oddpuppy

Coming in out of the cold

2012-02-08T06:44:00.001+08:00

Travelling to another country, rehearsing in unfamiliar spaces, participating in a new creation, ploughing through the cold cold wind. In my innocence I never realised that performing life and cultural outreach is a much huger world outside the work I've known in Singapore.

This is pretty much my first full time production - daily rehearsals in an isolated space, living day in day out with the same collaborators, touring in our choreographer's beat-up little car. Minus so many of the daily distractions - other technique classes, part time jobs to pay the bills, additional projects, social life - that fill the air when I am working at home. Instead I am really dancing day to night - with preparations focused on a single project instead of the scattered repertoire as I knew it in school.

This degree of concentration is a luxury as well as a challenge. We have three weeks to go to the premiere of Focus by Kham Company at les Hivernales dance festival in Avignon. Some days I can hardly believe my luck to be here - and on other days I wonder if he chose the right dancer and if I'm actually up to this. If I can grow enough in these six weeks so that I'm not wasting all these fantastic facilities and arrangements where everything is taken care of.

2011 - My year in art

2011-12-26T02:09:00.000+08:00

This year has been PACKED with good stuff. I think I'll have much to digest for 2012.

Here it is, in mostly chronological rather than any other order!

Model Citizens, a play by the Necessary Stage (Jan)
Getting burned by Louise Burns during my modern dance exam - well I needed to start asking myself at some point what kind of artist I am... (Jan)
Learning to lenggang and ronggeng with Mdm Som Said (Jan-May)
Dancing Peter Chin's Syncretitude (May)
Dancing Albert Tiong's Checkmate (May)
A dinner at Nahm, Bangkok (May)
Lunch at Iggy's (May)
Dancing in The Hungry Stones by Raka Maitra (May)
SAF (May/June) Out of Context - for Pina, les ballets C de la B and Beautiful Thing 2, Padmini Chettur
The Screw of Thought workshop at Theatreworks (Jun)
A chance meeting with French choreographer Ole Khamchanla - little did I know what was to come, watch this space for 2012 updates... (Jun)
Teaching in the Singapore Schools Programme by TTRP/ITI - Grateful for some crazy adventures and experiments at RGPS and CHIJ-St Joseph's Convent (Jun-Jul)
Contact Improv Festival Kuala Lumpur (Jul)
My first Capoeira Batisado with Argola d'Ouro (Jul)
Cooling Off Day, a play by Wild Rice/Alfian Sa'at (Aug)
Pina, THE dance film of the year, by Wim Wenders (Sep during the Singapore International Film Festival)
Fear of Writing, a play at Theatreworks written by Tan Tarn How (Sep)
Creating PLAY! - a wacky-thoughtful dance/performance experiment with Joavien Ng, Yak Aik Wee, Patricia Toh and Bernice Lee at the ArtScience Museum (Oct)
My first solo dance work out of school - The Always Sea (Oct)
Being a part of the FangMaeKhong International Dance Festival in Laos (Oct)
Performing at and watching the 2High festival at the Brisbane Power House (Oct)
An exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Gallery of Art, Brisbane (Oct)
Dust: A recollection by Vertical Submarine (Nov)
Some introspective conversations with Singapore choreographer Nirmala Seshadri - watch this space. :) (Nov-Dec)
T.H.E Contact dance festival - as a volunteer and a participant, and a witness to many amazing performances (Dec)
Presenting my first live improv score at THE Contact's Open Stage platform with Chen Jiexiao and Sherry Tay! (Dec)
Walk with Me - an Amanda Heng retrospective at the Singapore Art Museum (Dec)
Wicked at the Marina Bay Sands Theatre - I haven't enjoyed a well-crafted musical so much since West Side Story! (Dec)

And now, time for a real holiday. :)

"Do not fear perfection. You will never achieve it"

2011-11-06T01:28:00.003+08:00

- Salvador Dali

The best premiere

2011-11-04T08:57:00.002+08:00

First tech run, Thakhek. Photo by Caroline Cochet.

I declare now that I fell in love with Laos last month. There will be some sentimental raving.

I am indebted to four squirming tots in a disused motel restaurant in Thakek. Who watched my first dress run of the Always Sea in Fang Mae Khong (FMK). They sat transfixed through all 20 minutes of languid soundscape and strange sitting and falling and object collection. Also the horde of tweens at the actual first show who were so weirded out that they actually ran away from me as I exited through the audience.

What a pleasure to have fresh eyes. An audience that you can amaze and touch.

These were people who have never seen any dance in their lives save for a bit of breakdancing. Part of me wishes I could see as they do, and see for the first time the ambitious mixed bag put together by Ole Khamchanla and his FMK team. The Vientiane-based Laobangfai b-boy crew (virtual teen celebs here) were the draw and local street dance crews opened the show. I wouldn't have bet that this audience would sit through it all - Lao dancers reinventing tradition and hip hop through contemporary dance, meditative contemporary Indian dance, Cambodian classical-meets club groove, clowning on Jacques Brel, Myanmar classicial dance battles b-boy, contemp hip-hop, stripped down experimental contemp, and my own weird installation performance thing. (See here for more info about the festival). And watch they did, in three towns.

I can still feel the press of the last audience we played to, in the cool night below the bemused gaze of President Souphanouvong and the hills of Luang Prabang. Maybe three hundred people, squeezed into standing room and peeking from benches or the tops of cars just to be able to see... They were completely along with us for the ride. We were all amazed together.

Immigration

2011-11-04T08:44:00.001+08:00

I have had the fortune to travel and perform a fair bit in the past year. The immigration forms gave me the realisation that I had a great luxury of self-definition.

Seems hard to believe that just five months ago I was still immersed in three years of formal dance training. That orgy of intensely self-directed sweat, angst, humblement, reshaping oneself through guidance. At the end of which I stopped writing “Student” and put down “Dancer” every time I crossed a border.

Then the last five months – The Hungry Stones. The Screw of Thought at Theatreworks. The Singapore School Project with ITI. Contact Improvisation festival KL. My capoeira batisado.The Always Sea. Randai. Play! at the ArtScience Museum. Fang Mae Khong in Laos. 2High in Brisbane.

It is odd to say this. These days, I don't think I am dancing. I am moving, a great deal, but not in the same sense that I understood this in my past few years at NAFA. I have my own work, and it is often movement but it is not necessarily dance as in the technical sense. In the rehearsed and prepared sense. In the rules of choreography sense.

I am seeking. I am drowning. I am reading and mis-reading other human beings and human bodies. Sniffing around for ambient energy and human history. I am asking questions and writing emo drivel like this and proposing that something could happen. And also I am spending a lot of time writing proposals and grant applications.

In the last month I started to write “artist” instead of “dancer”. Then I end up explaining that I don't actually paint or sculpt. It could just as well be “researcher” or “interpreter”. I still hesitate over the boxes Holiday and Business for “purpose of trip”. I am tempted to draw in another box for Art, or Life.

In some small way make our own

2011-09-20T01:19:00.003+08:00


Photo by Oranje Lwin.

Tonight I performed in a Randai workshop showing organised by the Intercultural Theatre Institute - the presentation of a four-day intensive together with a group of theatre students as part of the NAFA Symposium.

It was an incredibly special experience. For the first time I felt that contact with an unfamiliar culture and art form was so open and welcoming, and something that I could actually connect to and in some small way make my own. Our three master teachers from Institut Seni Indonesia Padang-Panjang. Pak Edmiral, Pak Halim and Pak Arif were warm and sincere as they arrived to share with us something that they confessed was deep inside them, and an integral part of the Minang culture that they treasure.

I have an increasing soft spot for folk art. At any rate, the folk art that is practised as art and not as commerce. The good stuff and other work that grows from it has a wonderful organic quality that I can't get enough of. (My own theory: The folk art of Singapore is in our food.)

Photo courtesy of Zaidi

Anyway, Randai. I have swollen hands.

And a yearning to visit Bukit Tinggi.

One journey ends, and another begins.

2011-08-28T00:28:00.003+08:00

Dear NAFA classmates, thank you for the inspiration to sum up our last three years, and look ahead to the future. Yesterday's convocation was an emotional moment for me. It was hard to look back on the way we've come - a mix of relief, achievement, joys and frustrations remembered, sadness that it's over, and most of all, gratitude.

This is what I shared with our class and guests yesterday.

_______________________________________

Good afternoon Mr. Frank Benjamin, Executive Chairman of FJ Benjamin Holdings Limited, Professor Cham Tao Soon, NAFA Board Chairman, Mr Choo Thiam Siew, NAFA President, NAFA Board members, Lecturers, Ladies & Gentlemen.

I am Chan Sze-Wei, a graduate of the Diploma in Dance. I am deeply honoured to have been invited to stand before you today, representing the Class of 2011.

Dear classmates, I am honoured to stand here among you and remember my first day at NAFA, three years and two months ago. On that day, one of my newfound classmates put it perfectly. She was happy to be here, she said, “because I am finally with my people”. Entering art school, we were finally in a space where our passion for art or dance or music or design didn’t make you an oddball or a weirdo. We were finally here, in a space together with other young people who knew that the choice to dedicate yourself to the arts was a legitimate one. And for some of us it wasn’t even a choice, but the recognition of a necessity. We knew exactly why we wanted to be here, the distances we had travelled, and the sacrifices we had made. While others among us started out simply because we didn’t know what else to do with our lives. We signed up for the first of many firsts, with little idea how this journey would change our lives.

For the purposes of this speech, I am really glad to have had the opportunity to get in touch with many friends across all the different faculties represented here today. There were stories that were celebratory and some that were bitter. Each was unique.

We are the ones who are left. We saw many others abandon this path along the way. Some couldn’t handle the mental or physical stress, some needed to support their families, or because they didn’t have the support of their families, or couldn’t muster the financial possibilities to find even $5,000 of school fees a year.

I believe that it’s normal that a number of those who come NAFA take a time-out, take longer to graduate or eventually decide that this isn’t the path for them. Why do I say this? Because I know that a life in the arts and creation is one of the loneliest and most challenging paths that we could possibly choose. Every day that we train, we practice, we create and perform is a day that we have to face ourselves and our weaknesses, and not run away. Allow me to clarify that this NAFA education is not about fun. We come here to NAFA and literally volunteer ourselves for a position where we receive criticism every day, all day, from teachers and peers and the most merciless of all, the voices in our own heads. I am not exaggerating when I say that we have known three years, some of us four, of blood, sweat, tears, and pain. Days of frustration, humiliation and craziness when we wondered if any of what we were doing or learning made sense, when we doubted we would see this course through. We learned that pride and failure were bitter pills to be swallowed day after day, followed by swallowing the advice that this was all for our own good.

But it’s not as if there is no fun at all in this arts education. It is something of a door to a funny landscape where you have to re-wire your sense of fun and find it re-connected to stress, craziness and physical and mental exhaustion. Does that sound like opening week or production week, anyone? We all know that there’s no other kind of fun we’d rather have and no other place that we would rather be.

Also on the other side of this surreal and confusing door are instructions to be different and unique, yet to conform. To learn discipline, technique and professionalism – and yet still try to hang on to a sense of who you are and what’s important to you. All these contradictions have a wonderful old-fashioned charm. It may not be the only way to become an artist. But it is a process that has allowed us to start to discover who we are, and realise potential we never imagined we had. We were given first chances to show our work to Singapore and to the world. We acquired friends and mentors for life, and lessons for life.

