Passages

Passages 2022 – Protecting Veil, Bittersweet, The Sound was our Ocean, Faux Contact (see also ‘You Ate My Guest’)

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Pictured: Huo Liang and Shan Del Vecchio

1. Protecting Veil

A backdrop lit orange by a row of little lights below, making the background look like the wall of a lantern.

A woman crosses the back of the stage from one side to the other with her back to us, arms raised, one hand clutching the other hand’s wrist, and as she bourres, bent sideways gently like a stalk in the wind, she pats the screen, making a sound like a veil flapping in the wind. After she exits, three couples enter, women in a sitting position and men holding them and dragging them backwards in a half-arc onto the stage, and back out again.

Because we are in a small theatre, we can hear Uchida Chihiro’s shoes tapping rapidly (fast, so fast) across the ground when she first enters with her arms raised in a V shape, as Nakamura Kenya enters the other side of the stage; Chihiro’s expression remains light, pleasant, serene in this pas de deux. There are little touches I like in each of the pas de deux in this piece: Chihiro and Kenya stepping forward and leaning forward curiously to look at us while we stare right back; Kenya and Chihiro standing next to each other and one after another, slowly letting a single-shoulder shrug roll down their body and consume their movement, Kenya shifting slightly behind Chihiro and sliding back out. Quite fond of the lifts in Protecting Veil, and there are so many – Chihiro lying sideways across Kenya’s shoulders; Chihiro catching Kenya’s hand between calves, a lift with clasped hands, Chihiro seated on Kenya’s arm; the breathtaking moment where she grasps his wrists and leaps up in a tuck-jump to rest lightly on his chest.

Kwok Min Yi and Agetsuma Satoru are the second main couple – he lays her on the ground and she curls up like a sad sunflower seed while he tries to comfort her. I like how their moves look, how she slides her hand behind her back to grasp his so that he can pull her into a lift, Min Yi’s hand gripping her thigh while Satoru lifts her over his shoulder in a split; how she lies sideways on his shoulder with legs in a cycling position that has an almost severe look to it. The mood of their pas de deux shifts like the sea washing up on the beach and out again: one moment a little spark of triumph in connecting hands, another moment disconsolate on the ground; the next, leaning forward in hope as if drawing curtains to the morning light.

The third pas de deux opens with a little more drama. The other dancers have gathered at a corner and when they move away from it, they bring with them Shan Del Vecchio, a long white veil trailing behind him, and Yeo Chan Yee in their midst, so that when the other dancers fade away and the veil is laid on the ground in a seashell shape, she may lie back in elegant repose in the dead centre of the stage with her back to us, staring at Shan as he stands at the tip of the seashell. Venuses rising from the Sea. It feels like a new world exploration for a wondering wandering couple (I liked the move where she turned her leg through full rotations in the air, and <edit, this is Minegishi Kana and Miura Takeaki in a soulful tender delicate pas de deux> another kind of playful moment where they were on the ground and it looked as if she were rolling him along under her legs as he rolled on the sand). Chan Yee has her own brief solo as well, through which you can feel the choreographer’s voice and intent – a resolute hand pushing down through the ground, the full articulation of the foot pushing off the ground and the sleek turns. This segment ends with the crab-claw lift, where Shan lifts her in the air and she opens her arms and legs to embrace the sky, and more couples enter, girls lifted in the crab-claw lift.

At some point in time, a veil is drawn on either side of the stage – and then fans turn on and the veils flutter out horizontal to the stage. I’m quite fascinated because we don’t often have props flowing out from the sides of the stage, or dancers interacting with props in the way they have here, touching the backdrop and so on. Two of the pas de deux are repeated with slight variations – Chihiro’s and Min Yi’s – this is welcome, and feels somehow comforting. There’s a repeat movement of Shan (? <edit: Miura Takeaki?>) and later, Watanabe Tamana drifting across the back of the stage in the opposite direction from before, patting the screen; and perhaps because of the shift in mood, the pattering sound sounds ominously like the wings of a moth against a lantern.

A word on the other dancers in the group: They are the community that makes up a protective veil (though also a community that wraps itself around Chihiro and sweeps her away backwards into the curtains away from Kenya). We’re pleased to see the various dancers, from familiar faces to the newer younger ones. A part that comes to mind is the moment where they are dancing and then Minegishi Kana leaps out of the corner to join the other dancers, and then as one they drift to the corner on their very highest pointes or demi-pointes and freeze for a moment in absolute silence, which keeps you guessing, and then they patter out again like rain drops, falling to the ground and swiveling double-speed on their stomachs on the ground, rolling up again. They are breathtakingly fast, and they fill the frame and the stage with their presence.

One of the parts we like best is when they stand in a square of three by three, and they lean outwards and lean back in like expanding constellations, while Beatrice Castañeda and Jason Carter dance in the foreground, deft and neat, precise, a moment of exploding joy, like a morning star. Beatrice stands out, bright and exuberant in this dance. In another part we like, the men, who are holding the ladies aloft, lay the women down in a ring around Satoru, and when the women draw in their arms and legs to curl up like seeds, the ring of bodies constricts around Satoru in a mesmerising pattern. Satoru has a short solo that is strongly executed as always; it was something we would like to see again.

At the end, the group dancers, the expanding constellations, stand in rows on the stage and Chihiro steps out with the white veil. The fans stop; the horizontal veils drop. The screen below unbuckles and drops so unexpectedly it could almost be an accident. For the first time the crowd of dancers sees Chihiro, or she sees them. And then as the lights dim so that faces are invisible, the group coalesces into a sculpted pile of bodies with their backs to us, an incredible massive structure of men bent over to create a small mountain, and ladies seated in the outer ring pressing their hands upwards against the men’s waists, their carved shapes gleaming under the lights.

Chihiro climbs up the mountain. At the top she sits, and the white veil in her open palms is drawn down away from us, sucked into the other side of the sculpture, until it is all gone. Chihiro sprawls upon the pinnacle of the structure of bodies and she turns to look at us with a serene and intelligent, piercing look. What an indescribable feeling! It is an artwork, a work of absolute art…

And then Chihiro slides over the bodies and sinks head-first down into the other side of the sculpture as the lights go off.

Wow.

Lifts lifts lifts. I liked them. See above as well.

There are no photographs because the theatre was quite small and I felt a little shy about taking photos. The ladies wore vanilla yellow and the gentlemen wore orange trousers, as seen above.

2. Bittersweet

We reviewed this before, the Min Yi and Jason Carter version, in 2019.

It opens with Min Yi draped like a cross over Jason’s back, sliding her feet up and down her legs as if feeling her feet for the first time. She peels herself away from him and flits away across the stage, stopping in a brittle arabesque, buckling to the ground. She has discovered herself and come to life; and it takes a while for Jason Carter’s character to respond and to see her. And when he does, first she tries to return to him, curling onto his back and unfurling away.

They dance with such strength and calm. Min Yi’s dancing is graceful and every gesture of her limbs is expressive and meaningful; through them flows an emotion that stretches beyond the fingertips. The arms beseech, they caress. Jason, with his lyrical grace, exudes tenderness and care in every movement and perhaps for the first time we see that when he swings her down from one of the lifts, he must cradle her neck carefully. Patiently, Min Yi loops an arm around him and waits, and he will swing her like a diamond trapezoid over his shoulders, lift her as she lies like a swallow across his shoulder – somehow this image is not one of flight and hope, but of a yearning for freedom. Very gently, while her arm is draped across his shoulder blades, he carries her so that she appears to barely rest any weight on the ground as she steps, and steps, across the water.

At the very height of emotion, he lifts her up so she rests her palm on his shoulder and he carries her with one hand up, and travels across the stage. Where once it was a single-hand lift with the gentleman standing still, somehow this fits their version – as they travel, so too does the music swell and we are swept away.

Yet the performance does not feel heavy. You must know also that the dance is not choreographed as one long emotional handkerchief of tears. There are moments where there is a mellowing, and a gentle slowing of momentum – where he pulls her wrist delicately while she leaps lightly at him and he catches her, tilting her at an angle so her hand almost touches the ground. Weightless moments; seated on the ground, she folds her hands over her ankles, which move conceals her face and emotions, while he bows over the arch of her back; where she clings to him and he lifts his leg in successive motions as if to toss her upwards and away, but they move gently. Soft moments, soft emotions.

Perhaps their ties can be sundered – witness the scene where a white light lies diagonal like a sword blade across the stage and he is drawn towards it and though he tears himself away each time, he is pulled further and further away from her while she waits in agony for him. Yet in the end he chooses to return, and she wraps her hands to his face and clings to him as he steps backwards and drags her, not into the future, but back to their shared past. And so he chooses to accept her, even if he cannot see her face again or dance with her; and he willingly allows her to reluctantly slip her arms over his shoulders and drape herself over his back again.

Beautiful. We do have photographs for this (Saturday matinee). (We did feel our eyes fill. It had nothing to do with a story we made up along the way and above, which we just entertained in brief flashes – mermaid who finds her feet. Simply the entire mood created by this work and the dancers and the music, working to create the whole….)

Have some gorgeous photos, please.

3. The Sound was our Ocean

Above: Foreground – Ivan Koh, Igarashi Shu; background – Kevin Zong, Étienne Ferrère

L-R: Watanabe Tamana, Igarashi Shu, Timothy Ng, Chua Bi Ru (foreground), Kevin Zong, Esen Thang

Let’s hear from the choreographer himself!

When this begins, we see only the silhouettes of the dancers moving rhythmically. In the dimness we first make out a dancer in the front row (Esen Thang) who has a marked fluidity and expressiveness to her dancing. When the lights go on, we see the dancers are wearing the most solid blue colour possible, blue as the dream ocean, and bopping to the electronic synth pop music in the video above, repeated in Act 3. They are the happy oysters of the ocean – fast legs opening into triangular shapes, arms swinging up and down like pipes behind backs or like pendulums up and around their heads, catching hands and pulling back so fast you think they’ll almost spin like spanners. If you look at the IG post above, this is a snippet similar to the first Act (reminds us of the third, though) – joyous celebrations by the sides while central works in the middle burst into fireworks.

And so much of the work feels like a celebration. I like the speedy fiery group dances scattered through the piece: arms swinging back so fast hands almost punch shoulders, sweeping arabesques spitting backwards, men swinging ladies near-horizontal to the ground with their legs forked, the high lifts where the girls swing into crescent shapes, the exuberant Christmas tree lifts you see in the video above where the ladies are as high as pendants on trees.

