LIVING THE DREAM
Thai singer and dance Soraya Patoonsittichai makes her debut on The Great White Way in TheKingAndI
Her Skype name is Seira Kiyono, and even though she appeared only as pixels on the screen, her vibrant energy can be felt throughout the long interview. Her real name is Soraya Patoonsittichai, and she talked to us from some rooftop in New York, where the Thai-Japanese dancer and singer is currently a cast member of the Broadway play The King And I.
Playing Eliza in the hit show is a realisation of her long years of training, hoping, auditioning and more training. Soraya, a dance graduate from Chulalongkorn University and former dancer for several top Thai entertainers, now bears the distinction of being the only Thai to be cast in the famous Siam-set story.
For Soraya, better known by her stage name Seira Kiyono, the die was cast after the ballerina made a high-stakes decision to pursue her career of becoming a full performing dancer in the bustling city in 2011.
Driven by love for ballet, Soraya later landed a job as a ballerina for Ballet for Young Audiences/ Ballet Repertory NYC where she has danced several principal roles as Snow White in Snow White, Clara in The Nutcracker and Ariel in The Little Mermaid.
Yet little did she know that she was fated to run into her new passion after accompanying her friends to Broadway shows there.
Her aspiration to be in musical performance brought Soraya to a new challenge in singing lessons. But as an Asian, it was an uphill battle to climb the career ladder in Broadway due to her English accent. Besides, what makes it harder is that only a handful of Asians are generally chosen to take part in any US performance project.
“I’d been auditioning for all Broadway projects that announced open casting calls since 2012. However, my problem was that I always sailed through dance auditions but failed in singing auditions because of my accent,” she said.
To address this, Soraya took a private singing class to correct her English pronunciation and learn more vocal techniques.
After wandering through countless Broadway auditions over the past six years, Soraya at the age of 29 eventually realised her dream by beating 200 Asian dancers to portray the fugitive slave Eliza in the Broadway classic The King And I.
“The King And I is my first Broadway show and I’m also the first Thai taking part in this musical. The audition took around five months. Three candidates including me passed to the final round but only one was chosen to become Eliza,” she said with enthusiasm.
Directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s acclaimed musical was inspired by Anna And The King Of Siam, Margaret Landon’s 1944 novel. The musical will be going on tour in November through next year across the US and Canada. The book depicts the story of Anna Leonowens, a Welsh widowed schoolteacher who was employed as a governess for children of King
Mongkut against a vivid backdrop of Siam in the 1860s. Soraya recounted she was first cast in the role of Tuptim, a Burmese slave girl presented to the King as one of his junior consorts. Choreographers at the time told her to attend a dance call audition after they noticed her ballet skills.
Describing her feeling after realising she landed a part in the musical, Soraya said: “After working hard throughout six or seven years, my feeling is like, ‘Finally, I’ve made it!’. My dream comes true and it’s unbelievable because I’ve always wanted to be here [Broadway].”
Asked about her view on The King And I narrated through a Western perspective, Soraya said she has always been open-minded to new perspectives and experiences as she understood both the novel and musical, which have controversial content for some Thais, were created from the viewpoint of Westerners.
“Besides the content itself, choreographers were worried about my opinion on their designs of dance movements because I’m Thai. They’ve always explained to me that those movements were developed from Thai traditional dance combined with Western style. It’s an integration and I’m OK with it,” Soraya said.
Charmed by dancing since she was a child, the young Soraya had her first ballet lesson at the age of five. During high school, as other teenagers enjoyed their frolics on the weekends, she opted to enrol in ballet classes, earning a certificate from the UK-based Royal Academy of Dance. Soraya later obtained a bachelor’s degree in Western dance from Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts with a first-class degree. Her skills in dance are not limited to classical ballet but Thai traditional dance, jazz, hip hop and contemporary dance as well.
In Thailand, she also worked as a dancer for Thongchai “Bird” McIntyre, Golf-Mike and Chinawut “Chin” Indracusin under GMM Grammy, the country’s largest media-entertainment conglomerate.
She has portrayed Suay, a supporting character in the Thai romantic comedy film Loser Lover ( Sudkhet
Salet Pet) (2010). On top of that, Soraya was also part of Madonna’s opening dance troupe in the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project in New York City.
Soraya said she feels no pressure having been cast in The King And I because she considered this opportunity challenging. Besides daily rehearsal, she continues to hone her dance and performance skills by taking singing and dancing classes, which help strengthen her muscles in preparation for the upcoming tour as well.
“For me, ballet is similar to pantomime. My expression will be conveyed to audiences through gestures only. It’s acting and dancing at the same time. However, for Broadway, besides those two skills, the musical requires singing as well, which means I have to put all of my energy into delivering my emotions to the entire audience, including those in the back row,” she said.
CHOREOGRAPHERS WERE WORRIED ABOUT MY OPINION ON THEIR DESIGNS OF DANCE MOVEMENTS BECAUSE I’M THAI