My message to my class today is: let’s believe in ourselves and what we have to say. The best gift that we have received in our time here was not the inspiration and praise from our mentors and colleagues. Just as valuable were the criticisms and rejections. This was probably the best preparation that our teachers could give us. Let’s face it. We live in a society that generally doesn’t understand or appreciate what we do. If we’re really lucky, art is viewed as a profitable commodity or convenient propaganda vehicle. When we’re not, we are too often brushed off with the assumption that what we do is self-indulgent, wasteful, incendiary, needlessly provocative or simply meaningless. In a culture where individuals are too often treated as political and intellectual children, a young artist has a particularly heavy burden of proof to carry.

And I am sad to say that while NAFA is a sanctuary for the arts, there were moments where I felt that we couldn’t fully escape those same elements of the real world that want art and artists to be predictable, viable and pleasing.

So it is up to us, and only us, to first believe that what we say is worth saying. And then to go ahead and say it!

Let us not be afraid. There will be little recognition and probably even less remuneration. Don’t let that stop you. Let us not be afraid to make mistakes. Not be afraid to continue to make meaning of our world. To see and remember for society what is beautiful, what is forgotten, what has no voice, what has been censored by fear and by choice. Let us speak and sing, draw and dance, play and produce what is really important to us. Let us not fear to be loved and to be hated. To provoke questions and provoke reactions. To communicate. To touch people’s hearts. To be understood and misunderstood. To surprise and to delight. To put ourselves and our work out there in its truest and most powerful form. Let us not be afraid to let our art guide us.

My dear fellow schoolmates of the Class of 2011, and now my fellow colleagues in the arts, I am proud of you and I am excited for what our future holds. Now it is time for thanks. To our families, our lecturers, and friends. The people who have loved us and supported us all this while. We really could not have done this without you. Let’s now rise and give these very special people a round of thanks and applause.

Cheeky memories - Flip Book

2011-05-25T13:09:00.004+08:00

For the first half hour, I swore that Cunningham and Cage were turning in their graves.

Charmatz and co. looked like a gang of merry bandits stuffed into the most merciless unitards to do a massive spoof a la the Reduced Shakespeare Company. The arena-like stage was filled with incomplete contractions, sloppy balances, and careless lines paired with cheesy grimaces. A pathetic mime imitation of Cage doing old fashioned analog editing while the music alternated between Cage-y noises, static, and period pop of the 50s and 60s. I found myself laughing, but in horror. Among the sound crew seated just in front of the stage, the namesake picture book was being flipped as they danced, but even in the small Drama Centre theatre I couldn't see a thing of it. The house was half full, and one chap walked out. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or even more pissed off when the dance seemed to end in a premature curtain call at what felt like thirty minutes. Billed as a memorial to Cunningham, Flip Book seemed to be no more a tribute than Joavien Ng's bitter take on Martha Graham in Body Inquire (2008).

Then they started again! For two more rounds, each faster and sillier than the last. Then I had some time to relax a bit and start to enjoy the nonsense, and get prodded to think about my discomfort. What is this awe which my Western contemporary dance training has given me for the work of Cunningham? What has he really left to us? The strict precision of form and direction that I studied with Larry Clark (two generations from Cunningham via Viola Farber) is one way to remember Merce, but these philosophies about movement and space also influenced a great part of the dance world even if you didn't actually study with him. In the 50s and 60s his company struggled with great resistance from audiences, but his work has now become canon. What would it take today to innovate like him? To surprise, shock, disgust and delight in the way that he used to do?

It made more sense as I heard more about Charmatz' underlying concept for the piece. This wasn't one of those pleasing shows where the audience can get its satisfaction in one go and understand everything just from seeing the work. It is very specific in this case, as Mayo Martin has pointed out it is a work that references something that references something. And Cunningham may be a giant in the contemporary dance world but you just can't compare it to the anglophone world's access to Shakespeare. This is one of those shows that requires a fair bit of audience work to grasp. I don't think that's bad, but it's also not easy.

I was interested in how Charmatz insists on working out each edition of Flip Book in only five days, and that he recreates it simply from the visual impression of the pictures, with groups of very different experience - high school kids, Cunningham veterans (incidentally very Pina/Kontakthof). Here was a strong reflection on history and how we receive and replicate it, and a deliberate contrast to the usual methods by which we study dancing - directly from the master's body, precisely, painstakingly and unfortunately too often without questioning.
Flip Book by Boris Charmatz/Musee de la danse, Drama Centre Theatre on 16-17 May 2011

The Hungry Stones

2011-05-23T13:15:00.006+08:00

My first production out of NAFA is with Raka Maitra's Hungry Stones, this Saturday 28 May 8pm at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.

When I studied calligraphy and seal carving at NAFA, Wee Beng Chong was adamant that stones have life. He showed me several examples of the marble blocks that we use to create seals, regenerating themselves in crazy crystalline forms! It gave me a whole new way of looking at why we engrave them, and seeing Huang Laoshi's style of recapturing the look and feel of ancient time in the present. Then a couple of years later, I have gotten cast as a living stone, full of stories!

Tickets available through SISTIC. Details here.

As it Fades

2011-05-23T12:29:00.007+08:00

Pick of the week!

This is the most powerful piece to date from T.H.E, and Swee Boon's most focused statement on the emotional content of lost Chinese dialects and personal histories that the present has received from past generations, set among a mobile city of frosted glass towers.

The climax of the piece was a quiet one, with the dancers' parents emerging from the darkness and taking the hands of the company dancers, sharing a very private moment of connection and gratitude, the vision then filtered through playful silhouettes of a chain of girls. The dancing by members of the first and second companies was of all the virtuosic physicality that we have come to expect of T.H.E dancers, with a fresh element of a more gestural and even comic vocabulary.

It was clear that Swee Boon's muse in this piece was the newest, tiniest and youngest member of the main company - Indonesian-born and Singapore-trained Jessica Christina. Of the many commendable performances of the evening, Jessica simply shone. She carried the piece from opening to closing with a frenetic precision and fragility, and a maturity in performance quite beyond her years and experience.

It was however a pity that Swee Boon has not managed to find a composer to work with on this piece - though each of the contemporary music selections were appropriate to the choreography, I wasn't able to hear them as a coherent soundtrack or connect them to the haunting Hainanese song that opened the piece.

As it Fades, T.H.E Dance Company, 21 May 2011 at the Esplanade Theatre

I want more people to remember - Singapore Arts Festival 2011

2011-05-23T11:09:00.006+08:00

The Arts Fest has just begun, but already I feel like I've been running a marathon. Back to back with the Singapore Biennale, overlapping with the World Dance Alliance's free dance events of Singapore Dance Week, and the Esplanade programming of the Hungry Stones smack in the middle of the Arts Fest programme. It's a crazy amount of art to take in (and give out)!

Sadly, I've had to give away half my tickets because of my production schedule, so I'm counting on friends and blogs to tell me about the rest of the shows. I also don't have the time to churn out full length reflections on everything, so am giving the arts fest blog a miss. I will however be posting snippets here on what I've seen.

Apart from my rant about the festival website, my overall feeling is that the arts fest programming is quite interesting this year. The theme is simple but has the personal, sociological and conceptual dimensions. I have been surprised at the number of non-artist friends who have actually noticed the festival theme this year, and told me that they like it very much. There's a good mix of accessible and experimental work this year, which I am enjoying, and if I had more time I would definitely have caught the selection of free programming and public-friendly work. Choir Karaoke and Filem Filem look brilliant! The outdoor festival village has a nice energy to it after the post-show crowds start coming in at 103opm, although I am disturbed that the main feature of the village seems to be the Shiraz bar and kebab stand, and that from the exterior, the outdoor theatre has the feeling of a fortress against the un-ticketed.

So what happened to the ticket sales? It is painful to go to the dance performances and see the Esplanade Theatre and even the smaller Drama Centre at 50% house, when the performances have been excellent. I can imagine how tough it must be for the performers to look out into rows of empty seats, even if the other half of the house is moved to a standing ovation. On the other hand, what I hear from the music and theatre programming (that I had to give away my tickets to, bleah) though, is that the houses are doing just fine.

I actually like the concept of this year's dance programming - tributes to three dance greats Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Kazuo Ohno - and thought it would work well with audiences by banking on the names of the inspirations while bringing audiences to new work. This as opposed to the blockbuster-type programming we had last year with Sylvie Guillem and Cloud Gate. But it wasn't to be. It can't help that right now there is an esplanade publicity bombardment for the Nederlands Dans Theatre and the Mariinsky Ballet in the next few months, which aren't part of the arts festival (or dans festival, for that matter). I suppose that a large part of the Singapore audience, both local and expat, have yet to mature from the celebrity recognition phase. It's like visiting Paris so that you can show off your photos of the Eiffel Tower - and whether you liked Paris doesn't have to matter very much - but the Belgian or Cambodian experimental interpretation of the tower isn't going to interest you very much. And god forbid that you have a Korean superstar concert to compete with at the same time... my mum would have taken over my ticket for the Living Dance Studio from Beijing, but she was watching Rain. Of course.

A part of me hearkens a little to the sleepy arts scene of the 1990s, when it was possible to see pretty much everything in town, of all artistic disciplines. I love that we have such vibrancy today and a much larger audience base overall, but it really feels like all the events are cannibalising each another.

I sincerely hope the dance film component is doing better. I shall see next week!

On a tangent about Pina Bausch memorials. I enjoyed Ballets C de la B's Out of Context very much (snippet on the way), but I did wonder why we couldn't have gotten Pina's own Tanzteater Wuppertal, which is currently on its memorial tour around the world. I saw them in Hong Kong in March, and realised what a waste it is that the dance audiences of Singapore have never seen them here. Not when she was alive and the company visited Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2008, either.

Dancing can change your life

2011-05-18T01:15:00.004+08:00

It certainly has for me. I can hardly believe that my three years at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) are over. In the past month I sped through a daze of impossibly long days. Rehearsals, technique examinations, final year choreography project, bump in for our final performance in the department showcase. Thank you cards. Editing weepy videos all night. Final year end party. It was so hard to imagine it all coming to an end, that we sat in the park with each other and a lot of vodka until the wee hours of the morning.

This is gonna be the sappy posting.

I think I knew what a huge gamble I was taking three years ago when I handed in my resignation letter in the civil service and headed to full time dance school. What I had no idea of was how my life was going to change. I find it really difficult to imagine myself in my old life now. Hard to imagine ironing my shirts, jet setting in suits and heels, scribbling in long meetings and drawing a comfy paycheck. I am surprised how uninteresting it sounds to me now. The thought of long meetings and laptop-lugging is enough to make my back twinge.

I am really grateful that a lot of good people gave a chance to an unlikely dancer - starting with friends and teachers who encouraged me to perform and choreograph when I was still working full time, and the faculty at NAFA who auditioned me and accepted me, even though I was over the age limit. A dance diploma programme is no joke. I wondered many times if I would survive the sheer misery of the technical training, the pain every day, the injuries that took me off my feet. I don't think I would have even passed the attendance requirement if I hadn't had a faithful partner to wheedle me out of bed every morning at 6am to make the long commute to school.