Lots of moments pop and sparkle for us. The duo dance by Igarashi Shu and Kevin Zong: energetic and controlled flair, their limbs a blur in the misty lighting. The pas de deux, one after another, layers upon layers: Ma Ni and Kevin Zong’s pas de deux flows fast and easy on the eye – there is always a fine grace in Ma Ni’s dancing that makes it look beautiful and interesting; a delightful pas de deux from Ivan Koh and Henriette Garcia, who both bring out the contemporary spirit in the music, Henriette with a feline grace and confidence seen also in her swift and fun dance with Étienne Ferrère in the almost-final Act; Elaine Heng and Etienne in a marvellous smooth pas de deux like pulled taffy, or molten marshmallows, lines pulling and energy flowing through their moves; Ma Ni and Jason Carter moving easily in part of a group dance, lending the dance a sense of camaraderie; dancers bursting out from the centre and racing round the stage playfully as if at a playground.

This is a robust work of love.

A good chunk of the heart of this piece goes to the two rounds of pas de deux with Shu and Watanabe Tamana. The cookie in the ice cream. A riveting pas de deux with two dancers who have bold, vigorous, exciting styles that meld well when put together. Shu dances with imagination and a little dramatic flair as well; a flick of the arm wraps one in an invisible cloak. Tamana dances with skydiving confidence, unafraid: the body is thrown fully into a leap into the air; she leaps up fearlessly to balance on his shoulder, her feet crossed at the ankles and pointing down; the leg is thrust fully squarely to the side. One cannot be afraid to do the moves that may make one look ugly (but actually don’t). And at the same time both dancers participate in full so the dancing sparkles: the dream-catcher and the sunlight, the lollipop and the ferris wheel. They balance each other out securely and they make the rigorous pas de deux easy to watch.

Chua Bi Ru has a solo in the middle of this dance, a solitary body of loneliness in every twist of the torso and the limb, in a hand reaching back to grasp a raised ankle, in slowly running around the stage and coming up against the half-circle of turned backs. A thought crosses the mind that she is and will be the OG… wringing expression from every ounce and nerve fibre of the being. In that final moment when she is sprawled back on the ground staring at us upside-down with an almost Exorcist-like effect, something resonates within the desolate heart.

Timothy Ng, Yorozu Kensuke and Esen Thang hold another jigsaw piece in a little trio dance, Esen a flag twisting in the wind between the two. They all make it look far easier than it really is; the gentlemen roll and slide into place in lifting her, turning Esen; Kensuke and Esen in a kind of waltz while Timothy draws strong shapes in the air. Seamless and slick. It’s interesting how Esen’s voice shows in this. In an earlier scene <edit: in the orange Protecting Veil, not this dance> when the ladies all lean forward and push their faces between their parallel hands as if looking through a box, there’s a sense of liquid plastic in Esen’s movements, a kind of contemporary dance voice, and funnily, we can almost see the actual box.

It’s when the men burst out onto the stage in a rollicking display – Shu and Ivan, Etienne and Kevin, then Kensuke entering to dance in sync with Shu and Ivan <edit: Then Timothy enters behind as well> – boundless energy, charisma and polished moves, one of the most thrilling and memorable moments – that we look again at the cast list. Every single one of the dancers has their own distinct characteristic voice. We watched the opening carefully the second time round and looked at all the dancers in the dimness. You could not see their faces but they were all moving in their own way and yet perfectly together.

This ends with Tamana and Shu in a very brief dance together, and at last she heads off into the distance while he follows her with a listening expression; and he scoops her into his arms and she draws up her arms and legs as if she’s running, all limbs in right-angles. Then lights out. You won’t doubt that this is the ending.

We’ve seen the running pose before in other things – Organ Concerto, I think. I feel like it’s also in Lambarena but probably not. This one is not dead centre (unlike Organ) — it’s to one side. It doesn’t feel sinister. It feels complete.

What’s there not to love! I’d like to see it all over again.

4. Faux Contact

We’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away.

This was “You Ate My Guest” choregraphed by Etienne from earlier this year, but updated. Back in the day (some months back), the Artistic Director Mr Janek Schergen had said that he told Etienne that it needed one more scene to make it complete, and here we are.

This begins with the dancers in two groups, the inner core and the outer ring, leaning out and back in like atoms. This segues quickly into the effervescent showstopper we know and love: the mincing ladies, the strutting dancers, Stephanie Joe’s expansive bold dancing as Queen Bee with Agetsuma Satoru as her un/willing companion, the line up as if for Mr Universe/ Miss Universe (which brings little snickers from the audience), the signature move of a hand sliding down the chest to the waist and the arm opening out in an arc; the two lines of dancers facing off on opposite sides of the stage as their misunderstandings spill across a dark void in the middle; the men in a funny little mime round the ladies, picking up phones and sending emails with a quirky quizzical air. They know they’re in on a joke and that’s half the fun.

We do have more quiet moments in the dance. Kevin Zong takes on Jasper Arran’s solo – after a wild night dancing, the boys exit and one of them chucks him briefly under the chin. The music after is so quiet it’s almost silent. Kevin is still slightly giddy with the echo of the last dance in his mind, fingers pointing in the air…but this moment turns inwards into self-questioning and tear trails, into the eternal internal questions. One can of course waltz with classical grace – take my hand – but there remains an inner turmoil to be resolved when we jive to another beat. Kevin’s version is quiet, introspective, and sincere, so nothing in it is tacky – not the tear trails, not the inner pondering. The solo is difficult because it looks into the mind and heart, and it has passed into safe hands.

Where once this moved into a pas de deux, we instead see the men entering swatting away the mist as if they are batting away flies, and then two sets of group dances with the couples: pastel candy-clothed couples in elastic springs-in-their-heels hops and jumps, women in uber-fast lifted spins and jumps, and wine-berry couples in a soulful mood, gentler and calmer. If you look closely at the pas de deux following this, you can see a move that is similar to something Kevin has danced before them, because his solo once immediately preceded it. It’s like sliding a new panel between pieces.

And so we now go into the terrific pas de deux between Minegishi Kana and Miura Takeaki. Kana is a spitfire, emotionally unstable, stumbling in her arabesques into Takeaki’s arms – a deliberate stumble in each show that makes you catch your breath. Fast and furious with her emotions, exquisite in her agony. He is her bedrock and stable pillar, catching her in at the height of her fury, clasping her face in his hands – look at me, he says, and he is the linchpin, the centre of her wildly-spinning compass. In his arms, paradoxical as it may sound, she flies, she soars freely, and their duet is wrenching, head-spinning, jaw-dropping. There are heights they reach when dancing together that are achievable because they are dancing together.

The final Act(s) that follow are simply sheer joy and the dancers exude an infectious genuine enjoyment. Boom, the lights go red and and the male dancers strike poses, swing their arms like they’re turning giant invisible steering wheels; the dancers spill out onto the stage for a final showdown swinging their arms back as if they’re falling over, pumping their arms back as if they’re pressing on giant horns – hold back, hold back, here we go, here we go; bopping to music as they stride to the back and freezing in profile to face the flashlights blasting in their faces left and right, like celebrities. Tamana in a corner winding up her arm to spin an invisible bowling ball at the dancers; dancers holding invisible golfing clubs or rat-a-tat-tatting on drums, high energy power drinks and cool kids on the block. This is the music and dancing we will always want to remember.

For a little moment when the music in the final Act played, I was hit with a wave of inexplicable nostalgia so great I almost teared up.

We note John De Dios was in the cast list but was unable to be in this; we would have liked to see him in this as he has so much to add (great form, a quirky humour within, seen in some pieces). Igarashi Shu danced in his stead and did a great job, bopping along to the beat and his own internal drum, conveying the mirth in the music. We need to add a word in also– pleased to see that Jessica Garside was the ballet mistress for this 🙂

(One more word: you ate my guest? but i loved your dinner party

Oops i meant to put a comma, not a question mark. Same thing…?)

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You would have loved “You Ate My Guest”, I told a friend after Made in Singapore 2022, you should have seen all the dances but you would have loved it. And so when I saw this on the line-up, I bought her a ticket and she enjoyed the entire show but of course it ended on an absolute raving high note for her with Faux Contact. I didn’t think I would invite people who rarely watch SB to watch any longer, and anyway we are introverts. But bring your friend if Faux Contact is on the list. I can’t think of anyone who will not enjoy it or who will (shh!) fall asleep.

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wow, we made it to the end of this on the promise of genshin, which I haven’t played for over 2 weeks, but we’ll see how it goes.

Passages 2019(3) – Family Reunion

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Is this your family, you ask yourself. Stay tuned for the philosophical musings, hold on to your coat tails and hat-tricks. Here we go; do click on the links since they’re more space-friendly than embedding instagram posts! 🙂

(04) Family Reunion

You attend a family gathering, the highlight being festive goodies that you don’t have in your house (and your loved ones, presumably) – and they bring out a new shiny sweet in pink and purple and green foil and you ask, “What is it?” even though it’s already in your mouth as you speak, and it is rock candy that explodes into a thousand flavours and pops and sizzles, like something out of Willy Wonka’s.

Welcome to the reunion; take a seat.

Sit back there in the dark on the benches at the back of the stage, clad in the most outrageous clothes off the rack at a flea market, a guest at the most outlandish costume party of the year. Out of a darkness so deep we can barely see past our eyeballs, we hear Shan Del Vecchio strumming a guitar – how does he know where to start? – and a spotlight falls upon Ivan Koh, in a furry costume of jersey cow-patch pink-and-white topped with a baseball cap and pink sunglasses, providing us with a half-sung, half-flute rendition of Somewhere, over the rainbow, the music falling into the parched darkness, while the audience sits in respectful silence.

Is this your family? While he plays the flute, another spotlight on the other side of the stage reveals Yayoi Matches (this being a mere glimpse of what lies beneath) in a staggeringly marvellous trance – the jerky, stop-and-start, swivel-and-reach rubbery clockwork dance – maybe more than a dance, an entire blissful monologue with herself and in herself. There is something endearingly intimately open and honest about it, an unpretentious ecstasy about it that draws an awkward giggle from someone in the audience; a glimpse of a person caught in a reverie of her own, a fantasy world intimate and real to her; and, amazingly, coupled with the music, there is a kind of hope in it, a wordless joy of movement that you can almost start to sink into…

But don’t get too comfortable, folks, ‘cos Agetsuma Satoru is here to bark you out of any maudlin feelings with A Chorus Line, and Yayoi snaps right out and into traumatised harried dancer mode, and by the time Satoru heads into Let’s do the whole combination, facing away from the mirror territory, there are chortles from the younger audience members, perhaps from a not-so-distant memory.

Your family is — Valerie Yeo and Watanabe Tamana as two iridescent celebratory rainbow slinkies writhing and cavorting and partying their hearts out, hair all over their faces; it is Henriette Garcia and Tamana swivelling and whirling to home-made music which is punctuated towards the end with a chorus of “hees” at appropriate pauses by Stephanie Joe and Yayoi Matches, ticklishly irreverent; it’s Reece Hudson and Jeremie Gan and a batch of them clowning around; Jeremie Gan and Stephanie Joe and Jessica Garside dancing rhythmically, it’s soft bluesy music that’s folksy and stirring; it’s Ivan Koh singing a song that turns out to be one of our many favourites – “Don’t want to leave her now”…; now he’s dancing, or perhaps he’s fake-playing a baseball player to a voice-over by Reece Hudson, or twisting about in a frothy furry riveting solo to Shan’s guitar strumming and when, from the stands, Valerie Yeo whacks open her giant fan and screeches, he falls over and Valerie Yeo cries out, Are you all right? in hoarse Mandarin (which falls on giggling ears for some) as she and Tamana run to his rescue; a mixed bag of colourful tricks as the snippets of action whizz and flash past like confetti on a speed dial; it’s gathering in centre to cold white light and partying before breaking up with snippets of conversation: I want a drink! yells someone.

