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HATCH: Season 3 by Dance Nucleus

Performed at the Dance Nucleus Studio at Goodman Arts Centre; Performed on ?????

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Dance Nucleus is an independent dance house with the aim of providing a platform for artists to develop their craft. HATCH is their artist-in-residence programme that concentrates on creative research and development leading to a studio presentation of the work or work-in-progress. The programme gives time to explore, studio space, financial support as well as a supportive environment to aid the artists.

I attended Season 3 of HATCH last night at Goodman Arts Centre (I love this place omg) and it was really crowded compared to HATCH Season 2. Congratulations to Dance Nucleus on a full house! The presentation showcased 4 works by artists of different backgrounds and experiences.

POV by Sheriden Newman

For this first piece, the audience was invited to sit on the four sides of the performance space. This piece was performed by 4 dancers connected together by elastic bands. I could see that your sitting location would have affected what you saw on the dance floor, like there was one instance where the dancers were standing in a line horizontally on different levels. However, if you sat at another position, you would have seen the dancers in a line one behind another, at different levels, so you’d see only parts of their body. I suddenly thought that it was cool that people sitting at different positions would be viewing the same thing, but the effect felt would have been completely different because of the angle. It’s like one of those optical illusion videos that you see on Facebook.

Brownian (a working title) by Sherry Tay and Joseph Nair

This was my favourite piece of the night. Okay, so they got us to move to the “front” of the performance area, because the rest of the performances did not need the 360 degrees view. However, there was a catch. Those sitting on the left have to sit near the right when they came to the front and those on the right have to sit on the left, and everyone had to move to their seats together. So while everyone was moving, the soundscape for this piece came on and when I looked back, I saw the dancers already on stage dancing. Then I realised that by making the audience move like that, they’re mimicking pedestrians walking along a crowded road, each with their own location to go towards. I thought it was so clever.

For me, the piece painted a picture of a busy street. As the theory of Brownian Motion states, everyone had their specific pedestrian movements and route to walk/dance along, and each dancer had their own specific character. It also commented on the digital age that we live in and how everyone is constantly on their phones all the time.

Shallow Water Blackout by Sherman Fu

My biggest impression of this piece was the lighting. At the start of the piece, the lights faded in and out as the dancers danced, so whenever the lights came on the dancers were always in different positions from before. To me, although I’ve never blacked out before, it was like the blacking out that you always see in movies.

Other than this, I totally didn’t get the piece at all, until the choreographer explained a bit of his choreography during the post-show dialogue. He mentioned that each dancer embodied Time, Body and Mind, and at times one overpowered the other. I thought that the idea was nice, but no one would get it if you didn’t make it clear that you were using an idea like that. All the dancers were wearing all black, and it didn’t differentiate anyone from the other, so we had no idea who was what, or even that they were embodying anything.

With(In) by Koustav Basu Mallick

For this piece, the first thing that popped into my mind was: “Abusive relationship”. Then I was like no, that’s probably too far off. Cloth was hung from the ceiling, and the dancers, at different points in time, were tied in it. So basically, I didn’t understand anything from this , but from the post-show discussion, the choreographer revealed that his piece was about exploring the dynamics of partner work with a fellow dancer, as well as partner work with a prop that seems as “alive” as cloth.

Final thoughts:

So overall, HATCH Season 3 made me come up with a lot of questions, as it always does. I think that one thing that I kept on thinking about was how does one convey to the audience what they want to say? Sometimes, I feel that there’s not much point in creating something that everyone can interpret vastly differently. Which is kinda contradictary to myself, because I always say that I feel that art is something that has a meaning or idea behind it. But I think that I feel irritated at art that doesn’t really have like a “concrete” meaning or idea to take away because I hate not knowing things. (Like I hate it when people give really vague answers about art like “It’s anything you want it to be” and stuff like that.). Maybe that’s why I liked Brownian the best, because it held such a clear meaning to me.

I also remember thinking about relationships can be conveyed on stage. Whenever we see a guy and a girl on stage, we, or at least I, automatically think that they’re in a romantic relationship, especially in dance where everything is so physical and looks so suggestive. But that might not always be the case, a guy and a girl can have relationships as friends, siblings, acquaintances. It’s not always romantic, but how can we convey that on a dance stage where everything is so physical?

Okay, so with that I’m going to stop here. I actually had and still have a lot of questions that I want to ask, but I can’t put them into words and there’s just too many things I want to ask about so yeah. I’ll save them for another time.

#dance #dance writing #dancing #dance review #dance critique #thoughtsofadancerboo

Life’s A Stage by Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan Dance Theatre

Performed at the theatre at the National Library; Watched on ????

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Overall, I felt a bit disappointed. Not in the dancing itself, because it was really good, but in the other artistic elements of the whole 2-hour piece. I felt that as one on the leading Chinese Dance companies in Singapore, the way they pieced together the story as well as the different artistic elements should have been better. I did write a review for it, as usual, and I’ll be uploading it in this post as well, so you can see my qualms, as well as my praises, for Life’s A Stage.

Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan Dance Theatre’s orginal dance drama, “Life’s a Stage”, premiered on 15 July 2016 at the Drama Centre Theatre. Weaving elements of story-telling with Chinese dance and Chinese opera as well as other artistic elements, “Life’s a Stage” follows the life story of Chinese opera performers and lovers Sai Yu and Ah Hua.

Sai Yu, one of the star performers in an opera troupe, was convinced by Zhu Hong, a singer at a nightclub, to switch careers and left the troupe. She joins Zhu Hong to work in the nightclub. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worst when a gang leader sets his sights on Sai Yu. Ah Hua and Ah Fu, another member of the opera troupe, rushes to save her but are beaten up by gang members. Sai Yu is drugged and the gang leader takes advantage of her. In his misery, Ah Hua turns to opium smoking. Ah Fu finds him and encourages him to save Sai Yu.

Sai Yu tries to kill herself, but is saved by Ah Hua. Reunited, the couple start an amateur opera troupe “so as to pass down this Chinese traditional culture”. A now-elderly Sai Yu brings her grandsons and young students to visit the troupe. The show ends with an opera performance by Sai Yu and Ah Hua, who “hope to be able to pass down valuable Chinese ethics and virtues, as well as inculcate in the younger generation a need to preserve, promote and pass down this art and culture” through their performances.

Plot-wise, the dance drama was very heavy; the whole story was similar to that of dramatic Chinese soap operas. As is characteristic of drama series, the unluckiness of Sai Yu as well as the despair of Ah Hua was extremely over-dramatized. As Singaporeans would say, everything was so drama. Ah Hua smokes opium instead of trying to save Sai Yu. Sai Yu tries to kill herself. Although it might happen in real life, and maybe even more so in 1950s Singapore, this plot line greatly gravitated away from the supposed essence of the dance drama – Chinese opera.

Additionally, with the exception of the starting and ending scenes, the opera troupe was not mentioned at all. The entire storyline has nothing to do with the need to “preserve, promote and pass down” Chinese opera.

Moreover, the soundscape’s transitions and endings left a sour taste in my mouth. The music was made to fade away abruptly and it didn’t sit well with me.

But on to the good things.

I was particularly impressed with the second scene, which was the opening of the story. It showed the training and rehearsals at the opera troupe, and in the process showcased different forms of classical Chinese dance, such as dances using the Water Sleeves and handkerchiefs, as well as both male and female classical Chinese dance vocabulary. The dancers’ natural acts were spot on, and even when there were accidents during the handkerchief portions, the dancers played it off smoothly, acting like it was part of the choreography.

One dancer in particular stood out to me a lot. Zhang Xiaoqi, who plays Zhu Hong, was the perfect combination of beauty, grace and allure. Dancing in heels is no easy feat, much less dancing Chinese dance, and Zhang Xiaoqi still manages to play her role convincingly and look so, so good doing it. (You go, girl!)

Despite the holes within the plotline, I believe that the original intention was to promote the appreciation and continuation of all traditional Chinese art forms, not necessarily only Chinese dance and Chinese opera. With these art forms slowly dying out, I believe that it is essential to preserve this part of Chinese culture, which also plays a large part in the history of the art scene in Singapore.

#dance #thoughtsofadancerboo #dance review #dance critique #dance writing

Sounding Body by RAW Moves

Performed at the Black Box at Goodman Arts Center; Watched on 28 May 2016

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Sounding Body by RAW Moves is an innovative performance, which binds movement and music with technology. The piece starts off with a speech by the Instrument-System Designer, Felix Leuschner. He introduces The Machine to the audience. The dancers wear sensors on different parts of the body, and a specific sound from the guqin is made according to the movement of the body. Felix Leuschner then goes on to pose the question: are the performers musicians or dancers? Are they dancing or playing an instrument? Does the movement control the music, or the music the movement? With these questions in mind, the audience is invited to think about the boundaries of each art form and the overlaps between.

The piece is split into 5 sections, and an additional video at the end as an epilogue. The three dancers each have a solo for themselves in 3 of the sections, two solos in one of the sections and a trio in another.

I believe that the inclusion of the musical system would have allowed the dancers to explore different movements and dynamics, with special focus on a specific part of the body. However, one drawback that I felt had hampered the visual experience as an audience member was that the movements were very limited. With only movement from mostly a certain body part, at times the piece became a little stagnant, especially since not much big movements or dynamics were incorporated due to not wanting to overwhelm the audience with an extremely loud sound that would come from the movement.

Dancer Melyn Chow, I felt, had one of the hardest parts of having a sensor tied around her mid-torso. Not only is the torso a difficult body part to move, it is also difficult to create different dynamics. I believe that she has done a commendable job, especially since everything was so slow and the physical strain must have been extremely tiring.

The performance did have elements of humor in it as well. The trio play around with their sounds and had a mini race to get from one end of the room to the other. Matthew Goh was particularly hilarious, with his head bobbing due to his sensor being tied around his head.