I encountered a lot of scepticism when I chose a local school for my dance training. Were the students of good caliber? The faculty of international standard?

In the first few weeks of school I realised that of my cohort of 22, none of us were "perfect". Most of us didn't have perfect bodies for dance, many were late starters with little dance background, some didn't have the finances (to complete the NAFA education), and many in my batch were to me really young and lacking in focus. I believe now that it was exactly the right place for me. In a programme full of imperfect dancers, we were there to encourage each other. I want to give credit to the faculty at NAFA for their dedication to nurture anybody with the commitment to try. However unlikely all of us seemed, our teachers believed that we could be transformed. Believed that from the passion that each of us showed at audition time, each of us could beat the odds and make it to a professional level.

I was able to work with some wonderfully diverse faculty, both local and international. Graham and Limon classes actually felt like coming home to my earlier training in New York. It was meaningful to work with Asian artists on their own journey to reconcile the contemporary and the traditional. The NAFA signature curriculum that I went through exposed me to both Western and Asian art traditions, and different disciplines such as music, calligraphy and fashion. It gave me many avenues for reflection on history, identity and society. I am especially grateful to those teachers who urged me to see myself as an artist, not a student, and to demand quality work from and for myself.

We ended our programme with a graduating batch of just 9 of us. I think each of us fought tooth and nail to make it through - through to yet another beginning.

Singapore Arts Fest 2011 - Let's go!

2011-03-04T23:09:00.004+08:00

Early bird bookings open this week. I really like the mix of familiar and fresh programming. My picks:

Memory II: Hunger, Living Dance Studio (Beijing) - One of my favourite dance theatre ensembles since their visit with "Report on Giving Birth" here in 2005. Their new production looks at personal memories of the Cultural Revolution. This should be powerful stuff.

Crack by Arco Renz and Amrita Arts - Who could forget Renz' madly intense Heroine that was here at the arts fest last year. Plus one of my favourites among the Southeast Asian groups exploring classical forms. I never imagined the two could be put together. But from what I've seen in the last few years, Amrita's director Fred Frumberg has made some good collaborative choices in bringing non-Cambodian artists to work with the company. I'd trust that this is another wonderful adventure.

As it Fades by T.H.E - Sneak previewed at the Contact festival last December. Swee Boon is trying a new look, more raw and less (apparently) produced. I liked.

"Dance Greats" programming on Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Kazuo Ohno - and takes on their legacies by Ohno's son and Boris Charmatz (Musee de la danse). Yum.

Dance/film series - This was great last year, if poorly attended because of bad scheduling and publicity. This year the films have been branded "I want to remember..." with half on the dance greats and another series of dance shorts by Singaporean, other asian and international filmmakers. Don't quite understand the repetition of some programming choices though.

Javanese Moonlight Intertwined - I just can't get enough of Javanese dance and look forward to these court dancers. The dancing is paired with a contemporary acapella/gamelan music experiment. I suppose I could risk it. Even the cheesy title isn't going to put me off.

What I hate - the arts fest website. The mishmash categorisations by themes that all sound like the same thing: "Histories" "Personal memories" "Lost languages and memories". There must be better ways to convince audiences to cross genres, other than frustrating and confusing them with the programme.

My rant here. To suffer the SAF website yourself, click here.

"Your greatest love will never let you go"

2011-02-07T23:58:00.003+08:00

- 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

2011-02-07T23:35:00.018+08:00

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...

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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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...

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.
Poop by the Finger Players. A really simple, well crafted five hanky affair.
Comedy of the Tragic Goats by Cake Theatre. Boom! Pow! No words required!
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.
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
Being Human by Malavika Mohanan. A contemporary bharatanatyam experiment that she danced directly from the heart.
Matah Ati a Javanese classical dance/opera blockbuster, a tad long but impressive in scale.
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.
Buttered toast jus at Sage (which is sadly no more)
After 13 years, coming home to my dad's roast turkey

My year in art I - Nov/Dec 2010

2011-01-28T23:12:00.016+08:00

Some days are a gift. There were so many in 2010 and as I started to write up my "Year in Art" last month, I realised that there have been so many milestones that I would like to write about. So this rather late list will come in instalments, in some sort of reverse chronological order.

1. Pain
So it's funny that when I choose to start with November 2010, the first "gift" must start with this. The most frightening part of my 2010 came at the end of October and completely turned my next two months around. When my calf muscles fizzled out it was the first time I had to deal with a severe injury and to accept that part of it was going to be chronic for the rest of my life. I had no idea how unprepared I was - for being unable to walk, run, stretch, roll, jump, dance as I knew how. I wasn't prepared to forgo my exams or for the completely lousy feeling of not dancing. Dancing is when I feel alive, and suddenly I wasn't fully alive. I started to question my plans and the fickle art that I have given up so much for. I asked myself if I could still afford to love dancing this much, and if I could ever dance with the same abandon again if it meant getting hurt.
(the sequel to this story is in 2011, and I hope I shall tell it to you soon)

2. Graey Festival 22-28 November
The Graey festival was the best consolation I could have in the horrible weeks right after school was out for the year. Curated by choreographer Raka Maitra, this festival tends to the experimental and an exposure of the live artistic process - so termed "vivisection" this time around. I am so grateful that Raka invited her students to be volunteers and gave me a reason to not worry about my own dancing and spend every day for a week in the oddball comforts of the Substation, in the company of some amazing Asian artists presenting performances as well as "open rehearsals". The latter turned out to be a series of wonderfully intimate workshops and frank conversations with the artists presenting at the festival. So many vivid moments are still with me. Eko Supriyanto in private dialogue with his mask of Prince Panji - Yvonne Ng's conversational live warm-up for her snarling, earthbound improvisation piece "Headdress" - the stirring austerity of Navtej Johar's first collaboration with Zulkiflie Mahmod in the light of one cold bulb above the catwalk - Tripura Kashyap whipping her chain of bells - Scarlet Yu in a torrent of white dust - Raka and Eko sculpted together as Ravana returning to the womb.

3. T.H.E Contact Festival 11-18 Dec
This is a little company bent on the impossible. After a punishing year on main stages in Singapore and on international tour, Kuik Swee Boon's lean company managed to pull off a full-scale week of performance, workshops and masterclasses by both local and international teachers from Asia and Europe. I spent the week as a festival volunteer - dancing a little, but mostly taking tickets and making announcements. It was a shame that the performances were under-publicised, but overall the programme was very strong and a real treat to be immersed in.

Waterbloom remains my favourite work by Swee Boon. I love its self-contained layers and its world of floating athleticism, though I still don't know what to make of the enigmatic ending between Sylvia Yong's elastic pacing and the skittering little part first created on Lee Ren Xin and this year performed by Jessica Christina. This performance brought me back to the wave of euphoria, also in the University Cultural Centre, the night of its premiere in the programme Variance in (2008). That celebration of a stunning new company that arrived with a stable of home-groomed talent that was this unexpected, visual miracle. The dancers looked even more powerful and fluid this time around, although a little cramped on the Theatre Studio stage. And how I will miss Sylvia Yong, who made this her retirement show. She is simply alight on stage, full of magnetic intensity and whiplike extensions that take my breath away.

There was of course a whole lot more going on than just T.H.E. The festival presented an ambitious menu including a local triple bill of T.H.E, Singapore Dance Theatre and Frontier Danceland, an evening of work by young choreographers of T.H.E's second company, two studio showings of Asian choreoraphers and workshopped pieces, and finally a full evening of T.H.E main company performing work by Swee Boon and Korean guest choreographer Kim Jae Duk. I thoroughly enjoyed the contrast of the frenetic strength in the classes, choreography and performance by Jae Duk. He puts together a rascal's instinct for hip hop, modern dance, tradition and gesture with showy, snappy virtuosity. Sometimes he slides towards primetime slapstick, then swings back with brutality, speed and mesmerizing dynamic shifts. It was another completely different planet again with the suspended economy of solo shown by the young Taiwanese choreographer Chou Shu Yi.

4. A retreat to the hills
I took a little trip after Christmas to Thailand and Laos. Two pieces of natural art that I am keeping with me: climbing inside the white limestone waterfall outside Chiang Mai, and the dramatic green creases in the hills of Northern Laos as seen from the window of a turboprop plane.

"Never be afraid of failure."

2011-01-27T00:21:00.001+08:00

"Never be afraid of failure."

The right advice at the right time. I didn't know until now how much I needed to hear this as a young choreographer.

Thank you, Larry Clark.

I love pain

2010-11-18T00:21:00.006+08:00

I haven't taken such a long break since I came to NAFA and started dancing full time in 2008. It is much harder than I imagined to simply stop moving, as I'm supposed to do in this enforced time-out.

I confessed ashamedly to my physio. "I've been a good girl. I only did yoga on Saturday, very gently. Then I walked all over Orchard Road on Sunday." (It was supposed to be a book reading, not strenuous for the legs. Except that I was hopelessly lost.)

Did it hurt? Of course it did! Should I have stopped? Probably. But sitting at home drives me nuts. Lack of endorphins, sweat, rhythm, stretch, fresh air, pain...

I am beginning to see that while dancing all this time, I have developed a pretty perverted relationship to pain. I had gotten so used to it, day in day out. Pain, and fatigue. I wore it as a good girl guide's badge. I figured it was supposed to happen when you pushed hard so you could grow. Good dancing hurts. Every day. I often said that I was planning to print a T-shirt for class: I LOVE PAIN. The pain mecca was the triple row of koyok creams and plasters at Mustafa.

Now I keep thinking of that day four weeks ago. By the time Mr A bellowed "how am I supposed to know that you are injured? If you don't tell me I will still throw daggers at you as usual!", it was too late.

Was it supposed to count as 'injury'? It was just another regular day of pain waiting to be delivered only by the momentary exhilaration of dancing, which in turn would cause more pain? I suppose I should have noticed when my left knee gave way, but if I recovered I could only dance on! If my muscles began to twinge and cramp, I needed only to hold on for another five minutes and get an ice pack later...

I asked too much. My body showed me its limits. Decided to educate me that the little calf muscles are absolutely essential for balance, walking, turning, jumping. Decided to teach me that fearlessness is supposed to have bounds.

I need a new relationship to pain.

dancing for love

2010-10-17T01:11:00.006+08:00

It has been a long hiatus since the arts festival, and a lot has been happening for me in my final year at NAFA Dance. Oddly enough, the theme of my last post in June resonates a lot right now. We've just struggled through another production week of NAFA's annual Third Space show at the dan:s festival at the Esplanade Recital Studio. I say struggled because for us student performers and crew, it is a mad battle against the fatigue of the theatre schedule on top of our usual coursework and the accumulation of injuries and stress as we wind up our academic semester.

Dancing is indeed painful. Injuries are something that I am becoming used to as part of dancing life, with ice packs and anti-inflammatories as my best friends. What is more difficult is facing fellow cast members who may not care or work as much as you do, critics (professional and non-professional) who are unenthused about your work, audiences who sit stonily and reject every ounce of heart that you open to them. And toughest of all, your own expectations of yourself that can be the hardest to meet. Especially when working in the "contemporary asian" genre these last few years, I have encountered all of these a lot. Very often I have wondered what I am dancing for. It's horribly depressing. We had one of those stony audiences tonight, on the closing night of our show.