At some point in time you realise they’re barefoot, exactly like they’re right there in your house with you –

– except that Choreographer Satoru returns with Chorus Line once more, directed at Reece Hudson this time round, and this time when it’s facing the mirror, 5-6-7-8, everyone gets up and then boom, the opening of Swan Lake’s Overture plays, to the most unexpected choreography  – and in that small theatre, it has exactly the grandiose grandeur and overwhelming synchronicity required – they leap up at the right moment to punctuate a breath – and one of the best parts is actually when they just tilt their own heads and swivel on their butts while their feet patter on the ground; it almost takes the mickey out of something so grave, it’s a right proper laugh – but it’s also really an appreciation of the rhythm in the music.

Then we have possibly one of the most popular, stand-out moments of the entire performance –  Jeremie Gan is a hoot, swaying and lip-syncing to Dinah Washington’s Such a Kiss, beaming infectiously from ear to ear, with the air of someone sharing a delightful secret with you – just you! – and basking with gleeful abandon and saucy confidence in the memory of the night (oh what a kiss it was, it really was). There’s not a line in this song that is not milked to perfection with that glint in the eye, and superb comic timing and the savouring of each ravishingly delicious kiss – for the cherry on the pie is that at seemingly-random intervals throughout the song, the other dancers (Tamana, Satoru, Reece, Jessica, etc) break out from the shimmying hordes in the background that are embodiments of the same joy, and they stride right up to Jeremie, and plant solid, cheeky kisses on his cheek, drawing the appropriate blissful reaction from him, and squeals of delight from the audience at one performance especially, and peals of laughter from everyone else. Jeremie is inviting us to share such a night with the gossipy delight of someone sharing the juiciest confession with each of us, and you feel exactly like you’re right under the lamplight in that moment, you can practically see the lamplight and the rain in your head in cinematic fashion, and the audience loves it and laps every last drop of it up – and I don’t think I’ll be able to hear the song again without a smile and the memory of the performance.

 

More than half the heart of Family Reunion goes to Amazing Grace sung live by the late, great Aretha Franklin (the portion below, up to 2:53), rendered live by Yayoi Matches and Shan Del Vecchio.

And such a life it is that they speak of, opening in stops and starts, fits and sputters, a coordinated mess; the story of a couple finding their way, in a slow-motion tussle as they navigate their rocky waters. Warm, raw, unpretentious, imperfect life splayed and spilt across the floor. Sometimes she asserts herself, she steps lightly upon his shoulder like the Queen of the desert upon a pyramid she has conquered, and he tumbles down, and she cartwheels herself over him; she leads him and leads him on authoritatively and he follows at a mere suggestion or tug, and yes they are together, she wants you to know that when she rolls over him – they may be tussling, but he is hers and she is his. He may haul her over, holding her by her ankle, he may yank her in one direction  – never roughly, but definitely firmly – and when he rolls over obligingly, she gathers her skirts together and seats herself like a lady upon his flexed foot, with all the dignity she can muster, as if she is holding herself above the water, high above the fray – proclaiming I have the higher ground in any argument, as if she is that one character in the kitchen in that movie, who is holding the teacup of liquor and is saying Who’s drunk? not me! It is public, and it is physical, but they consume their lives entirely between themselves and no one else may partake of their fraught ties.

This moment is worth the inevitable white spaces – that delicate yearning and openness that you can’t stop watching, like buttered toast falling in slow-motion.

Breaking free, she circles the stage in a deliberate run — watch me, I am free of you — and yet she dashes back to him and leaps up and he catches her, holds her high up to the sun, like an eagle captured in a photograph in mid-flight, an idol on a precipice. Fragments of china in a cupboard in the sunlight, scattered jigsaws one moment, and bold colourful life the next; broken-down mechanical toys reaching for each other, clinging together; a story of a life lived in parts, that wants to be heard and will not be silenced. That one moment where she leans back in his arms in peaceful bliss, and he rests his cheek atop her head, and they have found each other – that is a moment to be savoured, and it is quietly glorious:

We risk a white space for this video – when they jive and waltz invisibly without holding on to each other, yet always, always connected in soul; when Shan holds her back, and leaps into the air and hangs there for one lengthy split-second and brings down the controlled force of his emotion down upon Yayoi and yet sprawls prostrate at her feet in the next breath, and she stumbles away from him in a magnificent montage of movement, yet runs back, with him, to find her space amidst the observers, the family members, the witnesses to their roiling romance, their throes of their troubles, the spin-and-yank, the twist-and-tumble, their lavish, savage duet – and as anyone would, in any book, they turn their faces away – not us, not ours, not watching, unseen; and at last, apocalypse averted, the couple find that the only person they are meant for is the other.

What a gift it is to be able to have watched Shan Del Vecchio and Yayoi Matches in this knotted net and netted knot of thorns – they are dancers with a unique contemporary dance quality; put together, they are, for want of a better word, a word I lump together with cacao nibs and kombucha – organic, hewn of nature, full of life, and lifelike, and alive. Yayoi Matches has an incredible dance style that we’ve not seen before (perhaps reminiscent of the stop-motion rubber-dance in NDT but much more rubber, less stop-motion crisp animation) – it is vigorous, it writhes, it breathes life into every disjointed joint and it wriggles to the surface and it is beautiful and gorgeous and alive – where that lacy black top and amazing frieze skirt of gradations of grey crepe might have swallowed a dance move alive, her dancing shone right through the costume and even enhanced it – made it look right – it was all right there and part of it; you know for certain that every step must have been choreographed, but she makes it look as real as if it were created at that very moment – the raw finish on a diamond.  Shan Del Vecchio matches measure for measure, breath for breath, with a smooth, flawless delivery as the man with a sustained romance in the heart, unflagging, torn to pieces and yet always there, the anchor, the home base, for their partnership. He is the key to pivoting the part of her life that was the solitary spotlight seen earlier, into passion.

Lest you think we are plunged into ice-cold solemnity after this, we are thrown a basket of fruit: everyone rushing to a corner in mock gravity for that self-explanatory move purportedly known as “tweaking the sun’s nipple“, can-canning to the can-can, throwing their legs in a squat stance, leaping forward, huddling in a group and throwing their heads round and screaming exactly like folk on a roller coaster (which causes a ripple of laughter); flossing(which brings even more laughter); and – one of my personal favourites, the petting zoo, wherein Ivan in his pink bonbon coat rushes around from one end of the stage to the other, one hand extended as if he is petting a very small ostrich, and bending and rising as necessary to follow the height of his imaginary ostrich, and as he passes the others, they collect their own ostriches and soon everyone is petting imaginary ostriches in perfect, ludicrous but completely sincere harmony – this gets a laugh from some small children in the audience who understand, and I love it as it is an extremely true depiction..

Have you seen the club yet? I want a drink, someone declared earlier, and now they’re at the club, prancing and bouncing with hands in the air to an invisible deejay – a wild riot of colours huddled in a corner, a veritable neon acid trip, that’s what it is, and high on that energy, they assist Valerie Yeo to stand astride the backs of her fellow man – and she whacks open her fan again and screams raucous exhortations to the man-made horse all the way to exit, lights out.

What a racket – and what unbridled unadulterated energy, and it all brought the house down.

Is this your family? Family reunion – if family were people stringing it out at a club, high and dry, wild and wet – it’s crazy, and it’s joyous, it’s a mixed bag of extreme highs and crawling lows, and highs again. I asked myself: Is this what family looks like?

But isn’t it? Only that everyone is keeping their selves wrapped up like dumplings; otherwise, we’re all a little mad inside.

Welcome to the family 🙂

The audience loved it – it was a blazing hot favourite, and everyone was excited about it at the end – I think I’ve not heard so many chuckles in an audience in a show.

*

Other thoughts

“Which of these would you wear, if you could?” asked a friend, of the costumes. Without a doubt, the sequined tiger(?) jacket of Reece’s – it speaks to me, there is a sequined tiger deep inside my soul. On carefully poring over the pictures and the memory – Stephanie Joe has a spendiferous blue furry Russian-style hat, the lovely silky slinky skirt on Tamana, perhaps that glittery Pepsi shirt on Valerie – oh, but I’m a Coke person.

Here’s the choreographer, Lucas Jervies, on the piece. You can see he genuinely intends to bring to life something that is real and visceral, and interestingly, in its own very expressive way, Family Reunion did that. There was an interview that I can’t find, in which he suggested that after Spartacus he wanted to do something that he felt a kind of connection to. He also said he might make changes along the way so that each show was different; in one performance I attended, some of the girls used their handphones as flashlights and waved them in accompaniment when everyone sang the Kermit rainbow song.

 

 

(200th Post) Singapore Dance Theatre’s Season 2020 – Dare to Dance

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Apparently this is the 200th post on this blog that we (the royal, without the lineage) started in 2014…Fitting, then.

Announced a long, long time ago…

This video is immensely fun and beautiful, and I love so many bits of it – from showing all the hard work – to watching Yeo Chan Yee in that dazzlingly long moment en pointe and then throws her into a contemporary pose and turns into her looking right out at the audience and then segues sharply into wings against light (Chua Bi Ru, Elaine Heng, Chan Yee, Timothy Ng, Ivan Koh) – there’s the intriguing bridge scene with May Yen, stunningly lithe and limber in the Bittersweet dress; the energetic Dare to Play moment on the playground with Huo Liang, Reece Hudson, Jeremie Gan and (is that Agetsuma Satoru) and sparklers, all clad in Triptych fatigues; the weirdly thrilling bare-floor scene that is surely not from Lord of the Flies – with Yorozu Kensuke as the heart of a swirling stormy knot of dancers, clad in a costume from.. Jabula? Ma Cong’s Shadow’s Edge? while everyone else (1:01) is in the grey from I can’t figure out where … Henriette Garcia, Justin Zee, Jasper Arran, Suzuki Mai, Leane Lim, Tanaka Nanase, Miura Takeaki, Watanabe Tamana, Ma Ni, Yayoi Matches, Yatsushiro Marina, Mizuno Reo, Shan Del Vecchio, Minegishi Kana; then Kwok Min Yi, Beatrice Castañeda and Valerie Yeo as the spinning snowflakes leaping out at us – very lovely.