The video that was shown as an epilogue was a compilation of the 5 (?) weeks of preparation, exploration and rehearsals for Sounding Body. I felt that it was a pity that many of the movements that they showed in the video weren’t incorporated into the actual performance, because I felt that there were many potential choreographic possibilities that weren’t implemented.

Overall, I felt that the idea of using technology in this way is really interesting and it shows the increasing trend of incorporating technology to enhance the performance. The movements incorporated could have been more varied and dynamic, but overall the idea behind it was good. It makes one think about the new boundaries that are being drawn, or erased, in art, and whether dance can be categorized as solely dance now.

#thoughtsofadancerboo #dance #dancing #dance review #dance critique #dance writing #dancer #dance performance #performance #performance review #performance critique #review #critique

Troika Ranch's "Enter Comma Prepare"

First, small note: quotation marks are not the proper way to denote an evening-length piece of work. Just like you would for a movie or novel, that should have been Enter Comma Prepare, but I can't do that in a title. I don't think. Another note is that I should have written this way before--in general, you want to write up movement description and other things the second after you get out of a performance (which started at 8:00 March 2nd). Dance and theatre both are under both the blessing and curse of being ghostly, ethereal performances. It's there and then it's gone. Video has done a lot to improve this, but not all performances are videotaped.

And now: Troika Ranch's Enter Comma Prepare

Right! This performance took place in several parts of the Kaul Auditorium on the Reed College campus. To begin, the audience entered and mingled in the first part of the lobby. Then doors opened to another part of the lobby, further back, where there are normally couches and chairs (removed for this performance) and we all shuffled in. There was a moment's hesitation when we realized there was no seating and we had no idea of how to orient ourselves other than noting that the six dances were all facing the back wall. In a sort of, "well I guess this is what I'm supposed to do" we lined up against the two longer walls. The room was lit only in UV lights, and the dancers were wearing decidedly home-made costumes that were faced with white and backed with black. It was eye-catching, definitely. The dance then consisted of, oh, a plethora of many dance styles. This is why I should have written this sooner. There was a lot of partnering and weight sharing, and occasionally the dancers broke to embrace or welcome an audience member. The movements themselves were deliberate, neither slow nor fast, and performed with a blank, passive expression. At one point near the end every dancer, linked in pairs (holding hands, I think), started kicking about in a 1920s Broadway showbiz sort of deal with manic expressions on their faces, the sort of crazy glee that lindy hoppers possess. It was like they were meta-dancing. Hmm. Some other particularly interesting parts were when the dancers moved toward the audience--not particularly to interact with the audience, but instead to move past them to the windows, which they started kissing. The intent on the part of the choreographer was to have the audience feel free to move around (hence no chairs) and thus not feel trapped by the advancing dancers, but that didn't quite happen--an audience member near me was buffeted between two dancers and was clearly uncomfortable with the interaction. Personally, I thought it was awesome. Performer/Audience interaction is like candy for me.

Soon after the window-kissing section, the ushers open the doors to the auditorium and a big, booming, god-like voice goes, "Audience: Enter. Audience: Enter. Audience: Enter," repeatedly. As I do so, I notice that the chairs are arranged in groups of two, three, and four, facing all different directions. The dancers are standing on the floor, not the stage, and are in similarly random positions. There are many different pieces to this performance, and each slight change is marked by a "beep" in the soundtrack. I would probably misinform you if tired to remember them all in order, so I'll just give samples. A computer-generated voice, assumedly randomized, called out a performer's name and a direction: "Carla, northwest. Jonathan, south," etc. The performers then had to dance their way in that direction in a rapidly moving yet still performative way. Another section: Three dancers read into a microphone about Plato's cave, interspersed with a mechanical voice continuing the reading, while three other dancers worked about the southeast corner of the auditorium with movements ranging from rolling around on the floor to climbing five feet up on the rolled-back auditorium bleachers. During another piece, ever dancer--scattered about the floor in different orientations--performed exactly the same movement sequence, though each one seemed to add in idiosyncratic slow or fast moments. Another time, the beep sounded and all of the dancers jumped up on the stage, performing on the stage just as they had performed on the floor or in the lobby. Up there, they had different group titles, such as "Royals," "Peasants," "Ladies," etc, and movements titled "Protect," "Disappear," "Enter," "Exit," etc. "Enter" and "Exit" were particularly interesting--at first, before any dancer had "Entered," they all stood with their back to the audience, black clothing visible. For "Enter," they walked in a circle to face forward, white clothing showing. At least, they did for one section. In the first section on stage, every dancer/group had the same movement sequence for a command (different sequences for different commands), but in the second section, after a beep, the dancers had a choice of the original movements, or their own interpretation. This change was particularly interesting, because at first I thought that the dancers were basically told to dance when their name was called, and the verb after their name was irrelevant. However, as time progressed, I noticed that the actions repeated, and knowing that the movement was still limited was much more powerful and interesting than removing most of the limits on this dance.