Ballet a la Bangkok

The other night I had the privilege of seeing the Bellarussian National Ballet Company perform with the Bellarussian Symphony Orchestra at the Thai Cultural Arts Center. Ballet is not necessarily a performance art that I usually get excited about, but this was Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, and it was done very, very well. What was perhaps most interesting to me was that besides the fact that there Thais in the audience (including, apparently, a member of the Thai Royal Family) and the fact that the pre-show announcement was in Thai and English, you could have thought you were sitting in any large performance venue in America. The style of the theater itself, the lighting and sound technology, and even the ticketing, were all completely similar to the average venue in the United States.
Thailand, like virtually every other Asian country, is currently enjoying a Neo-Renaissance (if I can coin a phrase that is more than a little oxymoronic) of Western theatre arts. I call it a Neo-Renaissance because the concepts and techniques of western theatre were brought to Asia long before now, and were largely ignored either as a result of Xenophobia, nationalist pride, or complete misunderstanding. The exceptions to this are perhaps Hong Kong and Saigon, where western style theatre has been produced for quite some time now. This is perhaps the result of greater western influence in those areas. Now, however, western theatre, including its technology, organizational structure, and concepts, is getting a second chance in Asian cultures. As would be expected of course, a certain amount of assimilation is occurring, as western theatre practices get applied to traditional cultural performance arts. The result, I am sure, is a slight bastardization of both the western concepts and the cultural traditions. I am making plans to see some original Bangkok theatre, and I am looking forward to seeing just how much one has influenced the other, and vice versa.