But the one moment that is my favourite, that never ever fails to touch some deep part of the soul, is that moment when Ivan Koh runs up the slope and that slips into Etienne Ferrere as Romeo, running up the stairs to Nakahama Akira as his Juliet, who falls into his loving arms – and joyously he lifts her – there is something so heart-stoppingly heartbreakingly gorgeous about that moment.

The making-of / behind the scenes:

Okay, so here’s the line-up for the year:

1. Romeo and Juliet: About time, and live music too, we hope. Etienne and Akira are our coverpeople for this.

2. Peter and Blue’s Birthday Party with Jeremie Gan as Peter now.

3. Masterpiece in Motion (with Beatrice and Timothy Ng): a world premiere by Timothy Rushton (who last gave us the rich, intense, and wildly different Evening Voices), the  company premiere of Ibsen’s House by Val Caniparoli, and hurray, Organ Concerto by Nils Christe. Hurray, I love organ concerto.

On Ibsen’s House, I am excited. It does also bring to mind a Dance Europe review of a recent ballet based on one of Ibsen’s plays, and in the 2nd or 3rd last column of print ,the reviewer said it was beautifully danced, but one must prepare oneself mentally, or else one might as well throw oneself off a building after the show, for it was so depressing (not in those exact terms – it was expressed much more rivetingly and hence hilariously).

4. Ballet Under the Stars has May Yen as the cover girl.

Oh wow, old favourites: Serenade (yes, yes); Theme and Variations (yes, most definitely – will we have one or two casts, we would love to see Chihiro in this too), and Kitri’s wedding scene from Don Quixote (oh, my..!)

For contemporary we have Edmund Stripe’s Piano Concerto No. 2 aka Shostakovich (at last), Nils Christe’s Symphony in Three Movements (oh! very good, with Organ Concerto in the same year, unexpected but yay), and Edwaard Liang’s Opus 25 (I know people who will buy a ticket just for this meringue delight).

5. Passages – Are those Jason Carter, Satoru and Kensuke – and a girl whom I can’t really identify because I don’t want to risk it, I’ve been wrong before! New works by Timothy Harbour (lines, light, mathematical alignment and particle choreography, harmony with music), Natalie Weir (emotion and heft and sweeping movements and something delicate tugging at the heartstrings), and Loughlan Prior who is the Choreographer in Residence at the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

6. Nutcracker –  a mystical, out-of-this-world modern design featuring Kwok Min Yi.

We charge forward.

*

Now I have a sore throat but I can’t quite take honey so we shall eat soft(half?)-boiled eggs (an old wife’s remedy that apparently works) – I love those, and am uncommonly excited about it. Apple juice works as well, for some. Maybe I shall have to drink lemon green tea because the lemon shall soothe my throat. Jellies! I like the Tarami jelly pouch drinks.

Passages (2) 2019 – Swipe, Bittersweet

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Passages 2019 was such a joy. I really keep wanting to do Bittersweet first, but we can’t swipe past.. yeah. Swipe. I’m in love!

Passages cover

Do watch the video that Singapore Dance Theatre put up here for World Ballet Day.

 

2. Bi…Swipe

(02) Swipe

This was seen in 2014 ( a review of which exists in my mind, of bars of gold lying dustily across the stage, of slithering bodies, of Timothy Coleman and the intravenous deejay music; but hey…where is it); and again, 2016 at BUTS.

Etienne, though not dancing in this, is always – for those who want to know! – incredible in Swipe; there is a delightful elegant crispness in his movements; in that solo where he leaps round and round in a circle, legs in a sharp V, or leans over in a perfect arabesque penche, legs practically a straight line with one foot on the ground. I tell you, I have written a review for this before (which I can’t find), of Etienne leaping backwards while throwing his arms piston-sharp for each portion of the music that sounds like a gunpowder keg open (I probably attributed it to the wrong dance, gold stars all round). Yes, crisp as slices of green apple on the palate. And imagine him marching out with the other three men, just making their way out proudly to the store down the road, leaning over and kicking back in jovial companionship. This is for our memories.

When you watch the dancers take the stage and begin their characteristic roc-like movements – five in a circle facing one another, and out of nowhere, one begins with a raised swerving arm sweeping outwards, jerking the body like a gull pecking at food – sometimes one arm, sometimes two, and then one-and-two-and-one-and-two, you try counting in your head – one by one, the others join in until all five are swaying forwards and upright again, swiping their arms up and out…

…immediately upon seeing this and hearing the music (it opens with the movement below), you know that the dancers must be in possession of an innate healthy sense of humour and a clear appreciation of wry humour. Listen to this music and imagine birds pecking…before they take flight.

Satoru steps in to take Etienne’s place, and he has his own contemporary style and fits into the beat without missing a breath. It is jaw-clenchingly difficult to fit in at the last moment, and especially a one-and-two-and fast-paced complicated work like Swipe, which is crammed full of so much fast footwork that just thinking about racing through it almost frays the seams of your shirt.

I am picking through the music on youtube with a chopstick, and similarly we will pick through the moments with our toothpick memories: Akira sliding her jacket off at the last of the opening act so it hangs tubularly from her arm and Jason can pull the jacket off Akira’s outstretched hand as he exits the stage, in a movement as smooth as water running off a silvered surface; Satoru and Akira’s duet, seamless and effortless; bizarre humorous little moments like May Yen Cheah and Huo Liang marching along the breadth of the stage in opposite directions, swiping their arms and nodding away like the fringe on cowboy pants.

May Yen Cheah and Huo Liang in the delightful little waltz of the puppet-doll, that opens (I think) with May Yen Cheah poised, one foot in front and arms curved expansively, bouncing to the beat, the famous one where he walks her through the four major points of the clock, stopping at each corner to turn their heads and swivel slightly as if to acknowledge the folk on the sides; she cycles her arms large as unicycle wheels;  she leaps into his arms, and there is a split-blink of a tumble and twist in his arms. Huo Liang is a quiet partner but it is evident that he carries within him the spirit of the dance and an appreciation of the absurd beats and quirky humour – there is this jazzy quality to how he moves to the music.

(We say this always, of May Yen, and it is very evident again in Swipe — every single expressive head tilt and every vibrant movement speaks of a deep, instinctive understanding of the music and an incredible ability to share the secret in the music and dance with us. It is as if she is speaking directly to us, and in Swipe, the moment she takes centrestage – and then my friend says who’s that? – she is opening this door to us to let us into this little joke, this delightful and enjoyable secret about Swipe – you feel something in you resonate  – not that something resonates with you,  I mean tuning fork to tuning fork.) We know everyone is unique and has their special qualities — and in this respect, in particular, she stands on a pinnacle of and on her own, with this unique ability that is entirely hers…)

Because we hear little hiccoughs of beeping in the music, a faint hint of the music for the three ladies’ dance later, we always think it follows – but i think what follows is what we call mystic Jason on the beach by the ocean, to the music below – Jason Carter walking backwards from the wings to our left. The light that pours down and illuminates only a stretch of the grey stage before us is the moon upon the sand. Listen to the whirling call of the ocean as he pushes himself across the moonlit shore, slithering upon the sand; to the desolate, haunting echo from above as he displays his characteristic precise control and sweeping grace, staring out into the ocean, flicking one leg out, curling it back inwards as if to cross his foot over his knee, his arms sweeping out, circling, encasing the sound as it washes down upon him; as he slinks elegantly across the sand – deliciously enigmatic. This is exactly the dance you would do if you were alone in the grey room, with the thudding beats whirling overhead, and the sea calling out to you. In the background, on the mother-of-pearl stage, Kensuke and Beatrice enter, undulating, arms cycling large as the moon, pausing at each step forward to bounce a little as May Yen Cheah had earlier – embracing the moon and all its mystical mythical magnetism.

 

 

Next is what we called the “credit card song” in the past, and when you hear it your blood thrills and your heartbeat quickens – this is one of my favourite moments, as always – the three ladies dancing. The other day, I heard a computer system digesting instructions, and it was the exact techno sound you get here; and also the sound of water falling down a drain.

May Yen Cheah in the silence walking over to the centre front of the stage, taking up her position before the music falls through to our favourite song; the little fish-catching solo, where Akira, making full use of the music, sways her arms from side to side before her, lower and lower, hands parallel to the ground but changing direction at each side as if her hands are fish swimming through the water – and that sudden sharp moment of silence where the music pulls back and catches itself sharply – and that little moment in the music where she suddenly pauses and lingers for a moment as seen in the picture below – there is that tinge of amusement and it always gets a small giggle from someone in the audience with whom it strikes a chord; Beatrice sharp-footed and nifty, blade-quick feet and swift little leaps. Watch the video from SDT, it’s all there – their fearless precision, their little skating feet, the casual archer hand drawing the string to the shoulder and the bow hand flinging itself forward, the wonderfully leisurely saunter and sashay across the stage, with their delightful little proud dipper cat-hands pointed just-so — we’re just ladies at the Ritz – utterly fast-paced yet completely chill, and the audience enjoy this.

At the end of the women’s piece, my friend could not stop marvelling: It’s perfection, she said repeatedly, and then again of the other pieces, in a kind of wonderment, as if to say – How had I not known of this, it is all perfection – exactly what I felt so many years ago when I watched my first One @ the Ballet …

 

The men are next up, and they are hot favourites with the audience. Striding out confidently from one corner to blurping bloorping music, the aces of our card deck, throwing themselves forward in great bows, kicking back – flinging their heads back as they march about to the music, oozing strength, confidence, charisma: Here we are, the dance proclaims – look at us. Falling into line at the back of the stage – enough breath in the music for Jason Carter to nod at Huo Liang and Satoru – you ready?, says the nod, and people always laugh maybe because of that moment of camaraderie or because it also fits, if you read it as a challenge, or a nonchalant devil-may-care moment that slides into 1:07, when they throw themselves into a tricky little jig of the feet as they advance as a row to the front – their feet kicking out to the sides, throwing arms out, almost a Scottish jig, or are we talking Irish here – beats to the feet, no time to pause, and when they meet at the front they cross paths, throw their heads back confidently, exaggeratedly, almost rebelliously.

To that music (as it rolls on), we have our men’s solos – a full display of shatter-proof power. Kensuke is made of zipline energy, a juiced-up juice box, explosive – see the flight of Kensuke round the stage, with his perfect trademark definitive Kensuke whip-turn of the head as he throws a perfectly-arced arm up. Huo Liang has the belligerent solo with the fast high kicks forward and freewheeling arms thrown out to touch his kicking feet, irrepressible energy, all-out jiving and a massive corkscrew spin  — he is his own man and he dares you to say otherwise. Jason Carter is in next, skittering feet sliding impossibly quickly across the floor, stylish, wry humour – almost skating across the floor – and at this moment on Saturday night, we have already heard the applause for the 3 ladies and the felt the audience perk up  – but if you are in the audience at this very moment, you can see – the men are on fire and they know it. Right then and there, in soars Satoru with a God Almighty leap (with no offence to the Divine), rapid and sharp on the beat with the little leaps backwards and the explosive opening of arms, one-two-three, when there are three short sharp exhaust-fume barks in the music (3:31 – 3:33).

