Local Love!

Thanks Tara for the great profile piece at themuse.com.sg in the lead up to this week's show!

OK, now you guys know everything about me.  :)

Singapore Arts Fest 2012 - We've got you covered!

Covered by the Umbrella for Two

Now that it's happening, I'm finding it hard to grumble about this arts fest.  Really. 

Just one main grumble.  Just one. When I first picked up the programme I was disappointed at the slim pickings for Dance with a capital D. I could do sodden women in clay jars.  But Akram Khan, again? Dancing horses? The rest looks like an avalanche of hodgepodge on recycled paper.   I am still sure that there must be a better way to organise the programme and do justice to the shows.

I confess that have ended up having a great time.  I love the festival village, its breadth and energy and the fact that most of it is free and accessible to a lot of people - compared to the commercial claustrophobia I ranted about last year. I have come to see that many projects both locally commissioned and overseas were built with a network of local collaborators, providing opportunities for employment and networking of a lot of Singapore artists in different disciplines, as well as an army of bright and perky student assistants.  I've especially enjoyed Lan Fang Chronicles and Parallel Cities-La Fabrica.  I also had a good adventure with Flux, An Umbrella for Two, The Bridge Cafe, and (some of the) dance films.  I appreciate the good spread of disciplines and formats, multi-disciplinary work, and co-optation of the audience in experiential and ambulatory works. I like that I didn't have to bust my artist's paycheck because of half of those shows were free and the tickets for most of the other shows were affordable (I had some money left to go to Conversasians instead, that's a story to come).  Doesn't hurt too that I also got some fun employment with another great production, A Very Wagnerian Night!
 
But I do have this uneasy feeling that quite a lot of what I caught seemed to have too much in common, whether it had been created by a Singaporean or a foreign artist.  That nearly all of what I saw had been selected by programmers based on the feedback of forms of conscientious arts fest goers who indicated that they prefer shows that are:

• challenging/experimental
• multidisciplinary
• experiential
• relevant to my life or touching on social issues
• tell me something about myself
• (the last two equating to "local in content")

I can't speak for the rest of the work that I haven't been able to catch, of which a fair share was also staged in conventional theatre formats.   I am looking forward to a final weekend of shows and to Platform Campus in print that's sitting on my coffee table.

I have heard rumours that the festival will be swapping leadership and maybe formats after this year.  Which leaves me with mixed feelings.  I hope that we won't lose the inclusive yet adventurous vibe.  I don't envy the next team which has to figure out what a national festival should do for Singapore's varied audience, demanding society and a high-saturation arts calendar.

I watched the flowers

Tickets on sale at the Substation from Monday!

That chinese girl who does indian dance

This and That (2009) by Nirmala Seshadri

I'm currently working on a new piece I watched the flowers with Nirmala Seshadri at the Substation, an experimental bharatanatyam work.  The first question I always get, is "why?!"

The short story is that I started dancing bharatanatyam, odissi and chhau during asian dance modules at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.  I had a great connection with my teachers, Nirmala and Raka Maitra, and still perform and work with them today. This led me to other indian-classical based work with Dr Siri Rama, Jayathi Siva and other choreographers who have been interested in my base in asian dance alongside my western contemporary and classical training.

Looking back, though, I know I was interested in asian art and philosophy much earlier. I devoured asian folktales as a little bookworm, and went on to history and literature when I was in school. My yoga practice has been part of my life for over ten years. Dance and performance is an integral component of the oral history and culture of Asia, and the forms as they exist today are fascinating junctions of history, migration and human interaction over centuries - so the social scientist part of me just gets hooked.   The emphasis on asian dance, theatre, music and their contemporization was one of the things that drew me to NAFA in the first place. 

I wonder now if it was an accident that among the many other asian forms I have touched on,  it is these indian forms that have become as much a part of my vocabulary as ballet (which I have done the most) or Limon (my first modern dance technique).  They weren't easier for me than ballet or modern, they were certainly difficult to begin with and difficult even now, as I guess all rich classical forms are!  I don't consider myself to have a complete grounding and practice like January Low (who is also half-indian, for what that's worth) and I don't see myself devoting hours to accomplishing an arangetram graduation. But the more time I take to practice these forms, the more they reward me with their intricacies and my fascination, and provide me with a counterpoint to the aesthetics of Western dance that are easy to take for granted. 

Could this only have happened in Singapore? Growing up in Singapore in a kantang (westernised) family, I guess it's normal that I feel estranged from the monolith that is Chinese history, culture and language, even though I do have great respect and interest in it today.  It's probably also normal that I grew up feeling comfortable with access to the other cultures around me, particularly Indian and Malay (and need I say American and European). I guess there's also the novelty of being an outsider that works to my advantage, like the way I am considered to speak excellent french only because I'm not french!

The most important factor is definitely the affinity that I have with my teachers and mentors, who I'm lucky have chosen to work in Singapore and where I had access to them. They have very different personalities and approaches.  But both celebrate their deep heritage and extensive practice while approach these forms in a contemporary context and constantly question their functions.  They are great improvisers, which gels well with my own approach to making dance.  I loved channeling non-mythological characters and re-creating abhinaya gossip in Raka's Hungry Stones.

Now with I watched the flowers, Nirmala and I are building a duet from our collaborations in 2009-2010 when I was part of the ensemble that performed her work This and That in Singapore and New York. Both of us are dancers as well as writers, and connect strongly with stories and emotional content.  This material has led us to some startlingly profound conversations about feminity, sexuality, philosophy and life journeys.  It will be the most intensely autobiographical work I have done so far.  Bharatanatyam is the main idiom and reference, but there is also improvisation, floorwork, text and theatre - in a strange way, the question of why a chinese girl is doing indian dance seems less and less relevant as we go along.  What I hope we'll share with you is two women at different life stages, in a sincere conversation about womanhood.

I watched the flowers - a meditation on womanhood, maturity and love at the Substation, 28-29 June. Ticket details to come.