The only answer I have found is that I must be dancing for me. First and foremost I have to find something that I really connect with and believe in with the work, despite all doubts that others may have about it. It is my own story to discover and share. Then I have to go out on the shaky limb where I simply trust that in this conviction, I will be able to touch somebody, somewhere, out there.

I am coming to treasure a piece of advice I got from Ms Robin Payne, a director and former theatre lecturer at NAFA: that as a responsible performer, I need to believe that every work that I am currently involved in is perfect. I was confused to hear this at first. But this has become more and more useful to me in the last few months. As a performer I am responsible for making the work real. It is in my belief to bring it to fruition. I may have my own doubts or hear more from others, but when I come to the rehearsal studio and the stage I need to put those aside and surrender to the world in the work. Any doubts and fears I carry, anything less than full conviction will only sabotage the performance.

So pushing aside the boundaries in Raka Maitra's Boundaries...Dreams...Beyond this weekend, I did feel rewarded. It started to make sense in my own life and my own story what it means to face the many rules and OB markers that rule our lives, and to find courage to make a lonely journey and cross them into uncharted territory where our lives are truly our own.

You have to love dancing to stick to it

2010-06-24T23:21:00.003+08:00

This is posted everywhere since Merce died. But it captures so completely what makes me and so many friends dance, I think I must keep it handy.

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls."
- Merce Cunningham

T.h.e O in Old

2010-06-01T23:07:00.004+08:00

Swee Boon is that soft but completely unrelenting director and teacher, who softly runs what are probably the most punishing rehearsals in Singapore. In performance it all pays off. T.H.E gets better every time I see them. They move with an unrivaled fluidity, power and control.

Full review on the Singapore Arts Festival Blog

Where to find me!

2010-05-31T22:41:00.006+08:00

It has been pretty quiet around here because i have a bunch of projects these school holidays.

One of them is my next show! I am dancing for Ricky Sim in It Appears That... in the Esplanade Studio Series on 9-10 July. Click here for details.

I have also been swallowed by the Singapore Arts Festival, as audience and blogger! You can see my ramblings about the Festival Opening, Wind Shadow, In the Mood and a few more at the Singapore Arts Festival blog.

Dancing in the Shadows

2010-05-29T23:14:00.000+08:00

Wind shadow was stunning.

But wouldn’t it have been more accurately billed as “Cai Guo-Qiang feat. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre”?

Read more of my review on the Singapore Arts Fest Blog

Velocity - Needs some revving up

2010-05-06T11:08:00.000+08:00

Note to self- need to break that bad habit of thinking of all Taiwanese choreography in the same box as Cloud Gate. There is other stuff out there, and young choreographers especially need support for doing something different.

So I tried to prod myself not to be annoyed when the all-male cast of Horse spent the first five minutes of their act falling over in half-hearted contact improv and very casually scrunching paper into hats, vests, musical instuments, fishing rods.... I love a good po-mo moment but it didn't seem to come to much. There were several entertaining moments of accordion-laced slapstick worthy of a saccharine prime time tv comedy, a rousing parody of military-parade gun tricks done with floppy paper rifles, a surprisingly effortless trio where a chain of guys took turns to hoist each other overhead and fold between the legs of their partners. Finally, three impressive solos hinting of martial arts, release technique and stylised contact improv. The lanky guy whose solo ended the piece repeated an astoundingly soundless flip from his shoulders to his feet.

Sadly, it came across as a sophmorish improvisation class. None of vignettes seemed to have been thoughfully strung together and the transitions from were abrupt. The manila-paper cupboards and eight monitor screens projecting grass and static didn't do much for the production either.

It may be worth checking back on these boys in about five years. But for now they need some time to grow.

Velocity by Horse at the Esplanade Theatre Studio on 1st May 2010
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Memory

2010-04-14T23:12:00.003+08:00

Memory by the Living Dance Studio (Beijing) at Theatreworks this weekend.

Of course this must arrive suddenly in the peak period of arts/dance activity for the year. But for them, I have no hesitations catching my second show in a day (after Cake's Cuckoo Birds).

I have never forgotten their intense "Report on Giving Birth", staged here during the 2005 arts festival. The UCC theatre studio was emptied of seats and transformed into a cavernous chamber where the audience roamed between gritty performance installations of women backed up against a wall in rubber kitchen gloves, writhing on a table, whispering feverishly in a line of quilted sleeping bags as they recounted their lives in pregnancy, birth, family. So close, you could feel their breath, sweat, and pain. Haunted by magnified sections of themselves projected live from the roving camera of the company's videographer Wu Wenguang. Then the intimate studio workshop a few days later (just three of us dancers, I recall!), and choreographer Wen Hui presenting us with toilet roll improvisation and the conviction that all the creative material we would ever need was present in our own lives.

finding centre

2010-02-20T23:42:00.004+08:00

Since I began dancing, I treasure my centre. This rare centredness is a revelation that I guess only certain physical training can teach one to savour, though we all live in daily gravity. Dancers, acrobats, gymnasts, practitioners of tai chi and yoga may touch this. As slippery as perfect pitch, the value of a complex number?

The special moments where the body perfectly aligns, a miracle of living counter-forces finding stillness in a universe of constant motion. You could stay suspended forever on one leg, five metatarsals, a hand, a head. You are invicible and if you leave it for another direction, another level, a dynamic, it is because you so choose. I'm not a natural at balancing, so those fleeting moments come and go and it's a constant fight to rediscover them with practice, a teacher or a physiotherapist. With belief that I'll find it again, and hope that it will be more often than not. Perhaps it's an addiction. Experiencing that centre personally or vicariously, is just thrilling. The ultimate connection, control, harmony, and surrender.

2010-01-06T09:38:00.002+08:00

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home'"
- Twyla Tharp

2009: My year in art

2010-01-02T03:56:00.002+08:00

Moments that made 2009 for me, in no particular order

Seeing...
1. Nederlands Dans Theater in Silent Screen by Lightfoot Leon. That endless black dress.
2. Ahn Eun-me Dance Company in Let me Change Your Name? as well as Eun-me herself in workshop, screaming, effervescent, incredibly foul-mouthed and lucid
3. T.H.E. Company in Variance, choreography by Kuik Swee Boon and Zhang Xiao-Xiong. The awed silence that preceded the applause of a hall of those who had long watched, waited, taught, danced with, studied from the company on stage. Elated to see some of our own in a modern dance company reaching for the stars.
4. Q&A by Danny K. Dance as artistic statement for and against the institutions.
5. Cake Theatre in the Comedy of the Tragic Goats. Wrenching physical theatre, in deft local hands.
6. Amrita Arts, recreating the sacred heritage of Cambodian classical dance with great humanity.
7. Sidi Larbi and Maria Pages in Dunas.
8. Simon Beale as King Leontes in The Bridge Project performing a Winter's Tale.
9. Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (on video)
10.Toccata, a collaboration of John Sharpley and Lim Fei Shen.
11. Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux danced by Ashley Bouder and Simon Ball, and the Bournonville Flower Festival at Genzano danced by Iana Salenko and Marian Walter at an Evening with Paloma Herrera and Friends
12. Lifeblood, the glowing tower of Singapore River-water by Twardzik Ching Chor Leng at the Singapore Art Museum.
13. Rosa Park as Odette/Odile in Singapore Dance Theatre's Swan Lake.
14. Three thousand women shouting passionately for feminism at the AWARE Extraordinary General Meeting
15. Stephen Hough playing Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Class with...
16. Aaron Khek
17. Jamal Jalil
18. Maud Toledano
19. Ricky Sim
20. Wee Beng Chong, calligraphy and seal carving
21. John Sharpley, music in dance
22. Maria Luisa Arias of Compania Nacional de Danza (workshop)
23. Kuik Swee Boon (workshop)

Dancing for...
24. Nirmala Seshadri, This and That
25. Larry Clark, Flight
25. Lee Ren Xin, as a synapse, a maggot, mini dinosaur, pillow and who knows what else!
26. Studying excerpts of the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux

Listening to...
27. Arvo Part, Fur Alina
28. Yo La Tengo
29. Battles
30. Animal Collective
31. The Analog Girl
32. Angela Hewitt playing the Goldberg Variations
33. The Concord Sonata by Charles Ives

Reading...
34. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
35. A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis
36. Joan Acocella in the New Yorker

37. A meal at Jaan par Andre.

38. Creating a collaboration with the brilliant and modest composer Jenny Rompas.

39. My first visit to India, the glorious cacophony of Delhi and new friends made at the World Dance Alliance conference.

A swan is born, light as a feather

2009-12-19T00:58:00.002+08:00

In every generation of dancers, a swan is born. With fluid, delicate arms that emote from the shoulders to the finger tips, but also the impeccable technique and strength required for the most challenging of classical roles. With cool poise to hold the balances of the white swan and the fluttering battements serres of her love-lorn heart - and at the same time the sensuous hauteur of the black swan and her tempting renverses and whipped fouettés,arabesques slicing the stage with her sexual attraction.

The last time we witnessed just a fleeting taste of such a swan was with Ulyana Lopatkina's visit to Singapore two years ago with the Russian stars gala, when she danced the dying swan (not part of the swan lake repertory but which has influenced many contemporary productions of the ballet). The undulations of her arms were heart-rending. She taught me that this ballet was not some trivial story but undoubtedly connected in character and concept) of a melancholic prince trying to escape from dull reality. With her anguished articulations of the shoulder, elbow and wrist, the head thrown back, she told me that love was a dangerously powerful force in humanity. It could spark desire and uplift, but it was also a force that could destroy a human so utterly and profoundly. Lopatkina's earlier, technically flawless displays of the classical Swan Lake role can be seen on YouTube.

There was another such swan at SDT's production of swan lake at the esplanade this week. Coming to us after a comprhensive career at the Korean National Ballet, Rosa Park gave us a riveting rendition of the white and black swans Odette and Odile, in what must go down as an outstanding performance in the history of SDT.

Of a slight silhouette and marvellously expressive and supple arms, Park is a pleasure to watch. She seized the limelight with rare charisma and a wonderfully nuanced portrayal of Odette's chaste charms. She appeared indeed as light as a feather, skimming gracefully through the bourrees suivi steps across the stage, and floating with commmendable control through her adagio pirouettes. Her Odile was no less impressive, as she flirted ruthlessly through renverses and attitudes, and then whirled confidently and continuously through 30 fouetté turns - the latter impressive despite some substantial drifting across the stage, Park compeleted the traditional music just a touch short of the coveted 32 pirouettes, and topped off with a triple turn. It was certainly more impressive than any fouettes I have seen at SDT in years. Her spirited characterisations even elicited some sense of amorous feeling from Chen Peng as Prince Siegfried, in contrast to his usual dryly technical delivery that tends to have all the charm of an ornate wallpaper. Together, Park and Chen were well-matched and executed several examples of beautifully effortless partnering. I would hope that this is the start of a promising new partnership.

The leading couple's work was the highlight of the evening. While the corps de ballet danced credibly through the challenging group choreography, there were a few too many moments of unsynchronised and poorly-blocked dancing. It was perhaps a symptom of the transitions in the makeup of the company, which has seen the departure or retirement of several important dancers, and the introduction of at least five new faces in the past year - of which Ms Park is one.