Satoru is our rolling deejay now, wrapping the arm about the head and back out again, Huo Liang and Kensuke joining him – the weird but enjoyable moment when they cross their arms to touch their knees, legs out in lunges –  it’s a long lick of an ocean wave for a surfer to ride, that blast of energy that they take until they hit the ground flat on their stomachs like logs, and the lights go out, to thunderous applause.

 

Next we have a slow pas de deux of Jason Carter and Beatrice, slowly emerging from our left to the throbbing of a heartbeat. This is intense, deeply intricate intertwining couple work – Beatrice hanging, from an arm, must swing herself up to catch onto Jason; in another move that people love, she leaps – practically flies – backwards into his arms as lightly as if they were two magnets, drawn to each other; they draw themselves together in symmetrical, deliberate shapes, but it never looks forced. More than one person was overheard comment after on how right they looked together – it is as rich and fully fleshed-out as a blade of fragrant grass pressed between book leaves, or an orange through a juicer; nothing over-wrought, just simply pure movement.

 

What do you think you are getting from this music below? Let’s say you decide to start from 0:22 to speed things up. Listen to the moon as it passes through the sky — and wait for it… 1:01 – the whirring of helicopters, and BOOM at 1:05 – the light burns white and  we have the buzzing of the jungle mixed with open spaces, the thudding pulse building up as the dancers spring into electric spring action. Danger, says the music, as Beatrice and Jason hit the beat and throw themselves boldly forward, jerking their heads back and scooping an arm high as they kick back in the fish-hook kick, as keenly as if fish string tied to their shoe is being pulled back, in short sharp successive jerks in the next few beats – they look incredible, out of this world, mannequins flung back. – You think you have already seen the manic mad action to the shrill whisper of anticipation building….

…then the bullet shots hit the dust, and as 1:42 draws up — 1:43 is Jason lifting Beatrice high like a warning across the stage — and the women are now raptors, pennants crossing the sky, one leg down for landing, the other curled behind for take-off — and a man in the audience goes oh my god in delighted surprise. This is the sound you get in a Terminators, Transformers movie – and the dancing is racing metal and sharp adrenaline, non-stop machine gun-speed and slick shimmering pairwork and thudding, darting shadows across the ground.

This picture brings us towards the end – Kensuke lit up, and from left to right, disregarding who is in front and who is not – May Yen, Akira, Huo Liang, Beatrice, Satoru, Jason (rightmost).

The last moments see Kensuke in his own lonesome world – a one-man fearsome show, opening his arms out arms to the audience in a silent cry (why, why) with the beat; he leans out to us, one leg unfolded back like a swallow-tail; at some point he lies upon the ground, defeated, while the others stand about him and swipe the air until at last he rises – and they empty the stage, and suddenly at the closing beat, he freezes, in a quizzical comical contorted version of the pose May Yen Cheah did earlier in centre stage (the one that moves to bouncing).

When the lights go out, someone invariably laughs – it tickles the funny bone somewhere. It’s phenomenal, and this time round – a lot more of its glory is revealed, like polished silver or like those scratch-and-win coupons. It grows on one, is what I meant to say – especially up-close.  It has its incredible charms, and when you watch them dance, you think Of course that’s what this music is doing. It seems completely correct.

It was a huge favourite with the crowd, this one. Somehow something in it really made the audience excited – you could feel them on the edge of their seats, and the  contrast between the slower and the faster parts was gripping.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say my new favourite part really is the helicopter portion. It just bloody socks you in the jaw when Beatrice and Jason Carter hit the stage – there is this curiously addictive thrill that comes with the music.

 

3. Bittersweet

What a work. Here’s our review of the 2014 versions.

(03) Bittersweet

You know the story already. The casting was a gold star, what a brilliant idea, why did we not think of it. I think the number of times we recall seeing Jason and Min Yi partnering each other on stage may be counted on the fingers of round about 1.2 hands and an elbow.

You know that story, now watch the video. Watch it with the music. You have to see it. I have longed a video of it for so long and now we have one. This is a short and intensely-crafted work that takes every note of the music to its logical emotional conclusion. This is why we don’t wear eye makeup to the theatre any longer; we did on Sunday, and it rolled down with hot tears.

Min Yi is vibrant and alive – she plays a creature for whom every fibre has awoken and is awake. The first step she takes forward, after sliding off Jason’s outstretched arms, is precious to her  – you can almost feel the fibres in her foot and the muscles in her leg thrilling to the touch of the ground. Those first steps are richly significant – they are alive, they are signs of being keenly aware of being alive. Even when her feet buckle inwards and her legs slowly fold to the ground, and she rises up again and limps back towards Jason who is now looking away from her, the images are sharp as glass in our eye; it is like watching those little creatures fresh out of the eggshell, stretching their wet stringy wings and letting the sun dry their feathers…

I cannot emphasise this enough – the steps are richly realised, in vivid colour.

When she takes his face in her hands, almost as if to say Don’t you recognise me? and he does, and she runs her hands down his arms to clasp his hands – she is in his veins. There is a breathtaking effortless emotion in their haunting pas de deux – she clings to him (perhaps metaphorically) because she cannot bear to let him go; and she is never a burden to him. Every moment he carries her is an embrace of his arms about her. Every handhold is gentle and strong (see: his Albrecht and the Rick Astley meme), every pirouette she makes is secure, precise, perfectly-timed and rich with this trembling emotion of simply being with another.

She knows, you see. She always knew that it was he whom she was destined to be with; and that is why she said Don’t you remember me? and she dances with him, and you see how he realises that she is not merely in his veins  – she is in his heart, and has always been, and he only needed to look at her to know it.

There is that one-armed raise, sometimes substituted with lifting her high, her hands pressed to his shoulders. This moment is not included as a circus feat; it is the crescendo of the story of their relationship –  a story of trust, for that is the bedrock of their secure love. It almost doesn’t matter because you have seen already that even if she is a filigree trapezoid wrapped about him; if they are entwined on the ground; if she is unfurling her arms while he holds her waist tenderly, filled with a triumphant gladness that she is with him, as if she is made doubly alive with him;  if she is resting upon his shoulder like a swallow – that even through all these moments, he is saying You can trust me and she says You can do it and at that moment when they confirm it with that incredible lift, your heart simply swells for these two characters.

There is a long and terrible embrace after, where they are locked so close together in the radiating warmth of their longing and belonging together, and the intensity of that knowledge makes more dreadful that moment when a long bar of white light falls across the stage like the blade of an unforgiving sword, dragging him inexorably away from her. This is Jason Carter’s solo – characteristically graceful and delicately expressive, beautifully articulated feet, a gentle eloquent emotion that says This is all my love for you. In those rare moments where he cannot be with her, he wants her to know that he has not forgotten her, and you can see all his love for her then; and there is, in how she stands and watches, the essence of tears streaming down her cheeks – I see you, she says, I understand.)

At last he breaks free and returns to her.

That moment where he tugs her lightly by the wrist, and she flies into his arms and he catches her – again, it is not a mere move, it is a gesture of togetherness; for we are apart but we must never be, and please, draw close to me; and someone in the audience gasps …

They are destined to meet once a year, perhaps, like the cowherd and the weaving maiden; though it is on a bridge of moonlight that he is persistently drawn away rather than a bridge of swallows to her. Imagine it then, that once a year she awakens, and she knows she must remind him of who they are, together, and how quickly they grow accustomed to being together for this blissful, brief, moment – dancing together, completely and utterly whole and perfect.

But as the light dims and the night fades away, and the clouded dying moonlight falls murkily upon them, they know it is over – it is over. In a bitter irony, their moves here echo the moves at the start that marked the beginning of their reunion; and once more, he turns his back to her, forgetting who she is, and she cannot help but be trapped again, upon his back, each foot that once touched the ground so freely and lightly, drawing up against the other leg as it did in the beginning, as if to remember the moment that has passed and that she must wait for again.

It is bitter, their parting; and their fleeting reunion, so sweet.

This is Bittersweet.

 

This, this is the embrace.

 

 

 

Passages 2019 (1) – Blue Snow

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Passages cover

Etienne Ferrère and Nakahama Akira in their costumes from Blue Snow

Here, have the official photographs.

Oh…for World Ballet Day 2019, they put up bits of almost everything in rehearsal (and the Everything for Bittersweet). So exciting! The video below starts with a segment of Swipe (one of my favourite parts of it), then goes to Bittersweet, then to snippets of Blue Snow (14:05) then it ends with a Bittersweet rehearsal.

Here’s the link to it because they now say the video cannot be embedded.

 

 

1. Blue Snow

This was first seen at Intermezzo (Dans festival) 2014 and then went on to BUTS in 2016. The cast marked ‘1’ below consists of most of the original dancers (though changes were made over the years); and ‘2’ are the newer cast (though Yeo Chan Yee has danced it at one of the performances too).

(01) Blue Snow

It’s dark, so dark that you fancy you see a cluster of dancers holding hands as they step out of the wings.

This is the music. Such a delicious delicate gentle inviting quiet opening, simple, pastoral. Invites sur la terre means guests of the earth, says Google translate. The plucking of strings, and then the clapping along, as if at a hearth by a fire. The lights make the floor look like a skating rink – the blue with arcs where circling feet have left their mark.

 

The lights go on to a group of dancers, backs to us, feet moving up and down in rhythm, swaying slightly to the beat. It’s almost reminiscent of a folkdance – cadence of a story in its movements, a comforting sensation like a sweater – but also the slight tension of the unknown (no props, everyone content yet also reaching out to the sky) – the newer cast giving it the look of pioneers in their cornfields, settlers and corn seedlings to the sky, the halving of wood and the growing of the land; they settle gently into the flow and there is incredible grace and the littlest of movements carry a significance. Ma Ni and Satoru stand out for their grace and delicate movements; Yeo Chan Yee has a clarity in her movements through which you see the understanding of the music filter through. You can imagine, from watching the group, that some of them have a backstory for their characters already.

Cast 1, I shall always love watching – there is a quality to them as there is in well-loved soft shoes – one moment there is a vigour and life as they dance upon the new earth to the strumming of the guitar, and the next, there is something almost spiritual about their dancing – this is lyrical poetry about breathing new life in the air. Do you know, perhaps you can feel how much they love this dance. There are new things always in this dance, to see – Akira / Jessica Garside making little circles on the ground with the foot – the five girls running to the front of the stage, their dresses sashes in the air.

The choreography itself, married with the music, is a miraculous work; it is seamless, and the group work looks as natural as breathing.

This is one of the most striking moments in the entire opening. You hear it at 2:10; the cold moonlight falls upon the people and they move in gentle haunting slow motion, reaching, yearning, each dancer the owner of a separate set of movements that are tangentially related to the other dancers’ movements – it is a marvel how they have their own independent movements but they breathe and move as one body of life.

