"...perhaps there is something similar about making dances and writing descriptions. There are so many words in a writer's vocabulary and many combinations are possible. You weigh words and use one or another, depending on what you are trying to express. And that is the way it is with movement, too: you try to weigh things, to see the importance of this gesture and that one - placed and measured in time, of course. Time - music and silences - makes gesture mean something. It's dancing presented in a certain way. To make every step look different by the way it is presented. A writer chooses a word. I choose a gesture. Economy is the point, learning what we can do without, reducing to essentials."
"Ballets have short lives. Compared to books, paintings, to plays and pieces of music, they are ephemeral indeed. The ballet audience, like every audience in the theatre, always wants something new. When a ballet is a success, it sometimes remains for three or four years, perhaps ten, seldom more."
- George Balanchine, Introduction to Balanchine's New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (Francis Mason ed.)
Monday, 18 January 2016
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
Performance's potency comes from its temporariness, it's 'one time only' life.
"Performance's potency comes from its temporariness, it's 'one time only' life. The ontology of performance maps a gateway across a different order of production and reproduction. It suggests that matter (and the Real) is created out of nothing - 'the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is' (Wallace Stevens). This reproduction works according to the invisible calculus of the multiple offerings of what one does not have. This then as a coda, a prolegomenon for another book, other words, other eyes. This then in Hope, the hope we fake and perform and the hope we thereby make and have. Hope's power is measured in this faking. Each performance registers how much we want to believe what we know we see is not all we really have, all we really are. That negation reveals the generative possibility of the 'not all' that keeps us hoping. Maybe next time I'll love/be/loved; maybe next time I'll write a better book; maybe next time my I will see"
- Peggy Phelan, The ontology of performance: representation without reproduction
- Peggy Phelan, The ontology of performance: representation without reproduction
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Please help me make my next production possible!
Dear friends,
We could really use your support for my next creation on 2 Dec with Katarzyna Witek and Chloë Abbott!
Even £10 (SGD 20) will make a difference. Please help us make this possible!
We have been doing some great work in the studio, and I'm confident that this is going to be an exciting, fresh and really quite funny experience. You'll see - click on the campaign link to view our video trailer. The website makes contributing easy via paypal and credit card. Do also pass this appeal on to friends!
Love,
Sze
We have been doing some great work in the studio, and I'm confident that this is going to be an exciting, fresh and really quite funny experience. You'll see - click on the campaign link to view our video trailer. The website makes contributing easy via paypal and credit card. Do also pass this appeal on to friends!
Love,
Sze
Thursday, 29 October 2015
Sze's dance updates Nov 2015-May 2016
Hello Friends!
I'm into my final term now at the London Contemporary Dance School. Having finished the coursework-based Postgraduate Diploma section, I'm now working on independent projects that will complete my work for the M.A. Time is suddenly passing quickly. I have become very comfortable and charmed by London and now I am submitting my final assignments in just a few months!
Some of my work since the last update: While here, I have gotten to make some projects that have been in the works at the back of my head for years.
Along with six wonderful collaborators, I presented The Sunshine Empire, an interactive ensemble of one-on-one personal consultations-performances for public spaces that included a theatre cafe, under a railway bridge, a public park and a charity fundraising open mic between June and August 2015. We asked what happiness meant to us and others... and whether it is something that we can buy. Check out our "corporate" website for videos and images -www.sunshinempire.com
I made my first dance film! 'Indivisible' has a group of dancers floating weightlessly down staircases, in iconic locations for dance in London, reflecting on the ecosystems of artists and art institutions. Film trailer at https://vimeo.com/143942731
Over the summer I had some wonderful exchanges at the European Contact Improv Teachers' Exchange in France, and the Radical Contact Summer Gathering 2015 in Sweden, as well as some research time with Kees Lemmens in the Netherlands that has led me in a new direction for my contact practice and teaching about how we share space.
With Cie Kham, we danced the final performance of Focus in April at Chateauvallon in France. It's been a wonderful 4 years and over 30 shows in France, Singapore and Laos, that have shaped me profoundly as an artist.
Back to the (near) future:
After a busy summer of contact improvisation, networking with other artists back home in Singapore and the excitement of the General Elections and arts festival, I am settling down to my independent study projects. I am writing a dissertation on "Audience Manipulation" and creating some new work! As usual, do contact me for updates if you're interested in the timing tbc projects.
WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)
A contemporary dance performance with Katarzyna Witek and Chloe Abbott
The Place Theatre, London
Wednesday 2 December 2015, 4pm and 8pm
Do you remember the last time we were here, together? Sitting in the dark, breathing the same air.
Trying to understand.
If only we could present to you something that you could use, just like one of those software platforms that hide all the complex machinery and just give you the illusions of the simple result. The ability to directly manipulate what you see: the reality of what we see and expect to see in the theatre. Manipulating the space we share between our bodies, our breath, two women, two wigs, and a trumpet.
I'm into my final term now at the London Contemporary Dance School. Having finished the coursework-based Postgraduate Diploma section, I'm now working on independent projects that will complete my work for the M.A. Time is suddenly passing quickly. I have become very comfortable and charmed by London and now I am submitting my final assignments in just a few months!
