BIOGRAPHY

Jitti Chompee is a Thai choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural leader whose work explores the intersections of traditional knowledge, contemporary performance, and the social systems that shape human behaviour. Moving across choreography, artistic research, performance, and cultural exchange, his practice creates encounters between inherited forms of knowledge and contemporary ways of seeing, thinking, and moving.

He is the founder and artistic director of 18 Monkeys Dance Theatre and Unfolding Kafka Festival, and the founder and director of the National Choreography Centre of Thailand (NCCT). Through these initiatives, he fosters artistic experimentation and international exchange, building connections between traditional and contemporary performing arts.

Jitti’s productions have been presented at international festivals and platforms across Asia and Europe, including George Town Festival and Rainforest Fringe Festival in Malaysia, Festival Tanztendenzen in Greifswald, Germany, One Table Two Chairs – Euro-Asia Young Performing Artists Cross-Cultural Exchange and Education Program in Hong Kong, and Kafka Symposium in Tokyo, Japan. His international collaborations have included the Nederlandse Reisopera in the Netherlands for Les pêcheurs de perles, as well as a performance with the Argentine ensemble Escalandrum at Teatro San Martín in Buenos Aires in connection with the music of Astor Piazzolla.

His artistic development has been shaped by international residencies and collaborations. In 2013, he was invited to an artist residency at the Institut Français de Fès in Morocco, where he presented Tightrope Walker. In 2014, he continued his artistic exploration at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, supported by the French Embassy in Thailand and the Institut français. In 2016, he received a residency supported by the Kylian Foundation and Korzo Theatre in The Hague, the Netherlands, developing Red Peter for presentation at the Ho Chi Minh International Dance Festival, ChangMu International Performing Arts Festival in South Korea, and CaDance Festival in The Hague.

A central thread in Jitti’s practice is his sustained engagement with Khon, Thailand’s masked dance-drama tradition, and the living knowledge embedded in traditional performance, music, ritual, and belief. Through projects such as Miscellany of Khon, developed in collaboration with Thailand’s Department of Fine Arts, he investigates how traditional performance practices can be researched, documented, transmitted, and re-examined through contemporary artistic approaches. Rather than treating tradition as a fixed inheritance, he approaches it as a living body of knowledge that continues to evolve through practice, transmission, and encounter.

His choreographic research also considers how objects, cultural memory, and collective belief shape the body and human behaviour. Through Object-Generated Choreography, a methodology he has developed in which objects become starting points for the creation of movement, Jitti explores how the material properties and social associations of everyday things can generate new choreographic possibilities and reveal the often-invisible systems that organise everyday life.

In 2025, Jitti founded the National Choreography Centre of Thailand (NCCT), an artistic research and exchange platform connecting traditional and contemporary performing arts practitioners, researchers, institutions, and communities. Through NCCT, he advocates for choreography not only as an artistic practice, but also as a means of generating knowledge, sustaining cultural transmission, and building long-term infrastructures for artistic development. His work emphasises exchange across generations, disciplines, regions, and cultural contexts, while creating opportunities for emerging artists and fostering international collaboration.

In recognition of his contributions to the performing arts, Jitti was awarded the insignia of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ambassador to Thailand in September 2021. In 2025, he received the Silpathorn Award (ศิลปาธร) from Thailand’s Ministry of Culture, recognising his contribution to contemporary arts and culture.

Through his artistic and institutional work, Jitti continues to explore how movement, cultural memory, objects, and collective belief shape the ways people inhabit and understand the world, while creating new possibilities for dialogue between Thailand’s living cultural traditions and contemporary artistic practice.