Singapore

“from: The Platform” by Chowk Productions: A Running Imprint on the Mind

by Chan Sze-Wei (745 words, 5-minute read) Singapore-based Raka Maitra and her company Chowk are familiar names at the Esplanade’s Kalaa Utsavam and Raga programmes annually. The company is firmly based in classicial Odissi dance and the martial arts of chhau and kalari. But with them, tradition is not a formula. Walking into the Esplanade […]

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Emergency Stairs

Podcast 31: Emergency Stairs & Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project

Duration: 30 min From 12 December to 24 December 2017, up-and-coming theatre group Emergency Stairs presents Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project, a first-of-its-kind intercultural arts festival in Singapore that focuses on intercultural dialogue, through the format of One Table Two Chairs. It seeks to bring prominent and established traditional and contemporary theatre artists from the

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Elaine Chiew interviews Singapore-based Filipino writer Victor Fernando Ocampo [Philippines, Singapore]

“For every writer, once in a rare while, a book comes along and really shakes you up, where (instead of that height/ceiling metaphor) I’d like to say instead, the floor drops on which you thought the legs of fiction stood. Victor Fernando Ocampo’s The Infinite Library and Other Stories did that for me. The ideas that power

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Discipline The City

Contingent Spaces: “Discipline the City” at the Substation

Discipline the City (23 August – 26 November 2017) is a three-act multi-arts exhibition held at The Substation. Going beyond a static presentation commonly utilised in exhibitions, the show includes permanent exhibits, site-adaptive performances, punk tours, talks, workshops, a shop and rotating exhibits. The monumental programme demands repeat visits over the whole period of the

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13 – 19 Nov 2017: Singapore

Dreamseeds Arts Fest by Club Rainbow, 18 – 25 Nov, *SCAPE An initiative by Club Rainbow (Singapore), Dreamseeds Arts Fest 2017 is a multi-experiential arts festival headlined by the non-profit organisation’s beneficiaries. Dreamseeds Arts Fest is an open-to-public inclusive arts platform that offers beneficiaries the opportunity to realise their creative potential and connect with a

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da:ns festival 2017

Podcast 30: da:ns festival 2017

Duration: 21 min Dr Stephanie Burridge and dancer Chloe Chotrani recap the da:ns festival 2017 by Esplanade Theatres on the bay, sharing their personal reflections on the shows they’ve seen. Chloe discusses the relevance of Eisa Jocson’s practice to Filipin@ sociopolitics, and how this comes through in Jocson’s double-bill of Macho Dancer and Corponomy, while Stephanie

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The Finger Players’ Contemporary Classics Season 2017: “Poop!” and “The Spirits Play”

Poop! by Chong Tze Chien A family left stranded in the aftermath of a father’s seemingly irresponsible, selfish suicide, must learn to navigate its way through the nooks of grief and crannies of letting go and letting be, all whilst holding to semblances of hope through a widow’s grief, a mother’s denial, and the celebration

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Asian Dramaturgs’ Network in Adelaide: Getting Messy to Make Sense

By Kathy Rowland (770 words, 5 minute read) The Asian Dramaturgs’ Network, launched in April 2016 in Singapore by dance dramaturg Lim How Ngean, has quickly extended its regional footprint this year with meetings in Yokohama and Australia. Its Satellite Symposium in Adelaide, presented by Centre 42, brought Australian and Asian cultural practitioners into the same

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6 – 12 November 2017: Singapore

                Bersama-sama: Exhibition Launch by Jasmeet Notay and Steph Jack, Supernormal Gallery, Kreta Ayer Road, 11 Nov 6pm – 10pm Bersama-sama is a small collection of abstract works by Jasmeet Notay and Steph Jack. Jack splatters and blends acrylics to create fluid, whimsical dreamscapes while Notay’s paintings are moody

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Eisa Jocson at da:ns festival 2017: The Body as Archive of Filipino Labour

By Chloe Chotrani (927 words, 7-minute read) To witness the work of Eisa Jocson is an absolute privilege at this point in history. The double-bill pairing up Jocson’s internationally acclaimed Macho Dancer and the new Esplanade commission Corponomy, investigate the economic body as archive of labor and service in the Philippines. It is said that

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30 Oct – 5 Nov 2017: Singapore

            German Film Festival by Goethe-Institut Singapore, various venues and timings from 2 – 12 November 2017 The German Film Festival will present its 21st edition in 2017 over two weeks. This year, more than 30 ambitious and fascinating films will provide a unique insight into contemporary life in Germany

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Choy Ka Fai’s “Dance Clinic”: The Dance Doctor Is In

By Bernice Lee (800 words, 5-minute read) Dance Clinic by Choy Ka Fai is thick with information and ideas. The choreographer performs a trickster role in an artistic approach similar to his previous offerings of SoftMachine (2015). Dance Clinic projects into the future, and digs into the past. It is in conversation with a curated canon of dance, with neuroscience, with

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Lessons in “Grandmother Tongue”

By Patricia Tobin (483 words, 4-minute read) “Have you eaten?” is the go-to greeting for Singaporean Chinese families. Typically asked in dialect (“Jiak ba buay?”), or sometimes Mandarin (“Chi bao ma?”), “Have you eaten?” is a sign of courtesy towards your parents or grandparents, a simple question that bolsters familial bonds. W!ld Rice’s Grandmother Tongue

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Ken Takiguchi: A Dramaturg’s Sanctuary

The Necessary Stage, in collaboration with HANCHU-YUEI, one of Tokyo’s most innovative theatre companies, brings us a work that explores the digital remains of life after death in another thought provoking work, “Sanctuary” opening 1 November 2017. Acclaimed playwright Leow Puay Tin interviews the production’s dramaturg, Ken Takiguchi about being the man in the middle. Ken

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16 – 22 October 2017: Singapore

Poop! by The Finger Players, Victoria Theatre, 20 – 22 October A man dies. His widow grieves. His mother laughs out loud because to her, death is merely a joke. His 8 year old daughter wonders, “When is life worth living; when is death worth celebrating?” Ticketing and more information. A Design Film Festival 2017

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W!ld Rice’s “Hotel” at Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival

In 2015 Singapore celebrated ‘SG50’, the city-state’s golden jubilee, marking 50 years of independence as a sovereign nation. Commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts to respond to that year’s theme of ‘Post-Empires’, W!ld Rice created Hotel, a sprawling, four-and-a-half-hour-long play in two parts intended to subvert the nationalistic triumphalism of the jubilee’s official

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Tan Pin Pin’s “In Time To Come”: On the Edge of a Snow-Globe Starburst

By Marcus Yee (872 words, 8-minute read) A time capsule of a film on time capsules, Tan Pin Pin’s latest film In Time To Come is underpinned by a confounding observation: Singapore’s national obsession with time capsules, despite the nation-state’s short post-independence history. The otherwise plotless film follows three time capsules, the sealing of two time capsules

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“Ghosts and Spectres”: The Burden of History and Artistic Narration

By Elaine Chiew (1350 words, 10-minute read) The stitching together of alternative histor(ies) within artistic exploration as a kind of “false radical chic”, to borrow Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s term[1], can cloud the tougher question of where lies the artist’s burden of truth when playing with history. The four artists showcased in Ghosts and

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