-Swan Lake at te Esplanade Theatre from 17-20 Dec 2009. Alternate lead cast Chihiro Uchida and Wang Hao.

facets

2009-12-08T03:06:00.004+08:00

I have never known so much about my body. The apparition of bones and muscles heretofore unseen: the sternum, the sacral ala. Facets of the vertebrae, tibialis anterior. The plantar fascia and levator scapula. I wake in the night wondering about the deep clack from the acetabulum, the balance of tensions at the cervical. For only aesthetic purposes, I would like to to teach an anatomy lesson from the sculpted contours of a dancer's back.

What a wondrous instrument the body is. How unique. In each achievent and each injury, it is my enemy, my teacher and my friend.

How long can a body last?

Humbled by movement

2009-11-08T01:05:00.008+08:00

At the Musee de la danse project at Theatreworks, a choreographer (Boris Charmatz) invited me to hop on to one of four box thrusts that had been lowered to waist-level in the studio theatre, above the clutch of eminent artists lying on the floor and tackling the question of "what is dance in Singapore".

"Just sleep there" he said, and I lay down on the dusty shafts, and attempted to create a position. Boris was sceptical. "How can you sleep like that?"

He was right. I opted for something less contrived and more comfortable. Then I entered a zero-gravity world, dazzeld by the fluorescence of the worklights so far above. Floating as child on the sea. Helpless, and free.

We are so used to creating movement every day as dancers, striving for finer or stronger control. But movement does not belong to human beings alone. It is also the property of beings non-sentient, infitesimal. Planetary and microscopic. We are of the same family in our origin.

Screen Dance

2009-10-10T00:36:00.006+08:00

One of the special things that I have seen recently is a British Council-sponsored series on "Screen Dance" in the UK. Contemporary choreographers are these days so enamoured of putting "multimedia" video projections into their works, but in Singapore there are far fewer of us looking into video itself as a performance medium.

Who needs lunch when you can go for a talk by the electrifying Liz Aggiss. She began dancing when she was 30, becoming a fearless artist and choreographer, and also a dance film maker and academic. In person and in some quirky on-screen introductions in the film, she pointed out the vast possibilities of film for directing and framing the audience's point of view, and also creating special effects to transcend gravity, venue, and sound. How nice to be able to keep a record of the work for posterity, that is made to be viewed on screen instead of inch-high blots for dancers on the wide-angle stage shot. It surely helps when generous institutions realise the potential and reach of dance film. The UK has the BBC, Channel 4 and the Arts Council England.

Singapore is just now falling in love with animation, computer graphics and film shorts. The most beautiful movement in Singapore is waiting to be shot and edited!

Performance Updates

2009-10-10T00:17:00.004+08:00

What a hiatus! I confess! I have been very busy dancing, and thinking and making dances at quite a frantic pace. It has been wonderful so far, discovering a lot of possibilities that I never realised, learning about my body and my thoughts, seeing a lot of very innovative work (see the wildly wonderful calendar on the edge of my seat at right), and finding that my limits may be much further than I would have dreamed of two years ago before I started this programme! Wonderful, and absolutely exhausting at the same time.

Two of the exciting projects that I'm involved in right now:

The Third Space at the Esplanade dan:s festival
30-31 October (Fri-Sat), 7.30pm Esplanade Recital Studio

I will be performing a contemporary Bharatanatyam dance theatre piece by Nirmala Seshadri. Incorporating classical Indian dance and music with contemporary movement, theatre, video and chinese poetry by Singapore-based poet Dan Ying, "This and That" is an intense piece is about age, memories and unfulfilled dreams. It is one of four dances in this year's NAFA Third Space showcase, an annual exploration of Asian traditions and history through contemporary dance.

More details here. Tickets are available from SISTIC.

NAFA Music Department new compositions showcase
3 November, 4pm, NAFA Lee Foundation Theatre

A new collaborative work with Indonesian contemporary music composer Jenny Rompas, which I am choreographing and dancing with Tong Wen Yee. The showcase also includes new music/multimedia collaborations by other composition students.

moving like air

2009-08-08T00:04:00.000+08:00

I had the privilege of taking an open workshop with Kuik Swee Boon and some of his dancers last night. It was an introduction to the style of T.H.E. and their current repertory Silence , a brooding piece that's going to be revisited at the Esplanade the week after next (see listings on the edge of my seat, on the right).

The workshop was slightly painful and mostly ecstatic - I thank all my lucky stars and wonderful teachers for the training that allowed me to follow it. Swee Boon's style is built on a ballet base of clear body positions and verticality, but has the beautiful, organic elements of interaction with the air and the earth. The phrases that we looked at pulsed with an urgent tension and fluid grace.

The best part was just watching him as he generously demonstrated the details, and explained their qualities in his gentle, eager voice. There is an amazing kineticism about him, a lithe electricity in his elastic relationship between verticality and the gravity of the floor, the flow of breath to muscle.

This weekend I shall dream of moving like air.

my favourite time of year

2009-08-07T23:47:00.002+08:00

Time to get inspired!

The dan:s/dance festival is back from 23 Oct - 1 Nov at the Esplanade. The headline programme list has been unveiled with Paloma Herrera of American Ballet Theatre, Shen Wei Dance Arts (New York), a collaboration between Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (who recently showed Sutra at the arts festival here) and flamenco legend Maria Pages, and Australian group RAWdance (who also visited Singapore at the last M1 fringe fest).

I'm hoping that there will also be a good selection of local and experimental work at the theatre studio and other smaller venues.

Of course NAFA is performing too! I am scheduled to be working on a contemporary Bharatanatyam collaboration with Singapore-Chennai-based choreographer Nirmala Seshadri, which I'm very excited about.

Dan:s Festival Blog 2009

Three cheers for adults dancing in Singapore!

2009-06-18T11:58:00.007+08:00

One of the main reasons that I began this blog was because so many people tell me that they love dance and ask me whether I think they could dance too, even though they've grown up and got careers and families. Yes, absolutely!

I am especially grateful to the bunch of radiant mums and professionals who I get to dance with at Attitude, who rush down to class after work or when they've fixed the kids dinner. We even have a grandmother in our class.

Mr B:
"I don't want people who want to dance. I want people who have to dance."

I find that this describes my friends as much as the NYCB ballerinas that Balanchine was thinking of! They teach me a lot about perseverance and passion, and help me to believe that dance is something that can stay with you forever, if only you can find your strength to stick with it.

The best part about dancing in Singapore is that there is so much interest and so many places where dance is happening. Every month I scratch my head over the arts calendar while I make difficult choices over the many local and international dance performances (not to mention attempting to squeeze in my other three loves, theatre, music and visual arts). Because of my indecision, I miss quite a few shows because they get sold out. But I really have to be happy about that too. At this point in time, we are blessed with audiences that are both faithful and adventurous. And I am constantly hearing about new schools and wonderful teachers. One board that I like to drop in on from time to time is at Dance Net.

I've had the chance to add some links at the sidebar for schools and classes that I hope you'll find useful. Please feel free to send suggestions! The list is focused mainly on schools for technique in ballet, modern/contemporary and jazz, and I hope to add a section on ethnic dance too, as I learn more about it. As I'm not as familiar with them, I haven't included the waves of social dance, latin, and line dancing that also have huge followings here.

Happy dancing!

Sweat

2009-06-14T00:06:00.009+08:00

"Sweat, you know, is for most sensible human beings not quite nice. Not quite delicate, nor mannerly, and to be avoided wherever possible. But a dancer lives-I use this verb in all its implications and with all emphasis-lives in it, with it, around it, soaked with it, permeated by it, marinated in it." - Jose Limon

It has been a sweltering three weeks since the end of my first year as a dance student. Nice of the weather to make sure I still feel like a dancer even when I'm not in the studio! With a break from evening rehearsals, I've gotten the chance to catch a bunch of shows, including one while I was away in China. Here's one little write up to start!

Forward Moves: Body Swap/Joavien Ng and Dani Brown; Q&A/Danny K

Thank you, NAC, for once again commissioning local work with a mandate to prove that dance, too, can be intellectual. It can be conceptual. That it need not be just movement. Okay, there were a couple of walkouts, perhaps some of these people just not evolved enough to figure out what was going on. Where the dancing was. (The editors of the festival programme have my empathy. Wouldn't it be odd to have a section for "not just dance".) But the majority, like me, did stay to be constantly puzzled and thoroughly entertained.

In the first piece, the festival commissioners put ultimate faith in German dramaturg Jochen Roller to navigate the triple minefield of (a) the old trick of two people swapping into each other's lives, (b) intercultural collaboration, (c) collaborators who had never met and seemed to have little in common. I feared the worst when the show opened with two women lolling side by side on a rug conducting an aimless conversation about a flight to Dubai. The Chinese dancer clad in yellow, the American/German dancer clad all in white. Most of the piece was talking. Joavien and Dani excavated parts each others' histories, and took commercial break type segments to ask the audience if they thought that Americans bathed enough, or if Asians weren't expressive. Interspersed with some matter-of-fact video clips of their week of living uncomfortably in each others' families and sleeping in each others' beds (partners included). For the remainder, they wrestled each other energetically and finally swapped clothes that turned out to be too small on Dani and too big on Joavien.

What made it work in the end for me was that the collaborators gamely sized up the invisible beast in the room, and grabbed it by the horns. We might like to pretend that we live in a perfectly globalised world, where one artist can speak the same language as another halfway around the world, and we suppose, simply step into another's shoes with brilliant effect. But for these two choreographers, the body swap experiment made it very clear that at a fundamental level, another culture is simply incomprehensible. As a result, we inevitably fall back on stereotypes of race and culture, including third cultures (at one point the two blended bodies to make a series of Hindu-ish live sculptures, in response to Joavien's having learned a "Hindi Dance" as a child). Joavien and Dani executed their analysis with personable charm and focus, and none of the pseudo-lofty conclusions that a lot of other inter-cultural explorations try to foist on audiences. But I found that I wasn't quite satisfied. A conclusion seemed to be missing to follow from the observation that cultural divides continue to exist. I also would have hoped that in a dialogue on culture, both dancers could have gone deeper than the stereotypes and looked into the complications of their own multi-cultural identities.

The second piece by diskodanny was a delicious satire on the number-crunching approach to cultural planning, or the art also occassionally known as pandering to the masses. At intermission, ushers distributed a study that Danny had commissioned, whose thesis was that it is possible to aggregate and pinpoint the formula for the contemporary dance piece that audiences want to see so that "audience's satisfaction will be maximized when their expectations of the performance are met". He then showed a seven-minute solo of lyrically modern mush set to Madama Butterfly, which he had choreographed based on the numbers, namely that audience preferences were for:

i. movement travelling across space
ii. earthly lighting
iii. recorded classical music
iv. costumes revealing body form
v. simple or no set design at all
vi. multimedia unncessary

After taking the audience through the statistics while flouncing around in a series of fantastic costumes, Danny offered amiably to adapt the movement, costume and music to better suit the audience's tastes. The result of a show of hands vote on that evening was a techno-mechanical recasting of the piece, with the artist wrapped in yellow and black hazard tape, "if you like, like a censored Singaporean".

Why annihilate an artist's individuality like this? "Because," he declared flamboyantly, "the artist desires to be desirable". Bravo.

Forward Moves on 6 June 2009 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Survey results quoted from Q&A: A Performance by daniel k.

My performance updates!