Some of my work since the last update: While here, I have gotten to make some projects that have been in the works at the back of my head for years.
Along with six wonderful collaborators, I presented The Sunshine Empire, an interactive ensemble of one-on-one personal consultations-performances for public spaces that included a theatre cafe, under a railway bridge, a public park and a charity fundraising open mic between June and August 2015. We asked what happiness meant to us and others... and whether it is something that we can buy. Check out our "corporate" website for videos and images -www.sunshinempire.com
I made my first dance film! 'Indivisible' has a group of dancers floating weightlessly down staircases, in iconic locations for dance in London, reflecting on the ecosystems of artists and art institutions. Film trailer at https://vimeo.com/143942731
Over the summer I had some wonderful exchanges at the European Contact Improv Teachers' Exchange in France, and the Radical Contact Summer Gathering 2015 in Sweden, as well as some research time with Kees Lemmens in the Netherlands that has led me in a new direction for my contact practice and teaching about how we share space.
With Cie Kham, we danced the final performance of Focus in April at Chateauvallon in France. It's been a wonderful 4 years and over 30 shows in France, Singapore and Laos, that have shaped me profoundly as an artist.
Back to the (near) future:
After a busy summer of contact improvisation, networking with other artists back home in Singapore and the excitement of the General Elections and arts festival, I am settling down to my independent study projects. I am writing a dissertation on "Audience Manipulation" and creating some new work! As usual, do contact me for updates if you're interested in the timing tbc projects.
WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)
A contemporary dance performance with Katarzyna Witek and Chloe Abbott
The Place Theatre, London
Wednesday 2 December 2015, 4pm and 8pm
Do you remember the last time we were here, together? Sitting in the dark, breathing the same air.
Trying to understand.
If only we could present to you something that you could use, just like one of those software platforms that hide all the complex machinery and just give you the illusions of the simple result. The ability to directly manipulate what you see: the reality of what we see and expect to see in the theatre. Manipulating the space we share between our bodies, our breath, two women, two wigs, and a trumpet.
Please support our WYSIWYG crowdfunding campaign! This is an unfunded project! Our indiegogo campaign is running for 50 more days. Do help us with a small contribution or a re-sharing of this link - where you can also view our video trailer! http://igg.me/at/WYSIWYG/x/3046203!
Migratory Objects
A durational performance installation with Sylvia Lim and Panos Chountoulidis
Ideas in Action, London Contemporary Dance School/The Place, London
Wednesday 18 November 2015, Drop in 1-4pm (timing tbc!)
I'm really excited to bring on board my music and sound collaborators of the past year to develop a series that I've been working on since 2010. Lost and found physical and sound objects make their way through time, space and boundaries - interacting with our movements, calling to us to transfer them and use them. They move us as we move them, we change their landscape as they change our present and our memory of distance and connection.
The Ice Nymph
A dance film in collaboration with Benjamin Boo
Live performance May 2016 (dates tbc), Royal College of Music
My next dance film was inspired when I was contacted by Benjamin, a Singaporean percussionist in the MA programme at the Royal College of Music. He has the ambition to revive Dr John Sharpley's 1989 composition, created for the Singapore Dance Theatre, in a collaboration choreographed by Mdm Lim Fei Shen, and designed by visual artist Tan Swie Hian. He'd heard that I'd danced this piece of repertory when I too trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and studied with Mdm Lim and Dr Sharpley. I'm now thrilled at the chance to interpret this unique material originating from some great Singapore artists who have mentored and influenced me, to create a film that will accompany Benjamin's live performance in May 2016. I also hope to bring this film back to Singapore and elsewhere with Benjamin's recording.
And more projects to come!
Thanks for all the support so far. I hope to see or hear from all of you soon!
Love,
Sze
Migratory Objects
A durational performance installation with Sylvia Lim and Panos Chountoulidis
Ideas in Action, London Contemporary Dance School/The Place, London
Wednesday 18 November 2015, Drop in 1-4pm (timing tbc!)
I'm really excited to bring on board my music and sound collaborators of the past year to develop a series that I've been working on since 2010. Lost and found physical and sound objects make their way through time, space and boundaries - interacting with our movements, calling to us to transfer them and use them. They move us as we move them, we change their landscape as they change our present and our memory of distance and connection.
The Ice Nymph
A dance film in collaboration with Benjamin Boo
Live performance May 2016 (dates tbc), Royal College of Music
My next dance film was inspired when I was contacted by Benjamin, a Singaporean percussionist in the MA programme at the Royal College of Music. He has the ambition to revive Dr John Sharpley's 1989 composition, created for the Singapore Dance Theatre, in a collaboration choreographed by Mdm Lim Fei Shen, and designed by visual artist Tan Swie Hian. He'd heard that I'd danced this piece of repertory when I too trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and studied with Mdm Lim and Dr Sharpley. I'm now thrilled at the chance to interpret this unique material originating from some great Singapore artists who have mentored and influenced me, to create a film that will accompany Benjamin's live performance in May 2016. I also hope to bring this film back to Singapore and elsewhere with Benjamin's recording.
And more projects to come!
Thanks for all the support so far. I hope to see or hear from all of you soon!
Love,
Sze
Monday, 28 September 2015
Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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