Below, left-to-right: May Yen Cheah, Jeremie Gan, Shan Del Vecchio, Yeo Chan Yee in front of Agetsuma Satoru, Elaine Heng as the heart, Reece Hudson behind Miura Takeaki, Ma Ni in front of Jessica Garside.

At the last, the dancers stream away from the stage like water droplets off an umbrella in quiet rainfall, leaving one lady and one gentleman, backs to each other – oh and then they turn and discover each other – to the music of Yanoyuki (which I do not have – vocals purportedly without actual words). This is the first of two central couple dances, with Kwok Min Yi (1) / May Yen Cheah (2) and Miura Takeaki, where once this was danced by Uchida Chihiro and Timothy Coleman / Nazer Salgado. Miura Takeaki is a steady reliable partner, and each movement is carefully pronounced – a leg as clear as a beam through the air in the stillness, the hands a steady support, and every touch is kind; and out of any tension there is the thread of goodness that shines through – with May Yen Cheah whose version is light and lady-like, and whose emotion in her face is like sake brimming almost over the edge of a small sake cup, capturing that moment where one feels almost crying like, but not; with Min Yi’s interpretation, their dance is the desolate edge of a knife – there is a sharpness in Min Yi’s movements when she wraps her arm round him and covers his eyes, and leans back, pressing into the air; when she reaches out to him with yearning arms. A second couple enters and dances in the corner with them, a mirror couple, a shadow couple – Jason Carter and Yatsushiro Marina (1); Agetsuma Satoru and Yeo Chan Yee (2) – and the lights go full on and the sense of isolation of the original couple grows less.

I think we can safely cut to the chase. I want to talk about two things, in particular.

First, when there are many couples onstage towards the end of the Yanoyuki movement. Out of all the shows watched, out of the dimness, it is Reece Hudson whom we see so clearly. It is as if innate in him he has the secret ability to understand the music, the dance, and to tap into some vein in it, and it flows through him. There is no over-thinking; in the dimness, he knows to crouch his back slightly as if he is protective of his dance partner (Ma Ni) as he presses his hands gently to her ears; he knows that when he closes her arms before her eyes like shutters, this is to be done tenderly, gently, with the greatest care and love. This is the quality that Reece has that we have tried to articulate, time and again, and it suddenly becomes evident in this one particular moment, this scene. This is not a series of dance moves. It is an entire emotion that flows in through the music and fluidly out through him; it has definitely gone out through his cerebral cortex because he is not moving thoughtlessly – but there is no overthinking, only a deep instinctive understanding that is arresting. There is no pretension whatsoever. It just happens. I emphasise the dimness because you cannot see anybody’s face really very well and yet – and yet when you watch him, you don’t need to. The collective group dancing, though stands beautifully in the eye – the solemnity graven in the eye.

(Oh hey, this is the dance where the ladies step over the seated men’s shoulders, towards the backdrop, and their skirts fall over the men’s faces so the men have to lightly brush the skirts away in their next move, very easily and naturally. You have to look out for it to notice it so none of the kids in the audience laugh because it’s very smooth.)

The second thing to talk about is the dance that starts with the music I do love, below.

From here on out, you can see the dances in the video above.

Always the gentleman enters the stage first and then his arm waterwheels slowly back, while the lady enters the stage, so that his hand lands perfectly upon her shoulder; as she walks along the length of the stage, he marches onwards stoically, at knee-height only – a move that Etienne and Shan Del Vecchio both make fascinating – sure, anyone can march but to do it and for it to look rhythmic and charming …

Etienne and Akira have danced it and each time it looks beautiful – there’s that little edge of an ache in the heart for some reason, in their dancing – fraught with the little touches of tension and longing. Watch 14:05 at the video above.

For the performances, Shan Del Vecchio danced with Akira (1) and Jessica Garside (2) – please see an earlier post on why.

Here is the second thing we must say: What was immediately impressed upon us was that Shan immediately adapted to each partner perfectly. Jessica Garside, it is good to see her spirited take on the dance – there is an energy in their moves, an expansiveness, a generosity – the wide embrace, the moment where she pauses  – he is still on the ground, and she pauses and scythes her leg in a wide arc through the air – almost a challenge; and when she throws up her skirt so he may slide under and through to the other side, they move with such urgency and energy – this is not about going all out, you understand, it is not the rawness and electricity you will see in the final piece (Zoo Animals…uh Family Reunion) because this is Blue Snow by Shimazaki Toru – it is controlled. But it is vast and it stretches out, it is open and it welcomes you. They are in absolute sync with each other and the music – you can feel the visceral motions of his pressing his palm against her head as she moves backwards – almost as if she is resisting yet as if gravity is also drawing her backwards (I know! gravity pulls downwards, not back, but you see). There is a tussle of life and subtle energy – this is a dance between them.

That moment there where he has slid through and under her skirt, and then when he gets up, they each rest a palm on the ground and move in a part-circle – and you can see that she glances at him almost, but not quite – their palms linger on the ground for the exact same amount of time and there is a similarity, the pressing of the new raw fresh earth, as if it has a heartbeat of its own.

Now we see when he presses the earth with Akira, how they do with a light intimate touch. Akira and Shan are well-matched. We know it is a last-minute change because we are informed of it, and you cannot at all tell. There’s a lightness to his touch when he presses his hand to her head – almost a caress. They make their way through life – there are moments in the desert and moments of light, a softness in their collective movements. Evocative dancing. It still tugs at the heartstrings, that moment she flings up her skirt and then they are together again – their hands caressing the earth, that is what it is.

 

You know and I know that I love 2:39 onwards, also seen in the video. It has been my favourite from the get-go and it shall always hold a special place in my heart – Tanaka Nanase as the fiercely joyous warrior Queen throwing up her hands sharp as katanas and Chua Bi Ru full of cheer as the gypsy Queen, all ice and fire, the both of them, the sharp turn of the heads when they slide about the floor – and watch them with their partners (Yorozu Kensuke and Huo Liang respectively) – harmony, professionalism, efficiency – and that spark of joy. Yes, that is it. I shan’t say that oft-used phrase.

Elaine Heng and Ma Ni dance this for cast 2  – you can tell they are having a ball of a time, Elaine is strong and fearless, Ma Ni as the graceful warrior lady – the music personified. And now again for something we must talk about – that moment when their partners dance with them. Jeremie Gan and Elaine Heng, what energy, the tensile strength of a springboard (you know this moment, where the partners are connected by a mere hand hold, hand gripping hand, and they lean back and spring together, almost) – elasticity and speed that swallows the eye whole, that demands that you watch it, listen to the music and you can imagine what I mean; Reece Hudson and Ma Ni, sleek and graceful, so graceful – smooth, poised to leap forward. Jeremie Gan is right on the music, right on that strumming beat and you get the energy of the music from his dancing; Reece Hudson is right on the emotion, following a rhythm that flows through the heart and strikes the heart.

The last music is this. You can feel yourself staring up at the stars … Gentle, but thought-provoking. Music to think, to feel, to dream, to.

That is the dancing, which you can also watch in the video above. Miura Takeaki light as a butterfly; Shan Del Vecchio – soft rain falling on his arms, moves as deliberate as the plucking of a guitar string; all of them soulful. Oh, I think I am in love with the music and dancing; is it possible to feel more love than in this moment, watching them?

Of course there’s 2:52 which we all adore and which you can see quite a few of the dancers enjoying too – where it launches into a more merry dance (that’s the part where they smile, said a friend, listening to the music – a friend who can’t stop laughing from the happiness when she watches them). Sure, it looks easy, but it’s for ages on end at high speed, and it’s jolly and the audience loves it – you can feel the rubber band of tension release itself and you can see the evident joy – if you watch Chua Bi Ru’s face, the sheer happiness is infectious – and then when the music is slow and solemn again, incredibly, at the turn of a shoulder, her face is sorrowful. There are little enjoyable moves I do like – the elbow that rests in the palm while the other raised hand waves like wheat in the wind; holding that hand up when they bow their heads, the raised hand closes, Min Yi’s folding like a fan downwards – I like that little trill of the fingers winding into themselves; leaping dolphins to a side; the lifting of ladies high, their backs arched in the men’s hands, their flowing skirts draped silkily over their legs; there is a clear joy ringing out through Elaine Heng’s movements; the kids always giggle a little at the butt-wiggle in the end scene; and the applause is always warm at the end when all fall down and Akira / Jessica reaches for the moon.

Yes, this is always beloved.

I first saw this in 2014. I think it is a good time to say here and now for the 100th time how grateful I am to have seen this. There are things we take for granted, and let the everlasting enjoyment of dance not be one of them.

There is a surfeit of images for Passages 2019, but to spare the website and because I can’t remember where they all are, we will just hang in there and put this up first.

I enjoyed all the dances for Passages 2019. Swipe, what new sounds and images we have and adore now; Bittersweet – such a wonderful touching performance that said so many things, so important – primary amongst them that loving dancing; Family Reunion – that warm raw earthy pas de deux, that petting zoo, the marvellous costumes, the acid.

*

…I felt I must at least write about Blue Snow, this afternoon. Get it out there, we thought – get it out there.

(I really need to stop here and say I’d thought the most touching farewell on Terrace House I’d seen is the one where some one wrote a song and performed it for his friends on Terrace House but now someone just topped that because he cut all the grass, washed the baths, and cleaned the kitchen for his friends before leaving. That’s the best.)

Sometimes when I say things, it may be like when they say on Terrace House that boiled dumplings feel a lot more gentle than gyoza, and a man who makes the boiled potstickers can’t be a bad guy. I get what they mean…

But when I write about something being seriously good in a particular way, I mean it.

Singapore Dance Theatre’s Season 2019 is OFFICIAL — Pride & Passion

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Here lies the previous update on 2019 — there have been changes.

So it’s out for sure, and you can visit the page below. The home page of Singapore Dance Theatre has a larger version of the header picture in its full glory – Timothy Ng and Kwok Min Yi.

http://www.singaporedancetheatre.com/performance-season-2019/

Don Q (pictured: Uchida Chihiro and Nakamura Kenya) – 7 to 10 March, thus avoiding Semperoper Dresden (performing William Forsythe’s “Impressing the Czar”) by a weekend.

Peter and Blue Go Around the World – 30 May to 2 Jun 2019 – for the kids.

Ballet Under the Stars – (pictured: Chihiro)

5 to 7 Jul (Contemporary Weekend) – Evening Voices by Timothy Rushton, Linea Adora by Timothy Harbour for SDT’s 30th Anniversary, and SYNC by Nils Christe. Okay, these are recent and decent works – the main change being Evening Voices instead of Another Energy, Unexpected B, Symphony in Three Movements and Winds of Zephyrus. The BUTS line-up has been massively overhauled. We won’t speculate. When we say that “mathematically X should show”, we refer to the number of years a ballgown can sit in the wardrobe before it is brought out to dazzle the crowd again; though if a work is new and smashes the windows with its brilliance, we try to guess again (loads of times, wrongly!) — Evening Voices, Linea Adora, Sync look good for another night out, though. I suppose some stuff can sit it out for a bit longer, and then there are costs to be settled. As it is, 5 to 7 Jul is a handsome line-up and fits the Contemporary Weekend title.