2009-04-18T12:57:00.003+08:00

Dear Friends,

Thank you for asking about my current projects! I will be performing in 2 shows in the coming months and would love for you to come:

8-9 May 2009 "Crossings" NAFA Dance Department Showcase at the Lee Foundation Theatre at NAFA, Bencoolen St
I am dancing in 2 contemporary items - Flight by Larry Clark, a new Cunningham-based piece set in a community of birds, and Red Bamboo, the story of Samsui women by graduating student Laura Tham. I am performing 2 pieces on 8 May and 1 piece on 9 May. It's going to be an exciting show, the other items are ballet excerpts from la Bayadere, Batulang by Yvonne Ng, and ID by student choreographer Max Chen.
Please contact me for tickets! $15/adults and $10/students.

17-19 July Ballet Under the Stars
"Flight" will also be featured at Fort Canning! Our showing date is tbc, I will keep you posted! Ticketing and more details at http://www.singaporedancetheatre.com/performance/2009/buts09.asp

Shoe bling

2009-03-12T12:46:00.003+08:00

Cinderella, Cinderella. SDT's reprise of Cinderella didn't have the wow power of the Nutcracker but it was good bitchy fun. My teenage cousin's favourite part was when the ugly stepsisters buried Cinderella in laudry basket. My artzine review here.

oops

2009-03-12T12:43:00.001+08:00

Oops! I had the wrong number for Frontier's ticket reservations previously, it has been corrected....

Beyond human

2009-03-02T08:35:00.003+08:00

My best friend Y sent me an amazing link that I finally opened today. Thank you!

You too may have felt it. That moment when you or somebody you are watching or reading suddenly has a moment that is simply beyond human. What is that thing that makes us so? And how do we live with it?

Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius

blockbuster weekend

2009-03-01T23:11:00.005+08:00

this was one of those blockbuster weekends for Singapore dance. Friday: Variance by T.H.E. Dance Company, Saturday: Interview with the Palace Ghosts by the Arts Fission Company. Next week, SDT in Cinderella and my kinesiology teacher (no kidding) in Imelda's Boys!

"There has never been an epoch as frantic for spectacle as ours. The rush of the masses toward the screen or the stage is an unending phenomenon...This frenzy, this craving for distraction at any price, must arise from a need for reaction against the harshness and demands of modern life." - Fernand Leger,1924

what the body remembers

2009-03-01T22:47:00.001+08:00

You woke fitfully one day in your air-conditioned bedroom, and discovered that you were Chinese. Chinese in a worn Mao suit, of a Republic carved from the blood and sweat of the Long March and a grinding revolution.

Tongue's Memory of Home was a gritty experimental dream of China's youth grappling with the ordeals of their parents, a feverish sleepwalk of four writhing dancers and projections on an undulating toilet paper screen.

The group Zuhe Niao usually bills itself as "physical theatre" rather than dance. If you prefer to split hairs, you might prefer this label. There wasn't any complex technical choreography, and no breathtaking acrobatics from the cast, many of whom crossed over from other disciplines in their 20s. What they created instead was a combination of movement, text, videography and performance art that had a theatrical intensity and a disorientation that was infectious.

"I am provoked endlessly by hesitation" - concluded a poem by Shanghai poet Wang Yin on the paper screen. The four awoke in a phantasmagoric boot camp, watched enigmatically by a fat guy (the production's erstwhile videographer) in a raincoat with a coke picnic. Stripped of privacy, the dancers marched with brutal simplicity to have their mugshots taken, to desperately cleanse their itching bodies in enamel basins, and to wrestle each other as frenzied nightmares. Above them played wrenchingly obscure images of a shirt burned on a rope, string games, acted preparations for farm work, footsteps up a twisted log. As lost as the dancers, the pudgy stranger returned to snag the video punctuation of the dancers' dreams with a butterfly net. He didn't manage to catch any of his own projections, but instead produced a blinking remote control widget, that drew each dancer to stumble in states of undress down a diagonal of light, till a girl with a crew cut and piercing gaze was left frantically gyrating her arm and naked breasts. She was assaulted by her companions as bedsheet-clad nightmares. Another dancer attempted to assuage the spirits by planting joss sticks, but came under interrogation from her colleagues who gathered around her apparition-like, demanding, What now? Sleep, she said. Dance, eat, sing, regret. She began to steal mouthfuls from the joss stick urn - handfuls of viscous black jelly. Her companions joined her, and together they smeared the wet substance over their bodies, the floor, rolled in strings of soiled toilet paper. The dancers slipped through the paper screen at the top of the stage, just before the fat guy charged into the paper mass and ripped it all down, leaving only shreds and the theatre wall to reflect images of the performers' youthful parents.

The tongue? It made a brief appearance about 45 minutes into the show when the dancers huddled together and thrust out their tongues to explore the air. But tongues were quickly swallowed again. Not quite a satisfying cameo for director Zhang Xian's hypothesis that the tongue is a concealed "limb" of the body and a key to personal memories. In the post show dialogue, Zhang did however point out that for young Chinese, the best way to bring their modern history home is to through experiments in physical sensation.

So loosen your tongue upwards. Can you taste memories where your mind does not recall them?

Tongue's Memory of Home (Shetou dui jiayuan de jiyi) by Zuhe Niao at the Esplanade Theatre Studio on 8 February 2009.

Too close for comfort

2009-02-15T23:05:00.002+08:00

As promised, Iodine was stinging and gritty. It was not as beautiful as it was powerful. These were dancers in another light, of a raw, corporeal intensity that we do not often see in Singapore. Full review at Artzine.

For the love of pain II

2009-02-01T01:49:00.003+08:00

I just read a post about how many Singaporeans look down on male dancers as being "gay". Aside from the stupid homophobia that makes an equation of gay = perverted + weak, I was so cross that I wanted to belt out my blog tagline. Even though the irony would probably be lost on most readers.

So many people think that dancing is frivolous and easy. We dancers are to some extent a victim of our own successes, because the whole objective of most dance forms is to make the impossible look effortless. So the ordinary person won't blink when they see 32 fouettes, a 64 count Cunningham developpe, suspended jumps, a gorgeous lift.
Would it be as good if everybody knew how much pain and technique it took? If audiences not only realised the artistic intent but also appreciated how dance stretches the limits of human possibility?

Jock Soto and Wendy Whelan. Easy, right?

Anyway, while I'm building up my own little encyclopedia on pain, I thought I'd share it here for other dancers and anybody else who wants to know:

NYU Harkness Centre: Common Dance Injuries

On ankle sprains

On rolling in, arch pain, bunions

Cinderella had it easy.

2009-01-27T11:23:00.000+08:00

My friend Jackie assured me sweetly that teachers tend to like dancers who fall in class. They are the ones going for it and not holding back.

So I should feel good that I tripped over my own jazz sneakers while doing some simple jazz progressions last week, and took a very contemporary hip-elbow slide across the studio. In the first row. My jazz shoes must be cursed. My last pair served me faithfully till I happily dusted off for my first hip hop class in years - only to have to retrieve them with a broom and dust pan after the rubber disintegrated in the middle of warm-up.

I've been told that a bad dancer blames the floor, while a good dancer blames him/herself. I am blaming myself for stubbornly sticking with some oversized shoes.

Shoes! It seems like a ridiculous predicament for a modern dancer. After all, blisters can be painful but calluses always fit.

But shoes have plagued me since the first pair of ballet slippers I bought for myself ten years ago. Having heard that a good shoe should fit like a glove, I bought the most snug pair I could squeeze my fat old feet into. They turned out to be so tight that I spent my first year of ballet rolling my feet to the big toe side (eversion) because it hurt too much to put weight on the outside of my feet. So how relieved I was when I discovered Sansha prolite extra wide shoes! I wore holes into a couple of pairs - until I got humiliated during an audition when I was told to take them off because my slippers were so loose that the panel couldn't see my feet. I've had RAD character shoes that wouldn't click because they were too loose and my feet slipped around and couldn't control the heels. Socks that sent me skiing across studio floors when all I wanted was to come to a stop.

It's when my toes are furthest from my head that I worry about them the most. I have long given up toddler ballerina dreams - as soon as I could write I wanted to be a novelist instead - but there remains something irresistible in the luminous line of a satin pointe shoe, and the precise elegance of pointe ballet. Never mind the perfect pair, I just wanted something that didn't hurt for some unusually broad, stubby-toed and low-arched feet. It doesn't help that in Singapore, the models available from two major brands can be counted on one hand, and there's no such thing as a professional fitting.

Not that fitters are always helpful. The confusion of the team of amateurs in a Capezio new york shop who gave me a pair of Tendu II so roomy that I could wear my toe-rings and dance, to my teachers' consternation. The disdainful horror of that Paris fitter when I slipped off my sneakers. "Vous avez des pieds tres larges", she said, wrinkling her nose. I ended up with a pair of 50 euro pietragallas which made me feel like my metatarsals were cracking each time I rolled through pointe. The exchange rate was over SGD 2 to the euro at the time, so I grit my teeth and danced on those shoes for an awfully long time. It's been a long journey, and isn't finished yet. I went for several unsuccessful fittings in New York, hunted down the dance enclaves of Bangkok and Beijing, and swapped with friends for models and makes from Japan to Russia and Brazil. For the record I'm currently in favour of the Grishko Maya and experimenting with the China-market Sansha Infanta.

Apart from the bruises to my anatomy and wallet, though, I'm grateful for all that my shoes have been teaching me about my relationship to the ground. It's where our lives start: when we push up into a crawl and then precariously onto two feet.

Some shoe fitting tips and links for anybody else on this journey too:

Soft shoes including ballet slippers, jazz shoes, jazz sneakers, ballet character shoes etc should fit LIKE A GLOVE but not a vice!
Capezio Guide for fitting ballet slippers

Unfortunately there is no easy equivalent rule for pointe shoes. Teachers, fitter,s trial, error, and hopefully some good luck.
Freed Guide for fitting pointe shoes
Gaynor Minden on Foot Types

putting movement into words

2009-01-09T10:54:00.007+08:00

I once read somewhere that the most fundamental thing about the experimental theatre experience is that shared relationship of the artists and the collection of brave souls who will come in and sit for an hour or more, with their brains smoking away as they try intently to UNDERSTAND. Going without qualms on the uncharted journey that the artist has prepared, which could be ephiphanal, gut-wrenchingly bad or just a deep snore. Isn't that even more so for dance and performance art! And at every post-show that I have sat in here in Singapore, I am so happy to see that a good number of people do stay back, because they want to understand even more, hear about it and talk about it.

But of post show dialogues (and certain streams of criticism), why do people who are intellectual (with words) always seem to expect artists in other forms to be as articulate? I squirm during those awkward post-show dialogue moments when a supercilious, verbose audience member is trying to extract justification from a tongue-tied choreographer or dancer, or worse, try to insist on some profoundly simplistic point of view. I was at a session last night when the first question went something like "I sensed that the dance was about the struggle between the genders, and that the women seemed to come out as the more dominant." The choreographers gently attempted to say (some more articulately than others), that it was an interesting but unintended point and that the piece was conceived as being about family relationships in general. The lady continued nonetheless to try and push her point; the moderator was too timid to take the mic away.

