The smallest movement becomes tectonic

"The smallest movement becomes tectonic."

I am excited for Kiran Kumar and Raw Moves for this weekend's Archipelago Archives installation-performance. Chatting with Kiran about his extended research project over several years into the junction of moving cultures between India and Indonesia has been fascinating. Wish I could be there to see this live.

Archipelago Archives Exhibit #3: If I could set with the sun
9 & 10 June 2017

"Pallavi in Time" by CHOWK: Seductive Virtuosity

Photo by Bernie Ng. Courtesy of Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay

This was one of those rare occasions where I realise that I’m watching an important work of art. A discovery, a risk, a breakthrough, that will influence my aesthetic and many others’ for years to come.

Read at ArtsEquator.com - https://artsequator.com/chowk-dance-pallavi-in-time/

Coming Home

Formal training in dance school is a mixed experience for many people. Stepping into the studio and theatre where you have spent every waking hour (or every waking hour commuting to) for three years brings a surge of memories. For me, camaraderie and excitement, but also tears, pain, disappointment, humiliation and a lot of anger.

There's a new dance alumni performance platform at NAFA opening this weekend. Talking about it with my former schoolmates Pam, Gretel and Viv brought a lot of those memories back.  

I recall that there was always so much to fight for. Fighting to be seen in auditions and exams, fighting injuries and exhaustion, self-doubt when toiling along at the back of the class, frustration as an understudy with no chance of being put on stage. Fighting for my choreographies when they weren't making the passing mark. What I was most grateful for was that instead of the cut-throat jealousy and pettiness that you see on "Centre Stage" or "Step Up", the dancers I went to school with were really a caring bunch. We knew that we were in it together. As our class size shrunk over three years, we cheered each other on and comforted each other when we were struggling with injury or getting a shelling from terrifying teachers (for our own good). We trusted each other to stay in time, to catch us when we jumped, and to know the combination so that if we blanked out we could copy it out of the corner of an eye.

In a competitive professional setting after graduation, I must say that sometimes it seemed like those deep bonds were one of the few comforting things to hang on to when I felt like an absolute nobody. Today, it is also nice to know that the positive vibes transcended different years. When I meet a more experienced dancer and discover we were both from the same school, it usually occasions a friendly chat, the sense that yes, you too had enough toughness and love for the form to survive! 

So when she was asked to support the new platform, Gretel took time out from other commitments and volunteered to be part of the organising committee alongside Max Chen, Peter Teo, Pamela Leong and Viv Phua. The title 归 ("Gui", loosely translating as "home coming" or "return") was chosen because it carried a strong sense of belonging and physical return. That sense of solidarity was very important for Gretel. "I feel like our local industry has much talent, but we're all seemingly on our own journey. So why not pool resources, ideas, friendships, to contribute to something bigger?" 

I am aware that the camaraderie can translate as clique-ish exclusivity for some of my professional dance colleagues who have not come from a conservatory-style background. It does trouble me sometimes, and I question what it means to declare that I am proud to be an arts school graduate. For sure, this isn't the only way to come to this vocation. It's a very specific mode of training, and a huge test of commitment. I'd hope that this new platform doesn't perpetuate the same kind of discrimination that some dancers feel they experience while in training.

Viv recalls that not everybody gets a chance to show their performing or choreographic potential while they're in their formative years. There are only so many solos and competitions to go around. A microcosm of the professional world, the selection for parts is unavoidably subject to highly subjective preferences of the choreographer or director. Sometimes X-factor isn't apparent until the dancer strikes out on their own after graduation. Viv was motivated by the knowledge that the pieces would be created by alumni passionate about their work, and that there was an inclusive spirit in the open call for alumni dancers. 

Rehearsal photo by Jeff Low. Dancers Mus Fitri Suhaimi and Natasha Neo.

The performance comprises five new pieces, choreographed by Elizabeth Lee, Seow Yi Qing, Goh Jiayin, Kenneth Tan and Wiing Liu. Gretel is excited about the ways in which the programme challenges and overturns our notions of dance in different ways. At a recent full rehearsal of the show programme, Pam was moved to tears. "Not because the pieces are sad but rather, I'm so proud of everyone." 

"Gui", 25-26 November 2017 at the NAFA Campus 3 Studio Theatre. Email nafadancealumni@gmail.com for tickets.

Substation Spaces: As if we've been living here forever

Signs of a Nest by Susan Sentler is meditative and sophisticated in its simplicity. When I arrive, the room seems empty with only one dancer and an iPad humming and whooshing with a minimalist pensive track. The other two spectators in the room have also chosen to sit along the walls, respectfully vacating themselves from the space as much as possible. There are little tiles of black and white photographs littering the floor. The photos are tender microscopes of HDB living. Fragments of gates, corridors, laundry, a shirtless tattooed man reclining in a void deck. I don't know why I'm surprised by Susan's sensitivity to the details of heartland life, as if she's been living here forever.

The dancer Valerie (last name?) has been carrying the iPad and gazing at it intently. She now places the iPad on the floor next to me. Her internal universe suddenly offered visibly amongst strewn photo fragments, another fallen piece of the world. She folds her body to the floor, wrapped around a door frame, and becomes part of the architecture.

In the colour images scrolling through the iPad, I recognise the Rochor flats slated for demolition. On the wall in negative, there are poster prints that I'm told are from Dakota crescent (pending demolition also) and Marine drive.



