Faye Lim dances, facilitates, performs, improvises, makes, and mothers. In Singapore, she presents works with the Strangeweather Movement Group, a collective she founded to create and perform dance works at off-stage venues around Singapore. As part of Singapore’s Contact Improvisation (CI) community, Faye has also facilitated jams and workshops in Singapore and KL, and she runs child-friendly jams and facilitates families of different shapes and sizes in contact-based dance and play through Rolypoly Family.
Faye Lim shares about how she came to explore body autonomy for children, the key principle that guides her, and where her body of work emerges from.
FL: In facilitating children to discover their own movements, I’ve journeyed through different types of attention, insecurities, and understanding what my framework is – a blend of different aspects of my existence, as a parent, dance artist, and contact improvisation dancer.
GK: I like that all your different identities come into play in your work with children. Has there been a key influence on your approach to this work though?
FL: Mostly to do with improvisation. I feel that a lot of the philosophy behind it has shaped my mindset and how I approach life, for better or for worse. And I suppose, with children, I feel like they’re more… impulsive? Not with any negative connotations though.
GK: No inhibitions.
FL: And, for me, they’re also harder to predict. Which is why I need to improvise.
Improvisation is almost like survival for me because I cannot handle having to control the way a child is dancing. The approach of a score – which is the language to indicate a direction or intention for the improvisation – and having certain parameters related to the score yet having an attitude of being present and dealing with change in the moment, is a good match with the way I aspire to be present with who the child is at that moment in time.
Read the complete interview on Talking Circles.