12 to 14 Jul (Classical Weekend) – Act II of Giselle (surely not the entire…? I do like the Willis, and this is quite enjoyable, though); Swan Lake’s pas de trois, and White and Black Swan (albeit we will see these again at the end of the year, so perhaps there will be alternating Swans?); and Act II of The Nutcracker aka the Land of Sweets and et cetera – aka a chance for the audience to see many different dancers…

 

Masterpiece in Motion (pictured: Elaine Heng and Chua Bi Ru) — 16 and 17 Aug 2019: Balanchine’s Serenade and Theme and Variations, and Fives. No changes here.

Passages 2019 (pictured: Etienne Ferrere and Nakahama Akira) — 1 to 3 Nov 2019: A work by Lucas Jervies, Natalie Weir’s Bittersweet, Shimazaki Toru’s Blue Snow, and (a change) Swipe by Val Caniparoli.

Swan Lake (pictured: Chihiro) — 5 to 8 Dec 2019.

 

I will mark out my calendars and wait. In any other year, I would be delighted at the timing – for this one, I’m actually wondering about the timing. Oh well *shrugs* whatever.

Ticket prices have inched up again – Cat 1 is now $80 (with Sistic fees, $84) – to begin with, there’s a lot to pay for to create and put up any performance, and it isn’t easy, and then there’s the live music. You know that feeling of walking in (as an audience) to hear the orchestra tuning up for a ballet … I first heard it so many years ago, and it was brilliant.

Happily, there’s a laudable programme called Adopt An Audience, which is about ‘making the arts accessible to everyone, including the low-income, underprivileged, and disabled in our society. Our hope is to share our greatest joy for dance with those who may not have the privilege of attending a dance performance by their own means‘ – and that is very, very important.

More on live music: There’s also a partnership with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra – the SDT website says: ‘Singapore’s first and only fully-independent professional symphony orchestra, the MFO was founded to be a platform to showcase the growing pool of professional orchestral musicians in Singapore’. In a way, their intentions are compatible – to give a space for artists to perform professionally. That’s a reason for the costs and there’s an SDT-MFO Orchestra Fund for the performances. That’s good, too.

 

2019 – the future, boldly

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I can’t remember when I usually roll the carpet out for predictions (after BUTS or Masterpiece in Motion, I believe), but this time I felt I needed to wait until Passages, and then lo! a friend kindly shared with me the line-up in Dance Europe (which excludes Passages).

Here it is (presumably, always subject to change):

Opening: Don Q(!); For families (read: kids): Peter and Blue Go Around the World; BUTS – Another Energy, Unexpected B, Symphony in Three Movements + Winds of Zephyrus, Linea Adora, SYNC; Masterpiece in Motion – Serenade, Theme and Variations, Fives; Dec: Swan Lake.

A One @ The Ballet booklet also tells us that Passages will contain works by Lucas Jervies (an Australian choreographer and director who has just created Spartacus for Australian Ballet, omg) and Ezikiel Oliveria (amongst other things, the founder of FiveLines, a contemporary dance initiative, and whose works on youtube look mouthwatering), Shimazaki Toru’s Blue Snow (which I had expected and hoped for), and Bittersweet by Natalie Weir (which I have longed for year after year until I sort of gave up).

The entire schedule is dated for much earlier months than the usual – BUTS in early July, Masterpiece in early August.

Despite knowing the future, speculation is always fun. I.e. what I thought would be back, versus what is actually on the list.

 

Classical

Other than perhaps Romeo and Juliet, I hadn’t really given it enough thought. I did think that Balanchine’s Allegro Brilliante would be back, and that we might bring back Concerto Barocco – but perhaps Concerto needs another year or so before it comes back? I did consider Serenade as well, but didn’t expect it completely –and it will be interesting to see it with changes to the cast.

Don Q! We must chew on that, because casting will…I don’t usually comment openly on this.

Swan Lake! I am also fascinated by that thought.

The big classical bonanzas are works of high drama, so we must sit on our hands and wait.

 

Non-classical

I did think Timothy Harbour’s Linea Adora might return simply because it is 1) new; 2) acclaimed; 3) really a worthy BUTS piece of incredible light, sound and action; but not his Another Energy – unless it is having a run at BUTS since it has only previously aired at Passages which is a considerably smaller audience – and it is very much a piece that would look fabulous for BUTS.

I had considered something from Val Caniparoli like Chant or Triptych returning (I think we’ve not seen any piece of his this year, which is a break in patterns). At the same time, we are adding new choreographers to our repertoire and freeing up some of the previous ones to return another time. New dimensions, new looks.

I would have thought that Nil Christe’s ZIN! would be back, as it’s a very BUTS-y piece and totally lovable; and most certainly Timothy Rushton’s Evening Voices for Masterpiece in Motion, which usually plays to a larger theatre.

Mathematically, it makes sense for Nil Christe’s Symphony in Three Movements to return because by 2019, it would have been three years since it aired (has it been that long?), which is a long enough wait (too long for something as trailblazing as Symphony) – but I didn’t consider it simply because it still felt fresh in the mind. On the other hand, though Val Caniparoli’s Triptych feels like a world away, it might be back only in the year after.

Obviously I am over the moon (if surprised) that Nil Christe’s SYNC is on the list – also happy that the following are back: Goh Choo San’s Fives (zomg excitement), Edwaard Liang’s Winds of Zephyrus (イェイ! \o/), and Natalie Weir’s Bittersweet (it would be interesting to see a new cast for this – or two casts, but let’s not be greedy – it is really hard work all round).

I’ve always been curious about Goh Choo San’s Birds of Paradise and multiple other works I’ve not seen before, but all in good time.

Passages 2018, Part 3 – Shadow’s Edge (Ma Cong)

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Marvellous photos for Passages 2018 are up on Singapore Dance Theatre’s facebook page.

 

On to Shadow’s Edge.

To the tune of infinite relief, this has been reviewed previously for Intermezzo 2014 and BUTS (Classical) 2016. It is more classical in look than the earlier two works – the pointe shoes, the classical port de bras (those arms! see picture below), the leaps.

02 Shadow's Edge

Changes to the roles, which you may skip if you so wish: Akira steps in as Alison Carroll has left; May Yen Cheah gives a new voice to the part danced by Maughan Jemesen with Kenya; Kensuke, who had actually danced this in 2015 in Malaysia with Rosa Park, I think, takes on the lead role (formerly danced by Chen Peng) and pairs with Chihiro (who danced Rosa’s part in BUTS 2016); Takeaki Miura takes Zhao Jun’s role (2 words more on this later); in a sleight-of-hand body-swap, Jason Carter dances Nazer’s role (a pas de deux with Li Jie), and thusly his portion is taken on by Timothy Ng.

 

We know the opening to consist of a lady (Chihiro) lifted by two men (Jason Carter, Huo Liang) and lying horizontal her raised leg trembling. This raised leg has always been a topic of contention amongst the shifting, murmuring audience (both the silent doubters whose body language betrays it, and the more vocal ones whispering): is it intentional? and as the young ladies correctly concluded, Yes, it is.

Chihiro alights at last, upon Huo Liang’s curved back and Jason walks her round. Kensuke takes over to partner her – he is deft, reliable and strong as always: lifts as she gently walks in the air above the ground; tilting her in a sundial turn, her body the shadow of a sundial needle; locking her over his shoulder in a backwards lift.

I ambitiously imagined myself trying to piece together the acts of this dance – but as always, it defies such actions. Shadow’s Edge can be thought of as a Netflix drama, summed up in the tagline Action is happening. Something is always going on somewhere.

–  and yet there were moments where there was a strangely gentle, soft, blurred look to the performance. Surely it wasn’t just nostalgia (for which I permitted myself a wet eye or two). Perhaps, after the contemporary look of the preceding pieces, it looked more classical, more Romantic.

There were so many moments when I thought – oh yes, this happens here! or Where is that pas de deux? Here are some of the little snapshots of moments I’d like to remember:

1. The men and their solid showing  – the pas de chats in the air, the awesome star leaps as they turn in the air, their shaking of hands in rage and stop-in-the-name-of-love sudden hand motions, their boundless energy, the cannon-kicks, where they throw out their arms and then their legs parallel to the ground.

2. The ladies and their precise footwork. One fascinating move for couple-work sees them in front of their partners, putting their hands behind their partner’s shoulders while making large sweeping circles (rond de jambes) on the ground with their feet as they advance forward.

3. The triumphant entry of the victorious queens Elaine Heng and Chua Bi Ru, lifted high on up by two gentlemen – each supporting one arm of the royalty. Elaine enters first, cycling her legs through the air; and then Bi Ru, and they are set down and greet each other royally, with a bending of knees and swaying of their bodies, and the brightest of smiles. Bold yet gracious grandeur.

4.  Li Jie and Jason Carter’s first pas de deux – lush elegant splits and strong hand-holds and sharp feet. Suddenly one marvels at how Li Jie’s hands always naturally drape themselves so gracefully at every turn, like a punctuation point at the end of a sentence, highlighting each move. There’s a pleasant, easy music in their style.

5. The trio of Tanaka Nanase, May Yen Cheah and Nakahama Akira – their dancing is pitch-perfect —  paint strokes on a canvas, wide swipes of a palette knife — and they fit together easily. There’s a delightful little move, of them throwing their heads back and opening their palms by the sides of their throats like the collars of frill-necked lizards, or flowery Elizabethan ruffles; and another, where they make little shuddering hops forward, lacing their fingers and pressing their palms towards at us. Delicate paintbrush moves.

6. Akira and Etienne’s pas de deux. They have worked together a fair bit through classical pas de deux (Coppelia, Sleeping Beauty), and their experience and familiarity shows. Akira’s dancing is neat and clear as always, and she is a good addition to the cast.

By the way, pictures from Instagram tell us that Etienne and Akira will be Prince Charming (Philip? Florimund!) and Sleeping Beauty for December, which I do think is good as they’re established and experienced, they’ve already worked so hard on the pas de deux, they look glowingly good together, and I am looking forward to seeing their interpretations of the characters. Separately though, I was also looking forward to seeing Li Jie dance the lead role of Sleeping Beauty – the viewer gets greedy and it’s good for principals to dance lead roles – and yet I also note the casting of Giselle gave room for Li Jie to dance lead but not Etienne. (A long time ago I made a passing comment on how I suspect multiple casts — and having one’s own company doctors — increases longevity.) So many considerations, so little time!

7. Miura Takeaki’s solo, which is stable and decided, firm dancing. He has worked hard and grown a great deal for contemporary dancing, and his solos are patiently worked-through, the legs unfolding clear as arrows, the feet establishing their positions, sharp as darts.

