I want more people to remember - Singapore Arts Festival 2011

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

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!

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"

- Paloma McGregor, dancer with Urban Bush Women

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

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

My Year in Art 2010 Part II

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

Things I did...

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

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

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

My year in art I - Nov/Dec 2010

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. PainSo 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 NovemberThe 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."

"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.