25th Singapore International Piano Festival by Singapore Symphony Orchestra, 7-13 June 2018 This year’s celebration brings in six phenomenal virtuoso pianists from across Asia, Europe and the Americas. All six pianists will present varied, colourful programmes in The Singapore International Piano Festival for their 25th anniversary with a variety of works from Mozart, Beethoven, […]
Weekly Picks: Singapore (4 – 10 June 2018) Read More »
By Chloe Chotrani (990 words, 4-minute read) Garden Uprooted is a performance work drawing from nature as the source, a collaboration with The Philharmonic Orchestra Singapore and The Arts Fission Company. Subtle tonalities slowly seep into the theatre, and contradicting erratic yet fluid movements in space and time. Throughout Garden Uprooted is nature-inspired music by
“Garden Uprooted”: Fluctuations of Silence Read More »
Lim Chin Huat shares about his journey of learning one artistic discipline after another, his approach to creating work, his struggle with calling himself an artist, and how his current project In Her Hands traces its origins back to more than ten years ago. He currently teaches movement full-time at the Intercultural Theatre Institute. CH: I was a science
Lim Chin Huat and Negotiating Positionalities across Time (via Talking Circles) Read More »
StoryFest: International Storytelling Festival Singapore, The Arts House, 1-3 June 2018 Come and listen to tales both old and new from Singapore and around the world at StoryFest 2018. StoryFest is back for their second edition this year with the theme Be Legendary. The festival that is happening from 1-3 June at the Arts House features a
Weekly Picks: Singapore (28 May – 3 June 2018) Read More »
Performing a dance in red stilettos is not allowed at Angkor Archaeological Park, but that’s not stopping Khun Sreynoch from working on it. As members of Cambodia’s first contemporary dance company, Ms. Sreynoch and her closest colleagues have known each other since they were children studying Cambodian classical dance, or Apsara. But in fusing old
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta and Bali from 14 – 20 May 2018 Komunitas Salihara is organizing a lecture on the 15th of May 2018 titled 20 Tahun Reformasi: Majukah Rasionalitas dan Budaya Ilmiah Kita? The talk looks at how after 2 decades of reformation, Indonesia is still dealing with basic primordial
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (14 – 20 May 2018) Read More »
By Chan Sze-Wei (849 words, 5 minute read) L-E-V Dance company’s OCD Love is tightly choreographed and intense in its physicality, as might be expected from a choreographer issuing from years dancing, choreographing and directing for the iconic Batsheva Company whose Gaga style of dancing and theatrical physicality has become iconic of Israeli contemporary dance.
“OCD Love” by L-E-V Dance Company: Mental Illness Plus Dance Equals Ballet and Horror Read More »
Visual Arts Angkor: Exploring Cambodia’s Sacred City by Asian Civilization Museum (ACM), 8 April – 22 July 2018 The ancient civilisation of Angkor left an artistic legacy that lives on most spectacularly in its architecture and sculpture. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the archaeological complexes are today acknowledged as great masterpieces. But until the late
Weekly Picks: Singapore (7 – 13 May 2018) Read More »
By Lainie Yeoh If Walls Could Talk at The Gaslight KL, 8pm 30 April Fondly known as Walls, this poetry open mic show is a must-try event in KL. Many wonderful poetry acts have been discovered in Walls, and the energy from the audience is always warm and generous. Each volume has a feature act —
Weekly Picks: Malaysia (30 April – 6 May 2018) Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Makassar, Yogyakarta, Bandung, and Jakarta from 23 – 29 April 2018 For our first pick this week, we’re bringing you to Makassar in South Sulawesi. If you’re a dance practitioner, join Densiel (enci) Lebang’s 3-day Contemporary Dance Workshop. This workshop aims to get participants to develop awareness and
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (23 – 29 April 2018) Read More »
New Margins Exhibition Tour and Book Launch, DECK, 20 April 7pm Art is often seen as intimidating and distant. What if you held art in your hands, like a book? Can books be seen as art medium, like a painting or a sculpture instead of an object to be purchased in a book shop? This
Weekly Picks: Singapore (16 – 22 April 2018) Read More »
By Kathy Rowland (400 words, 3 minute read) “I asked her out six times in thirty seconds.” In 2013, a Youtube video by slam poet Neil Hilborn went viral. In the clip, Hilborn delivers an impassioned performance of OCD, a poem that celebrates, then eulogies, a love affair that falls victim to one lover’s obsessive
SIFA 2018: “OCD Love”‘s Dancing in the Face of Love Read More »
Ugly in the Morning’s 3 or More If You Can Afford It Album Launch Concert, Esplanade Annexe Studio, Saturday 14 April 8pm Join alternative funk/rock band Ugly in the Morning for the launch of their third album, 3 or More If You Can Afford It, a 10-song journey of funk beats, catchy melodies, tight vocals,
Weekly Picks: Singapore (9 – 15 April 2018) Read More »
By Chan Sze-Wei (1,110 words, six-minute read) Norhaizad Adam’s second full length work with his company P7:1SMA (say “prisma”) is set in another world. The audience steps through the door of the Drama Centre Black Box into an arena of wooden crates and sacking, the whiff of wood and coffee beans in the warm light
“Ngopi” by P7:1SMA: Stop and Smell the Coffee Read More »
Bali 1928 is an ongoing international and interdisciplinary project established by American ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst in 2002 to “research, find, understand, document, explain, restore, re-release, and repatriate the first published recordings of music in Bali along with rare film footage and photographs of musicians and dance-drama performances from the 1930s”. With support from the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s Regional Mobility
