In this video, LASALLE students Ernie Martha and Raesmi Nambiar speak to Raka Maitra, founder and artistic director of CHOWK, on the practice of contemporary dance in Singapore, her roots as a classical Odissi dancer in India and the challenges CHOWK faces as a dance company. This video can also be viewed on YouTube.
Between February to April 2019, BA in Arts Management students from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, embarked on an artist documentation project as part of their module History & Contextual Studies: materials, methods, history. The first-year students were tasked with interviewing an artist to better understand an aspect of their practice – their processes and influences, issues they were interested in exploring through their artmaking – and to produce the result of the interview in the form of a video.
The students were given brief parameters for the project but creative freedom in how they executed the
brief and shot and edited their videos. They were also allowed to select any artist to interview. Some immediately gravitated to an artist they admired, some selected from within their own artistic communities, while others chose artists they were unfamiliar with or simply curious about. Six of the best videos will be shown in partnership with ArtsEquator.
This video of Raka Maitra from CHOWK is a series is part of a video project by BA Arts Management students of LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. For more videos in this series, click here.