I'm suddenly aware of the empty shelves lining the wall. I know this space well but never have those shelves occurred to me to be HDB corridors like the one where I live. Not until the dancer props the iPad up on one of the shelves, injecting a contained life among the rubble of photo tiles next to it. The door opening the room to the alley is ajar, and the street and construction down the street aptly filter in.

This work gives us the space, almost without time. Its breath and its dimensions, in the patient time of the body. Earlier this week, I heard Susan talk animatedly about the Deleuzian fold. Look at the space. Look at it shatter, forms and architecture splintering. Look from the outside in, and be sensorially absorbed into this dear little space that I fear will also soon be remodeled.

Valerie is making attentive decisions and changes of pace and space. Her quiet presence leaves the room, and scatters photo fragments in the hallway outside before she returns to peer through the window. Is she really just a second year undergraduate at Lasalle? Susan is there, happily clicking her tongue and her camera, and for me it's an integral part of the piece. The urgency of the photographic moment leads me to relish my consumption of this space and time.

The dancer draws a pair of flip flops from a small shelf that I suddenly identify as a shoe rack. She slips out the open door into the street and the night.

Signs of a Nest with Susan Sentler at the Substation/A Home for the Arts, 17 November 2016.

Post-script: It's a perfect closing for my hour of visual meditation, but on the way out I discover the game room across the hallway. I spend the next ten minutes whooping and batting coloured ping pong balls with a badminton racket at Ang Song Ming's family of drum set and electric guitars. What a wondrous evening.

Piece for 350 Onomatopoeic Molecules

Maybe I will see a kite looking for its string...

I hadn't realised till last Friday how absolutely beautiful the Bengali language is.

Musical phrases spilled from the lips of a lovestruck youth, wandering in a forest of airy bamboo frames. As the stanzas repeated, four female dancers who had sat listening rose to take the centre of the stage. Their steps wove a decisive counterpoint around his words. His companion, another poet, reclined in the background, making a bed next to a rustic bench and...a yellow hard hat. A reminder that this dreamy poet longs not only for love, but for his home and family in Bangladesh, while he spends lonely days hammering in the hot shipyard.

"From Another Land" is choreographer Raka Maitra's collaboration with dancers she has trained at the Chowk Academy of Dance, poets Rajib Shil Jibon and Zakir Hossain Khokon, musician Bani Haykal, and set design by Kiran Kumar.

I've studied and worked with Raka on and off since 2010. Of the many works that I've danced and seen so far, this is by far her finest.

Over the years Raka has developed her distinctive contemporary dance idiom - a blend of classical Odissi, martial Chhau, and evocative tableaux of restrained movement and fragments of storytelling set to abstract soundscapes.  What struck me right away with this new production was the sophisticated layering and interweaving of the various elements. I am quite amazed that the work was so integrated when two of the performers - the poets - had been able to join rehearsals only on their one precious day off every week.

In terms of visual composition, each tableau had an impressive depth of foreground, background and texture, with the casual lives of the poet-workers backgrounding the vivid dancers, then surfacing again as the poets stepped forward to share their words with animation and sincerity, anchored by subtle chords and drums.  A series of contrasting lighting scenes by Josiah Yoong transformed the simple decor from town square to metropolis, to a technicolour vision of Bangladesh.

Choreographically, I had the sense that Raka had chosen to pare her building blocks even more carefully than previous works - from the simplest of Odissi steps, the dancers patterned from unison into rhythmic canons and counterpoints. They danced solos and movement-chatter as they discovered a new universe (migrants arriving to Singapore? Singaporeans discovering Dhaka?). Raka herself danced a couple of the impeccable solos that she has always done so well - expressive, precise, coloured with modulations of dynamic and gaze. But she also took moments to retreat into the layered background, leaving the stage open to the other dancers' fluid grace and the poets' tender narratives.  Karishma Nair stood out from the ensemble with a magnetic focus and clarity of movement. Poet Zakir seized my heart when he rushed forward, laughing, with a child's excitement, recounting his son's letter, to end in a bittersweet embrace from his proxy family - another migrant worker.

During the performance, it mattered little to me that I don't speak Bengali.  It reminded me of how many people say they love to hear French spoken even when they don't understand it - the words take on a musicality and rhythm. Before the show I was already astonished by the translated poems in the programme notes (excellent translations by Subir Nag), and I was able to transfer their poignancy when I heard the words spoken by the poets themselves.

At no point did I imagine this as a token charitable project to glorify the "underprivileged" stereotype of the Bangladeshi migrant worker. It was apparent that each performer was fully an artistic contributor in their own right. Both Rajib and Zakir are published writers in Bangladesh. The biographies and post-show dialogues were a potent reminder of the richness of the lives and talents of individuals who are often invisible to the more privileged here in Singapore.  I appreciate that private donors had made it possible for a significant number of Rajib and Zakir's Bangladeshi colleagues to attend the performance when they might not otherwise have had the means. I sat among a group of them, refreshed by their bafflement and absorption at what seemed to be an unfamiliar form to many of them. I realised that I am from another land, too.

*The title of this post is an excerpt from "Shades of Light and Dark", Rajib Shil Jibon.

The Hungry Stones

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

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

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.

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.

T.h.e O in Old

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

A swan is born, light as a feather

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.

Humbled by movement

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.

moving like air

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.

Sweat

"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!

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

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.

blockbuster weekend

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

Good old fashioned Christmas, batteries not required.

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.

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 little company that could

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