Some of us may take things from an intellectual tack, but other times and for other people these things just can't be explained in words. One audience member complimented a dancer on her focus and presence, and pressed her to tell just how how she did it. She replied nervously that she just tried her best to get into the roles. I know this may not be satisfying to someone who wants to hear in words what it's all about. I wanted to whisper to the chappie who was just in front of me, give it up, she just does it, she's just incredible and that is the lesson, you won't find an answer here.

There are times when we say things with movement precisely because those abstractions or the shape of those feelings can't fit neatly into words. How I love those mysteries.

For the love of pain and nutrition

2009-01-07T07:59:00.005+08:00

School's back in season! While we're giggling at each other as we limp back into the studio after a brutal jumpstart to the season (crazy placement audition and daily repertory), I have to keep reminding myself that there's nothing else I'd rather be doing, even if my creaky old body doesn't quite agree.

While arming myself with bandages, tape, pain spray, deep heat rub, cold packs and hot packs, my new year resolution is to ingest as many of these as I can hold down:

water
bananas (for potassium to relieve muscle aches)
salmon (protein, calcium and anti-inflammatory omega 3)
papayas and oranges (Vitamin C anti oxidants to help healing of muscle tears and formation of collagen for my squeaky knees)
spinach & carrots (beta carotene makes vitamin A for tissue repair)
nuts and whole grains (vitamin E anti-oxidant and protein, slow release complex carbs)
glucosamine tabs (anti-inflammatory)

Handy nutrition information posted here courtesy of my lecturers and "Reboot Your Body", Dance Magazine Jan 2008.

your toes are bad

2008-12-29T16:28:00.004+08:00

I love it when pedicurists work on my feet. The first time, a pale wraith of a boy in Shenzhen grimaced delicately as he chipped and shaved the fat calluses on from my balls and heels. Two days ago, the pedicurist in Beijing worked with an air of focused resignation as he examined my soles and my toes. Then he solemnly unrolled a green picture-sheet of various toenails, chipped, bruised, detached. Homemade herbal remedy. He could save my little black toes, before they unfolded in similar contagion across my other eight.

The catch. 200 yuan a toenail.

I said No.

Well, nobody ever died of black toe, did they? That's what dancers' toes look like, whether it's pointe shoes or floorwork. Corns, calluses, bruised nails and plenty of studio-seasoned dirt. The least gorgeous and most essential part of the performing body, the more seasoned the better. I figured as soon as I go back to school in 2 weeks' time they'd revert to whatever damaged state they were already in.

But all the same, it shook me up enough to make me do a bit of my own web research for a professional opinion on black nails. I wasn't anxious to end up like my friend Lu Yi who took her RAD exam with a fungal infection and a fat dose of painkillers. This is from the doctors who write for Dance Magazine, "Foot care for barefoot dancers" and "Foot care for pointe shoes".

Maybe I'll take better care of my feet next year.

Good old fashioned Christmas, batteries not required.

2008-12-29T15:14:00.004+08:00

How about some good old-fashioned Christmas? Less of the price tags and catering menus, and more of the excitement and wonder in the eyes of a child.

SDT’s The Nutcracker by Jeffrey Tan is one of those magical productions – a fantastic sleigh ride for children and grown-up kids alike, the dance woven together with convincing character acting and a brisk storyline that makes the two-hour ballet go by surprisingly quickly.

See more of my review at Artzine.

Stop, go.

2008-12-14T23:10:00.018+08:00

Time in grayscale. Stop, go. Stop.

In 7 vignettes, Melissa Quek, Hazel Tng, Jessica Christina and Katherine Chen crept, then hurled fitfully against counting clocks and grainy recorded twin selves. Dancers' hands traced a continuous organic line scribbled in a maze of projected animation, folds of cortex and cauliflower on walls, floors, bodies. As the dancers began air-scribbling on their skin, I read - reminder to self: you are one day older. reminder: achieve what you did not do yesterday. Lyrical solos, shuffled peekaboo, and a game of stop-and-go where each dancer's phrase was punctuated by the spontaneous commands of another. The restlessness was tangible in the confines of an assymetric stage space, and one by one the bodies succumbed, crumpling gently under time's weight.

This was one of the most seamless and meaningful examples of inter-disciplinary collaboration that I've seen. The dance came through as an equal partner with video and animations by Kunyi Chen (astoundingly, created in just 2 weeks before the show), and a pulsating, gurgling score by Joel Ong that was reminiscent of Steve Reich. And in any good dance-video collaboration, credit must also go to the tactful lighting, here by Eugene Tay.

Melissa's self consciousness is an intense internal lens, bringing an unsettling psychological insight to many of her dances. It is also her self-consciousness, however, that undermined this performance. Her experience as a lecturer seems to have made her feel personally responsible for making contemporary dance more accessible to a larger Singapore audience. So for fear that the audience wouldn't "get it", the theme was literal and oversimplified. Dancers moved their arms like clock hands, and said "tick tick tick", against a projection of a giant clock. The programme note pointed out helpfully that Timeline was "a movement based contemporary dance piece that expresses how time inscribes itself on our minds and bodies. Asserting that it is not how much time you have that matters, but how you respond to it."

Melissa admitted in post-show dialogue that at some point she had thought about making dance accessible to a young adult audience; this might be good for an arts awareness programme in secondary schools, but left little for the intelligence of the general audience at an independent black box production. After being hammered with these giant indicators, I waited for a similarly resounding conclusion. In consequence, lying down in capitulation wasn't the satisfaction I'd hoped for.

- Timeline by Melissa Quek at the Drama Centre Black Box on 5 and 6 December 2008.

the cosmos

2008-11-30T17:43:00.008+08:00

Phew! My backlog will finally see the light of day - some shows so great that I have to share them with you:

I have long held a reverence for the classical Indonesian dance forms. The fine control of the limbs and the gaze, the amazing tension with which the dancers shift from one moment to the next turns the space into a tangible substance. I imagine that the air in which they move has become condensed with mythology. Dances created for epics, each phrase flows into yet another development and it seems that it would be simplistic to try and pin down a beginning and an end.

I hesitated only a little before I bought myself a ticket for Infinita, a collaboration of a traditional Javanese dance company with a Korean contemporary choreographer, set to the music of Ligeti. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, since my impression of this contemporary Austrian composer is chiefly from hearing Lux Aeterna (of Space Odyssey 2001) ten years ago - it was discordant, complicated, disturbing stuff to me. Anyway, I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle an hour of that. But I was certainly curious. The performance poster cited an Austrian newspaper critic, "as if they have always been one: Ligeti's music and Javanese dance..." Well, really?

The dance began with a classical enough setting and costumes, an ensemble of five men and one woman, formal patterns set to Ligeti's mercurial piano etudes. The natural harmony in the shifting patterns of that classical dance form, that vision of a universe in flux, does indeed sit well with the whimsical musical phrasing. And what exquisite dancers! Lithe and soundless, they took you through the evening from the traditional to brightly idiosyncratic solos, duets and trios where the classical aesthetic blended with quirky character pantomime and some rather contemporary leaps and turns. They executed with incredible control and personality. Then drawing back to a more classical idiom, three men emerged with a large gilt chair. In near suspended motion, they tumbled it across the downstage horizontal, transforming it into a hillside, a palanquin, a fort and a throne for a monkey king.

The vignettes by the javanese dancers were spliced with interludes by a tall, pale Korean lady who seemed to be a projection from another dimension. Surreal in her whiteness, remote baldness and some incredible costumes reminiscent of Queen Amygdala, she suspended time and space intensely somewhere between the Javanese classical technique, contemporary and Korean dance. In the finale, both she and the Javanese dancers appeared on stage together for the only time. It appeared she would conquer the ensemble on a downstage diagonal. Perhaps she was marking the turn of the seasons in the tropical Indonesian climate. I'm really not sure. (I found out only later that the pale lady was actually the choreographer.)

The lights came up after rapt applause; audience members, me included, surged for the door in search of answers on the programme notes.

- Infinita by Sen Hea Ha and Taman Budaya Surakarta Dance Theatre was staged at the Esplanade Theatre Studio on 31 Oct and 1 Nov 2008.

2008-11-03T23:52:00.002+08:00

Sometimes it really pays to stick around! In what appears to be freak coincidence, I landed my first solo role, an indianised adaptation of the Diaghilev ballet l'Apres Midi d'un Faune. Fancy me, playing Pietragalla....

Dans Festival 2008: Why I dance II

2008-10-20T00:22:00.007+08:00

I saw the Nederlands Dans Theater I last night. Sitting in the dark with 2000 people for Silent Screen by Lightfoot Leon. It was one of the moments for which I live. Not just a moment for which I dance. The curious opening of a light somewhere inside you such that when you leave the theatre, you know that you leave as a different person.

It made sense to me then that it must be the study of movement. It is movement that we recognise as life - the unfurling of a leaf, the agitations of an amoeba. I was reminded recently by my music lecturer Dr Sharpley that we humans live based on flimsy sensations of thought, communication and perception. As far as we have been able to use those flimsy senses to discover, those thoughts and perceptions of light, sound, and heat are in themselves movement: the eternal spinning and collision of particles. Movement is why we live.

Is destiny a molecule, an atom, a quark?

Today I am reading these stunning quotes from Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais:

"you have to love dancing to stick to it. it gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you are alive." - Merce Cunningham

"We do not have to be educated to understand the abstract language of motion, for motion is the stuff of which our every moment of life is preciously concerned." - Alwin Nikolais

And one of my old favourites from an artist who has also been a dancer. Perhaps why she understands that we start with the physical, with movement.

"Art is why I get up in the morning." - Ani diFranco

Why I dance

2008-09-17T14:10:00.005+08:00

The two questions I have answered most frequently since I started dancing full time are "What is contemporary dance?" and "Why did you choose dance?"

The first question usually comes from people whose understanding of dance is confined to some vague ideas of the "known" quantities of ballet and social dance. Contemporary dance has many definitions, I tell them, but I like to think of it as everything that came from Isadora Duncan and onwards, efforts to express movement outside the strict vocabulary of classical ballet technique. It can have the freedom of abstract art. It can explore the imagination like the many musical compositions that do not describe a specific thing. It can also have the authenticity of a photograph or document everyday life.

I am appreciating the second question more and more. It's made me think again about my glib convictions. At first I said simply, "because nothing else feels as incredible as this." But why incredible? The majority of regular folks claim to be stumped or bored by dance performances and dance is supposed to be the hardest art to sell. So why does this form of communication and expression move me like no other, and why would I be so convinced that this is the best way to touch other people?

Above all, dance is an art. There is something in art (as well as philosophy and the pure sciences) of the search to understand humanity and our world. It may be wonderful for people to spend their lives making widgets, stacking up investment dollars (or crying over them as it were today), getting their breasts enlarged or blindly parroting the tenets of some belief. But I know that's not enough. To be awake, to really live, we need to observe, engage and understand.

While I dabble in creative writing and theatre and enjoy those forms very much, there's nothing else like dance. Dance, along with music, is one of the art forms that crosses all boundaries of language or culture. Anyone able to perceive dance should be able to associate with it directly, because physicality is the most important medium through which we experience our world. The body is our instrument for living. Walking, running, jumping, sitting, the feeling of contact with another human or with objects, sensations of warmth or emptiness, the physical manifestations of emotion. Someone listening to music may appreciate the sound but might not relate to its creation because he has never played the piano or guitar. But someone watching dance can relate to jumping, balancing, or the powerful physical expression of joy or grief - much in the way that we are fascinated with the feats of Olympic athletes because we can understand those superhuman exertions in the context of our own, ordinary, bodies.

