Flight of Kinaree กินรีหนีไฟ
Bangkok, Thailand |
25-26 April, 2026
Bangkok, Thailand
25-26 April, 2026
Goethe Institute: https://www.goethe.de/ins/th/en/ver.cfm?event_id=27254228
Ticket Melon: https://www.ticketmelon.com/th/yaboihanoi/flightofkinaree
Director and composer yaboihanoi (Lamtharn Hantrakul) brings together musicians, choreography/dance, and visual artists to intercept and refract our entanglement with our digital reflections through light and shadow, sound and motion.
Team
Lamtharn Hantrakul (yaboihanoi) - @yaboihanoi
Choreographer-Dancers - @kidbuoksip
Yutthana Agradechanat - @agradechanat
Klakul Agradechanat - @klakul_aun21
Khaen
Patchaya Nantachai - @sun_der_thailand
Phi Nora
Kantaphong Khamcharoen - @kantaphong__b
Visuals Designer
Avneesh Sarwate - @avneeshsarwate
Supanat Chaiyanopakul - @poommrio
SR Production TH
Sound Technician
Thanapat Ogaslert - @nowheredweller
Project Manager
Praphaphan Suthirawut - @piper.suth
With support from
Goethe-Institute Thailand - @goetheinstitut.thailand
yaboihanoi
HLAB - @hlab.official
Photographers and Videographers
Salyn Mars - @ph.salyn
Punnaphat Thongsunsra - @bboombmm
Nuttakant Luengphiphatchai - @bbrighthgirb
Nichakon Aongsankam - @nchsnch
Graphic Designer & Video Editor
Salyn Mars - @ph.salyn
Mattresses
PDM Brand - @pdmbrand
In Flight of Kinaree, audio-visual technologies reimagine Thai music-dance-drama; creating new forms of digital and analogue storytelling anchored in Thai culture and Southeast Asian mythology. The experience harnesses the team's deep roots in traditional Thai performing arts as the structural basis for generative algorithms and AI across sound, movement and visuals. Like in many communities, younger generations rarely engage with classical artforms. Thai Khon dance-theater, Nang Yai shadow-theater and Lakhon-Ram music and dance are "ancient" and "boring". Flight of Kinaree resynthesizes these materials for the modern audience; fusing genre-bending electronic music based on Thai instruments with contemporary dance, bespoke visual and projection design steeped in Thai forms.
The Kinaree is a mythical bird-maiden facing unjust sacrifice by fire. She performs a mesmerizing dance-ritual to distract her captors, then takes flight, escaping death but leaving her human lover behind. He sets out in search for her. This story of separation, longing, and reunion belongs to broader Buddhist Pannasa Jataka literature from Southeast Asia. In his research, anthropologist Peter Skilling emphasized how Jataka tales like the Kinaree were never static, but "fluid and flexible", the "story changes with each telling". Taletellers used whatever materials were at hand—candlelight shadows, paintings, improvised lullabies—to unfold new narratives shaped for each audience and setting. We see ourselves belonging to this reimagination of culture by local communities connected across time, distinct from decolonial and diasporic reclamation narratives. Flight of Kinaree is a living transmission of traditions from Thailand, Southeast Asia and beyond.
Our opening scene is inspired by the mythical Himmapan forest - home of the Kinarees. Soundscapes feature nature sounds both real and AI-synthesized dovetailing with improvisations between the Southern Phi Nora and Northeastern Khaen, a unique musical combination blending different regions of Thai repertoire. A blend of synths and felt piano re-contextualizes these melodies.
In a world where information is increasingly generated and mediated by Large Language Models and AI systems, how do we know what we are consuming is real or fake? Is this article true? Is this image real? Is this video something that actually happpened? This scene imagines a future where the effect generative algorithms are no longer constrainted to the digital domain, but enact real harm and damage to the real world we inhabit. It is inspired by the original tale when a council minister fabricates a series of lies to convince the kingdom to banish the Kinaree.
สองโลกปะทะ |
| Collision of Two Worlds |
The real. The digital. Which of these realms will survive? This premiere work by director and composer yaboihanoi (Lamtharn Hantrakul) brings together musicians, choreography/dance, and visual artists to intercept and refract our entanglement with our digital reflections through light and shadow, sound and motion.
To capture Thailand’s unique scales and melodic structure, Differentiable Digital Signal Processing (DDSP) analyzes the precise tuning and melodic inflections of Thai wind instruments like the Phi. This data drives ML audio synthesis (python scripts, Mawf, Neutone) to generate futuristic textures anchored in Thai scales over Western ones. Building on composer yaboihanoi's win of the AI Song Contest 2022, the compositions are at the forefront of electronic sound which respect the structures of Thai music.
The broader electronic soundscape—blending AI audio (StableAudio Open), hybrid synths (Arturia MiniFreak), and granular effects—enabled new musical dialogues between the Southern Thai Phi Nora (oboe) and the Northeastern Khaen (mouth organ). The approach bridges isolated regional styles and reverses longstanding biases toward Central Thai instruments.
In the original tale of Suthon-Manorah, the Kinaree performs her final ritual-dance before a flaming alter. In a dash of courage, she flies off and escapes to her homeworld of the Himmapan forest. We reimagine this scene as a fever-dream of lights, distorted electronic basses and angular movements across dancers and visuals.
The fabric screens and physical space are an homage to Nang Yai shadow theater from Thailand and Southeast Asia. Characters move between light and shadow, juxtaposing analogue and digital silhouettes to reflect our entanglement between real and synthetic worlds. Choreographers' developed new vocabulary of classical and contemporary Thai movement for both live dance and encoding into real-time projections. To complete the experience, audiences sit on the floor among cushions and straw mats, evoking the down-to-earth atmosphere of performances traditionally held in rice fields and village temples.
Inspired by the Jataka tales of the Buddha's past reincarnations, Kid Buak Sipp choreographers composed a Thai poem expressing cycles of separation and longing. We transformed this poem into an audio-visual installation where animated Thai handwriting dances across fabric. A custom handwriting script morphs between abstract circles and legible poem fragments, drifting in and out of view like memories from a past life. This installation flows into the main performance and remains open for audiences to pause and linger afterwards.
The original tale tasks the lover with identifying the true Kinaree among seven identical sisters. We reimagine this trial by casting the sisters as digital clones in a synthetic world of fake news and fabricated content. As the lover searches through the darkness—guided solely by an iPhone's real-time feed and selfie light—MLX object detection segments audience members, projecting their likenesses to amplify his confusion. When he finally discovers the true Kinaree, their duet blends her physical and synthetic forms until they reach across the digital divide, reuniting in the embodied world.