festival (Ludwigshafen), and SIFA – Singapore International Festival of Arts, GHOST:2561 and BIPAM. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), and a fellow at the Theatertreffen International Forum (Berlin).

Early in his career, he was selected for the Korean-Asean Fellowship (2005) and the John F. Kennedy Center’s modern dance program (2010). Notable works include TRANSACTION (2013), Hipster The King (2014), Girl X (2015, with Suguru Yamamoto), Happy Hunting Ground (2016), The Retreat (2018–2020), and INTERMISSION (2023).

In 2024, he founded Backroom – Ritual Studio in Bangkok, a platform for embodied practices, performative rituals, and alternative choreographic inquiry.