Frankfurt Lab

What memories does a body carry within itself? In The Weight of Tending, the choreographer and performer Patscharaporn Distakul traces her own family history in an exploration of belonging and identity.

Here she interweaves the memories of her grandfather, who is almost 100 years old and whose recall is fading, with her own experiences to form an auto-fictional choreography that uses dance, the voice and music.

The past and present meet in the question of how heritage, migration and cultural inheritance become inscribed in movement. Together with the musician Max Masahiro Levy Distakul draws on everyday rituals, dances and gestures that left their mark on her as she was growing up between Thailand, Italy and Germany. How are traditions passed on across generations, how do they change and take on new meanings? Here the choreographer also studies Western terms and projections onto Thai society as well as stereotyped concepts of identity and femininity. The Weight of Tending tells of what people preserve, carry on and reinvent.