Duration: 26 min ArtsEquator’s dance podcast series returns this year, after a short hiatus, with a lively and thoughtful discussion between Chan Sze-Wei, (dance-maker, performance-maker and sometime trouble-maker; Chloe Chotrani (movement artist, writer and gardener); and Soultari Amin Farid (choreographer, arts educator and researcher of Malay dance) This month they discuss two programmes that took
Podcast 37: “Joget” and “Intersections: Traditionally Speaking” Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Medan, Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Jember from 26 March – 1 April 2018 Indonesia’s ocean contains some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the population cares about the ocean and have the wisdom to preserve the reefs. One of Indonesia’s
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (26 March – 1 April 2018) Read More »
This is the book to own or read if you are in any way invested, connected and working with children as well as people with special needs. It is exactly as the title says: an effort to be inclusive, empowering and celebrate all people. The book is divided into five sections: Inclusive dance pedagogy; Equality,
By Akanksha Raja The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2018 is just over a month away, and the programme offers an extensive palette of art and performance not only from Singapore but also as farther afield as Germany, Palestine, India, Cape Verde, and more. It’s hard to define or label the types of shows on
SIFA 2018: Top Ten Picks for the Art Lover Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Yogyakarta and Jakarta from 12 – 18 March 2018 Start your week with a ceramic workshop that also helps support coastal and marine ecosystems! The Coral Triangle Center (CTC), a non-profit foundation that promotes the conservation of marine biology, organizes a Coral Wall Ceramic Workshop this Monday.
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (12 – 18 March 2018) Read More »
Chloe Chotrani is a movement artist and writer based in Singapore. She has set up the performing arts archive, Talking Circles, a digital archive of performing artists from South, Southeast Asia and its Diaspora. A continuous work in progress, the archive stands as a blog – Talking Circles; where you can find informal interviews of performing artists where we
The importance of documenting & archiving the performing arts (via ASEF Culture360) Read More »
By Chloe Chotrani (1,040 words, five-minute read) The one who loves you hits you. The one who hits you loves you. The one who loves you hurts you. This is a piece about relationships, unfortunately. (We can’t get away from them.) One woman, one chair, one microphone. And a chair opposite her, for you. In
“Talk to me and I slap you”: confronting intimacy and violence Read More »
By Bernice Lee (995 words, four-minute read) The Esplanade Theatre Studio is awash in red light. It feels like the set of a Marvel movie – gloomy and dystopian; a planet overtaken by villains, awaiting rescue. Red mechanical legs hang from above the stage. The audience sits in the round, beyond the reach of this
From the lucid dream of “Cut Kafka!”, a promising new artistic path Read More »
You know a Nine Years Theatre production when you see one. There’s the smell of precision about it, from the calibrated ensemble to the period-perfect set pieces. Every single performer seems to be breathing in and out in perfect sync. The language is exact, the direction exacting. The company has made significant strides since it
Kuik Swee Boon and Nelson Chia, dreamers of dance and drama (via The Esplanade) Read More »
Ama-Lia by Teater Kami, 1 – 3 Mar, Goodman Arts Centre Teater Kami continues its practice using theatre as a tool for education and social and cultural awareness with this performance written and directed by Keatar HM. Performed in Malay, this semi-musical tale of two girls, Ama and Lia, and the toy shop run by
Weekly Picks: Singapore (26 February – 4 March 2018) Read More »
Cambodian Living Arts believes that arts and cultural expression are essential to a thriving future for Cambodia. This month, we tell the story of Phal Saravuth, leader of Yu Vek Selapak troupe, a group of young artists skilled in dancing, music and theatre. Phal Saravuth formed the troupe Yu Vek Selapak out of the Khmer
Inspiring Arts: Phal Saravuth (via AsiaLIFE Cambodia) Read More »
There is an unspeakable tranquil that washes over the audience seated inside the chapel at Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film in Singapore. For the first five minutes of Be Longing by Sara Tan and Yejin Kwon, the windows are thrown open and we watch the traffic of Middle Road roll past. Passers-by unknowingly become performers as
“Be Longing” moves between home and away Read More »
By Chloe Chotrani (1400 words, 12-minute read) Dance was practiced as a devotional union between the ancestral and earthly realms through ritualistic performances in architectural spaces, with its genesis in India, extending into Southeast Asia. This essay examines the bronze figures of deities and temple traditions in Angkor, Cambodia in relation to ancient Hindu traditions
Dance as Devotion in South India and Southeast Asia Read More »
By Corrie Tan (1228 words, 10-minute read) A man is rising from the water. The sea is birthing him: his closely-cropped hair, his bare chest and shoulders, his damp sarong clinging to his thighs. On land, another man with a shorn scalp is sitting cross-legged in the sand and mud, his distended lips pulled back
“Cinta Tuah Jebat”: Love on the Rocks Read More »
This is an excerpt from “The Pangalay Dance in the Construction of Filipino Heritage” by Joelle Florence Patrice Jacinto. The research discusses how the Pangalay dance of the Tausug people was used as a heritage tool to support the construction of a Philippine culture. The paper was published on the Journal for the Anthropological Study of