I am learning each day that dance is an art that requires immense discipline, conviction and pain. So as of 17 September 2008, this is why I still dance.

Dans Festival 2008

2008-09-05T00:53:00.003+08:00

Pocketbuster #2 of the year has arrived for me.

If you are a dance fan, head for SISTIC if you haven't already done so! Do NOT miss Nederlands Dans Theater I.

http://www.dansfestival.com

Pinch yourself

2008-07-25T22:03:00.001+08:00

It's true? Three weeks: I have given away my alberto rinaldi suit, moved to the far industrial reaches of this island, corrected my vision of the last 20 years, and disguised myself as a student-card carrying 18 year-old. (Disillusioning my classmates about my age is the best fun. The China posse even screamed in disbelief and seized my IC.) And best of all, DANCING every day. And talking and writing and thinking about dance not on the bus or the loo, but in my focused time.

After my first week at NAFA, my groaning ankles and back are glad to remind me that it's real. Change is good. Change is possible! I'll save my miserable moments for later. Nothing else feels like this.

my new address on Bencoolen Street.
irrelevantly, also one of the worst designed school buildings and logos ever

the little company that could

2008-07-02T18:00:00.002+08:00

This contemporary triple bill was a pleasant surprise from SDT. They are perking up and saying "I can" by breaking out of the tried and tested repeat telecasts of Coppelia, Maninyas and Lambarena. Instead, they plucked some ambitious pieces from the repertory of top ballet companies of the world - ABT and Dutch company Introdans. And another neoclassical gem, which is my first introduction to the work of the Dutch National Ballet.

The company emerged luminous in A million kisses to my skin by David Dawson and Glow-stop by Jorma Elo, who is apparently the new enfant terrible of neo-classical ballet. Elo is from Finland, of all random non-ballet-powerhouse places. (A nice interview with Elo by SDT. I hope they do indeed commission a work from him!)

What was most challenging about these group pieces is that they are typically set on companies with an outstanding ballet corps. You need more than just a couple of star ballerinas for these - kisses has a cast of 9 and glow-stop of 6, equally demanding roles. SDT delivered. Leaping, exuberant trios and duos in blue flitted across a glowing white stage in kisses. The star of the night was Chihiro Uchida. She took on her solo and duets in kisses with a charming zest and an iridescent presence. Glow-stop was a mysterious aviary in sensuous red, revealed in a series of cold spot lights. Elo's choreography was a joy, echoing the snap-bang of Ratmansky's Middle Duet, and the playful freedom of a boxful of wind-up toys.

SDT did a great job in this show. But at times the rough edges showed. Certain sections looked a little under rehearsed, and at moments some dancers struggled to keep up with the athletic choreography. The heavy and contemplative Evening by Graham Lustig piece proved too challenging; the lifts were stilted and the dancers just couldn't seem to drum up the required dramatic lyricism. The poet's collapse at the end of the piece appeared to be one of boredom.

Okay, who are we kidding. This isn't ABT. But they're ambitious and I think it will take them far. I was proud that evening to be able to say that this is our national ballet company.

-Continuum by Singapore Dance Theatre on 13 June 2008, The Esplanade Theatre

2008-06-26T11:42:00.004+08:00

Possibilities by Melissa Quek
This is my first first full length show. Please come watch!

what to look for in a class

2008-06-18T09:57:00.005+08:00

I owe you a counterpoint. There are lots of great teachers and schools for dance, yoga etc in Singapore. It's important to pick one that suits you so as to avoid the minefields that can get an adult dancer injured - because the one big problem with starting these activities late is that you can get injured more easily.

Everybody has their own style of learning, and I know plenty of people who adore the yoga drill instructors that I detest. That said, if you are pondering trying out dance classes and have been wondering how to start, there's some basic things that you can look out for:

1. Find a studio and teacher that you feel comfortable with.
I believe in vibes. You won't know until you go down and try the place out - always ask for a trial or walk-in class first. You don't want to be stuck where you don't enjoy the space and the people.

2. Look for a teacher who is approachable.
Some of the greatest dance teachers in history were/are scary as heck, but other great teachers will also help you learn by being approachable and open to your questions. One of the wonderful things about starting dance as a mature student, as opposed to a five year old, is that you can do more than just copy. You can analyse what you are learning, and understand the process. "How can I get my flat back really flat?" and "Why do we turn out our legs?" are definitely not stupid questions. I have found it most rewarding to study with approachable teachers who will take the time to talk to you after class, and share their knowledge of physiology or dance history. (Thank you my first teachers Katie Glasner and Sandra Kaufmann!)

3. Favour teachers who give corrections.
I used to hate getting corrections. It made me feel like I wasn't doing well in class. In fact, there's no better way to learn. Take the corrections given to you (as well as the ones given to your classmates, which you can also learn from) as presents, not insults! There are teachers out there who prefer to just demonstrate the combinations and collect their paycheck. Good teachers will actually make the effort to monitor their students and help them improve. (Also on corrections - I believe that pink tights for ballet actually help you to get better corrections. You might think that they look odd, but they show your muscles and placement better than dark tights or baggy pants.)

4. Pick a studio that fits your schedule.
I know this sounds duh. But if you are rushing off madly to classes and are constantly late (and I have been there), you will be (a) missing the important warm-up or stretch segments and putting yourself at greater risk of injury, and (b) being disrespectful to your teacher and classmates. Do try to give yourself time to change and stretch. As a bonus you can get to know your dance-mates/yoga-chums while you're at it.

Happy dancing! It's like nothing else on earth.

What not to look for in a class

2008-06-17T23:51:00.003+08:00

So their towels are fluffier, the studios more spacious and less endowed with shoe-grease and sweat. But that's just not enough. I'm hanging up my towel and swearing that I will no longer judge a studio by its looks.

Especially not when it has nasty clauses against breaking your year-long expensive subscription, and especially not when my favourite teachers have left and only ditzes and grumpy drill seargeants are left teaching my yoga classes and time-slots of choice. Especially not when they go out of their way to make sure that it is excruciatingly inconvenient to not pay them. Need I even think twice when the erstwhile polite sales staff inform me that to cancel my giro when the contract expires, I must show up at the studio in person and sign a form? (i.e. so they can make another crude sales pitch) I am going to cut them off at the bank. Goodbye Pure Yoga.

Don't just dance!

2008-06-17T08:14:00.010+08:00

This year's NAC commission of new choreography was based on the assumption that Singapore choreographers do too much moving and too little thinking. So Joavien Ng, Neo Hong Chin and Ebelle Chong were set the challenge of doing better, with the editorial advice of dramaturge Tang Fu Kuen.

With Body Inquire, Joavien chose to take on that giant of modern dance, Martha Graham. She boxed herself and Ricky Sim in harshly-lit white squares, and set up a game of "Simon says". Each contraction appeared more ludicrous and awkward than the last, interspersed by totalitarian quotes from Graham at her most fanatic (if you get bored with yourself, simply think of dancing towards your death). The dancers struggled and grumbled in a protest of their individuality against a strict technique. The finally sublimated into a pair of cardboard squares, while they described themselves in a recorded conversation and biographies scrolled overhead.

Hong Chin, working with Ebelle as her performer, revisited the birth of their children and the schizophrenia of confinement in MAgic:MAchine (what a great title).I'd never thought of pregnancy as phantasmagoric. In a dim glow, Ebelle emerged, embryonic, in a series of translucent plastic bags. In a wonderfully surreal dark her baby's face hovered, projected, on her plastic body. She writhed and screamed through her delivery and exhaustion, a sort of clinical manufacturing.

Ebelle then swapped places with Hong Chin, and cast her with Melissa Quek to measure w a l l s, an invisible house that appeared gradually in tape on the floor, a la Dogville. In another coup for great budget lighting, the dancers then whirled and wrestled across a grid of laser pointers.

Pushing choreographers to come to logical conclusions sounds like a good idea. The result was fresh, but forced. The ideas still felt unfinished, and I wonder if the movement motifs might have been less belaboured without the editorial intervention. At the post show dialogue, it sounded as if Joavien had been resisting pressures to draw a political conclusion from her diatribe on the oppression of the individual. It would have been a fun point to poke at Singapore governance, but if that wasn't the intent, then why attempt to force it?

Forward Moves, the Esplanade Theatre Studio, 7 June 2008

Boxing Rings for Butterflies

2008-06-14T22:37:00.000+08:00

Did you hear wailing about this year's festival programme being crammed with avant-garde work from unheard-of post-soviet states? Well, wail on.

Maybe it was with a knowing wink that this year's festival began with a Requiem. If you could imagine artistic insanity, it might well comprise an orchestra, a full choir, five vocal soloists, and two major ballet companies in swimwear. Also liberal silence, two divergent requiems and four black couches.

Yet all of it came together in impossible, dark genius. Choreographer Edward Clug harnesses the force of Mozart's requiem and migrates the conventions of beauty into a totalitarian state. Gradually, he strips all human comfort away: off with the skirts, the jackets, the couches. The fifty odd corps de ballet disrobing at dim centre stage formed a lump in my throat. They were just that reminiscent of preparation in a concentration camp. The dancers were transformed into a proletarian swimsuit parade, sweeping in mechanical ranks across the stage.

Out of such brutal uniformity, the ballet strives to remind you that in this cruel arena, we are still beautifully human. Such a soaring, exuberant Dies Irae. Lyric duets conceived in boxing rings for butterflies. Finally, the corps(es) struggle towards you to collapse in a plastic massacre. In the aftermath, a girl in white floats solemnly through, dispensing shining arcs of baptism water. Another dancer discovers her existence half-submerged in a fishtank.

Clug is well aware that his work is steeped in religious and political imagery, and insists that you must take away your own interpretation. But to explain its genesis, he admitted in the post-show dialogue that he wanted to turn the music around, create a requiem for the living, a purgatory, a rebirth. That this was his response to a childhood in Ceausescu's Romania, and his own realisation of a desperate need for freedom.

He found much resonance in Singapore. At curtain call, the audience were springing to their feet in applause. I guarantee you three theatres-full of Singaporeans can now identify Slovenia on the map.

-The Architecture of Silence by the Slovene National Theatres Opera & Ballet Maribor and Ljubljana/ Singapore Festival Orchestra (Slovenia/ Singapore) blew me away on 30 May 2008, The Esplanade Theatre

counting to eight

2008-06-14T18:02:00.001+08:00

Many "grown-up" friends don't know how happy they make me - when they ask me suddenly how they can start dancing. They're not planning on taking it seriously, they say, but they'd like it to be part of their lives. They wonder shyly if it's too late if they're 25, 30, 50? Can they do more than wait for their daughters outside the studio?

I'm so glad to have another opportunity to say: You're not alone! There is no better time to express yourself than Now!

It has been a joy to discover the dance community in Singapore since i returned from New York five years ago. It's a community of people who watch dance, practice dance, teach dance, and above all, love dance. They are present at the performances of classical as well as experimental work, and populating the pockets of adult dance classes across the island. Proof that movement is a language that transcends age, traditions, and languages. I've met dancing doctors, teachers, lawyers, bankers, homemakers.... and I'll admit that till recently, I was a dancing diplomat.

Dear friends, the link page of this site is dedicated to you!