"Your greatest love will never let you go"

- Paloma McGregor, dancer with Urban Bush Women

Dance Magazine has a regular last page featuring different artists' answers to "Why I Dance". I posted this article on my locker at NAFA all of last year until it got shredded by wear and tear and I keep returning to this line.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_6_83/ai_n31951766/

My Year in Art 2010 Part II

Time has simply flown by!  Nine months later, I finally acknowledge that I will never get around to writing in the detail that each of these merits, so I'm simply posting the rest of my 2010 list here, of the Jan-Oct 2010 experiences that I am savouring even now in Sep 2011.

Things I did...

1. It Appears That... (July 2010) by Ricky Sim. My first Esplanade Theatre Studio show, and an immense growing experience as a person and as a plant!
2. After Ricky's show I got a thrilling faux-celebrity moment when I promptly jumped on a plane the same evening to perform Nirmala Seshadri's This and That at Dance Theatre Workshop in New York. (July 2010)  NY is a sort of second home for me, after my college days when I began dancing.  It was incredible to be able to return to perform there, even in a small studio showing.  Also took lots of classes.  There's just nothing like dancing in New York!
   
3. My first semester in Albert Tiong's advanced modern class at NAFA. This is the terrifying achievement that every NAFA dance student yearns for from year one, to be promoted to the boot camp that is Albert's class.  To find out how this semester ended, see this posting Part I. For how my story with Albert continued...well that's for another post!
4. Javanese court dance with Neomi Ogo.  I have always loved the elegance of Javanese dance and now I love it even more for its precision and meditative quality.  But boy, is it tough!
5. Prostitution in Port Authority by Larry Clark (May 2010).  It felt like I'd come a long way with Larry from his first casting me in Flight in my first year and I was really honoured to get a fiesty solo, as a mama-san! Port Authority was great fun, not least of all because of the excuse to go and dye my hair in crazy colours.
6. Understudying Somewhere we hear... with Kuik Swee Boon. A punishingly beautiful experience to learn his repertory firsthand, which gave me a deep respect for the commitment and detail that goes into all of his work.

Things I experienced and won't forget, in no particular order...

1. Twardzik Ching Chor Leng's Lifeblood - The Singapore River at 8Q SAM! Besides the mind boggling dimensions of this piece and its clever play to ask us about what we think we control in resources and life, it was also the first time I got introduced to land art.
2. Poop by the Finger Players. A really simple, well crafted five hanky affair.
3. Comedy of the Tragic Goats by Cake Theatre.  Boom! Pow! No words required!
4. Blogging for Singapore Arts Festival 2010. Thank you Yish.  The blogging community that year was a wonderful platform for discussion and further enjoyment of the arts fest.
5. Singapore Arts Festival shows, coup de coeur!!! Hokkaido by Danny K, Heroine by Arco Renz and Su Wen-chi, The Manganiyar Seduction by Roysten Abel, The Netherlands Sewing Atelier
6.  Being Human by Malavika Mohanan.  A contemporary bharatanatyam experiment that she danced directly from the heart.
7. Matah Ati a Javanese classical dance/opera blockbuster, a tad long but impressive in scale.
8. While facilitating OC Women 4, I had the chance to rediscover The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  It's a poem that seemed cheesy to me in the past but it all started making powerful sense in 2010.
9. Buttered toast jus at Sage (which is sadly no more)
10. After 13 years, coming home to my dad's roast turkey