8. Kensuke and Chihiro’s pas de deux: a subtle, engaging performance. There’s a part where she leaps and lands in a split upon the platform formed by his forearms, and the two young ballerina-girls in front of me turned to each other, jaws dropping, eyes wide. Separately, Kensuke has a characteristically solid solo, displaying his strong form and the excellent multiple turns that bring to mind Basilio from Don Quixote.

ETA: This seems a good spot to insert the following video from Kensuke’s dance instagram, from his rehearsals with Rosa in 2015.

 

 

 

9. One of my absolute favourite moments – the non-stop dancing suddenly segues into this gorgeous moment with choral music (see from 0:33):

 

 

 

It brings tears – it’s a voice straight out of one soul, speaking to another.

At the end of this segment, everyone kneels, heads bowed, except for our lead couple. Ladies press their foreheads on top of their folded hands on the ground. Chihiro circles in to the centre of the spotlight, and with a confirmatory glance from Kensuke, follows the other ladies. Kensuke, standing behind her, throws his head back and arms up and rages at the spotlight above.

10. Right after that we get spun straight into this music – and one of my favourite parts of this dance – which includes the contrasting pairs of the slick and speedy May Yen Cheah feeding energy into the routine and partnered by the efficient Kenya – they are the waste-no-time couple zipping through their routine; versus the smooth, varnished edges of Li Jie and Jason’s pairwork, which, despite its speed, retains a curiously elegant musical look to it. Jason’s dancing in the pas de deux is interestingly smooth, a layer atop the usual lines.

(Here’s an irrelevant comment – recently found out that JASON is the name of what wiki says is “an independent group of elite scientists which advises [the US government] on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature.”)

 

 

At some point on Saturday night towards the close of the dance, as Huo Liang leapt into the air, flinging his high, arced arms open, I suddenly felt as if I could hear and feel him soar with the beat of the music, enveloped in it.

You can also see some of the dancing for this portion in the video below, particularly from 0:19. (It’s a 2014 video – Rosa Park and Chen Peng are seen in the opening, and Maughan Jemesen dances with Kenya, and in the triple-couple dance you can see Stefaan Morrow. Phew, that was a long time ago.)

 

 

At the very end, the group falls down in a ring about the lead couple, as Chihiro raised high up in Kensuke’s arms in the brilliant, cool white spotlight.

It felt strange but pleasant, watching Shadow’s Edge after so much time. I don’t necessarily think it’s the nostalgia that made it seem sentimental – it was the choral music, perhaps, that carried that note. It’s a work that buzzes with so much energy and life and yet – it felt also more …muted and soft at points. Or perhaps we have aged.

If I could revisit anything from Shadow’s Edge, it would be the entire thing because it’s actually unadulterated fun. But especially the choral part, which I have always, always adored.

 

On Saturday night, all the performances received the wild applause and cheers they deserved. I think that, barring the unexpected, Evening Voices might be aired quite soon, because it’s really very complex and thorough.

 

Happy Deepavali / Diwali, as the case may be! We celebrate the triumph of light overcoming darkness during the Festival of Lights.

 

On food, if you’re interested…

A minor delay in this review was caused by (amongst other things) a visit to Roxy Square. If you are in Singapore, you should go to Roxy Square to eat the original Katong laksa. Folk who have been in the East since the 50s and can remember where the sea used to run up to the land before land reclamation say that this is the real deal – Roxy Square Katong Laksa probably doesn’t use earthworms (from the beach, not the garden variety, for the brine) any longer, but it’s still eaten with a spoon, and the gravy definitely tastes like they squeezed coconut shavings for the milk (back in the ’90s, we still had home-made curries made with squeezed shredded coconut).

…but I had the famous wanton mee instead, with its smoky apparently home-roasted char siew and chewy egg noodles, served by a very polite uncle with kind eyes who bellows your queue number deafeningly as if it’s the lottery (“FORTY-FOUR! FOUR FOUR!…and the next number is…TEN! Next is…(suddenly speaks softly, causing us to convulse with laughter) eleven.”) He takes orders in a soft voice and repeats your number to you for fear you’ll forget it; and he then scribbles an objective description of you to avoid dispute (“c is for char bor [female in Hokkien], grey for your clothes“, he told me kindly once)…though today, “NUMBER 13!!” and “NUMBER 14!” both wore grey, thus causing confusion.

More on food in Roxy Square.

It’s surprisingly accessible, by bus from Kallang and Dakota MRT stations, and (working backwards) probably somewhere around Bugis and Orchard.

 

 

Passages 2018, Part 2 – Evening Voices (Tim Rushton)

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01 Another Energy_Evening Voices

The picture shown is of Agetsuma Satoru and May Yen Cheah in their pas de deux. The dancers in Evening Voices wear long-sleeved leotards of grey in front and beige behind, and a ring of grey encircles their wrists. There is no pointe work involved.

The work was inspired by Vespers (All-Night Vigil) and the word that came to mind was elegiac, somehow. Evening Voices has got a very special and unique look to it. The mechanics of the pas de deux and pas de trois are quite magically and fearfully composed. Tim Rushton has been the Artistic Director of the Danish Dance Theatre for 17 years. The write-up in the pamphlet says, tellingly, that he uses his work “as a means to communicate human emotion” and that his work has been described as “emotionally-led”.

A truth to be told is that there’s apparently something called, self-explanatorily, “white tutu fatigue”, a version of the Europe-touring tradition known as “ABC” (aka “another bloody church”). From a distance, all of Passages 2018 may look all very linear and modern and not faintly dissimilar, but a close look reveals the shades of emotion washing gently through Evening Voices, and then the emotional surge that is Shadow’s Edge. We were essentially looking at a Masterpiece in Motion night.

 

 

This dance begins with Chihiro walking out into the darkness and taking position to the audience’s left, a little beyond the blurred, barely-visible fringes of an oval of light on the ground. A single light on her reveals her in side profile, arms drawn up – a contemplative pose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She starts shudderingly and faces us, and the music begins, a sole voice, as she makes little movements as if moulding soft clay into a small pot. She reaches out to sweep her right arm and then her left arm behind her, as if she is taking in the spectacle of the world around her; and Timothy Ng runs into join her, and as more voices join the chorus, more dances enter from the shadows, opening arms as if moulding ever-larger pots, inscribing paintings in the air with a wave of the arm.

The body movements are soft, a little classical in shape, moulded clay out of jars. (Yes, this thought arises from the grey of the leotards.)

Contemporary works are always studies in how to arrange the dancers to keep the stage alive to the eye: Chihiro in her corner in drawn, desolate movements – the other dancers in a group on the other side – and Shan Del Vecchio entering from the audience’s right, in a desolate solo of roiling rolling limbs moulding empty air into clay, one moment bending backwards elastically, impossibly (see image below), the next locked in a running position and rocking over to touch the ground and righting himself again with a sharp hist! – the herd stares at him, and he turns to look at them, and they clap their hands over their mouths, crouching low, eyes large. He remains distant, and no one reaches out to him– and he exits, as isolated as he was before.

Here, image, as promised.

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpgIPvQgH40/

I honestly hope no one minds that I insert these random 1000-word pictures. They really capture the spirit of the moment, the stunning dancing and choreography, et cetera.

The pair work for this group is quietly exquisite. Ladies shuffle through a gentle promenade, the ladies wrapping an arm about the men’s torsos as the men walk in a circle, and if you look carefully you can see how the ladies have to shift their arms; ladies lifted off the ground by the sheer power of clasping the hands of the gentlemen behind them, and beating their legs rapidly like birds’ wings – the mind’s eye sees Ma Ni’s strong legs and beautiful form; ladies hoisted upside down over the men’s shoulders in a fascinating cat lift –imagine a very large cat sprawled over the shoulder, its hands gripping the lower back of the man, body and legs straight as a plank – Jessica Garside, strong and graceful.

It is good to see more dancers being given more significant roles over this year – Ma Ni, Yeo Chan Yee, Jessica Garside, Timothy Ng, and Ivan Koh (once seen as one of the chaps in Serenade even before he was a company dancer), for instance.

Exit pairs, leaving Agetsuma Satoru on the stage, who held his own solidly during the BUTS weekends. May Yen Cheah joins him for this pas de deux, which opens simply but compellingly with a pendulum leg swinging forward and back while the torso turns, the dancers watching the point of their foot for as tortuously long as they can before they can plant their feet back on terra firma. May Yen Cheah’s expressions and dancing bring out the passion, the agony, the light in this piece, and she is stably supported by Satoru. (I will talk more about Satoru at the end of this post.)

This is a slow-burn romance to choral music. It has its tender moments: the careful interlocking of arms as she rolls gently onto and off his back; that moment she lies on the ground, her arms forming an open loop through which Satoru rolls his looped arms; while he holds her hand while, curled up on her side, she shuffles in a circle on the ground; she sprawled across the picnic mat formed by his thighs.

— and it has its unsettling moments: where she lies on the ground and he lifts her feet – and her entire body peels off the ground in a pretzel S-shape, leaving only her head, and her shoulders and arms to support her as he walks round in a circle, and their dependence on each other takes on a surreal, almost grotesque look; or when he lies at rest, at last, upon the curve formed by her legs, and a little pronounced playful kick of her leg and tilt of her body throw him up into an uncomfortable arched sitting position, his arms clawed and his head thrown back.

The other couples enter (men first, posing Herculean-style a little comically), framing a gentler reconciliation of the main couple. Perhaps because of this shift in tone, when the couples echo the pretzel turn above, it seems more tender, a prelude to a display of trust as the men hoist the ladies upon their shoulders in a Cleopatra-lift, the ladies sprawled sideways across their shoulders, one hand resting upon their knees and the other supporting the men’s lower back, while their heads are propped up by the men – to every casual eye, ladies of leisure at rest. If you are seated at the correct spot, you can see one brave tall gentleman keeping his partner across his shoulders for the length of a Satoru solo instead of letting her down gently, because the dancers will cross the stage with the Cleopatra-lift in a matter of seconds.

Everyone retreats at last, leaving the stage bare save Shan and Chihiro in a huddle at the back of the stage. Satoru sweeps out, winging down upon them.

If the mind needs a story, the story that takes form is of a star (Chihiro) that has fallen from the firmament and slowly moulded itself into a human form, and is reaching out to the waking world.

Thus begins a lyrical, poignant pas de trois to the sound of a chorus of male voices, over which a lone female voice soars. Small bright white lights illuminate the stage. This pas de trois is stunning and beautiful in its mechanics, and looks fresh and revolutionary. The pen gives up inscribing and stops in awe at the beauty.

We travel onwards from this discovery of Chihiro – the gentlemen sliding her between them, kneeling by her as if in awe and worship; testing the waters as Satoru pushes her and she falls into Shan’s waiting arms; supporting her outstretched arms as she pushes off the ground in arabesque – little hops, stretching the feet, learning to fly; Shan throwing her to Satoru, she twisting in the air, in Satoru’s arms.

They worship and mould, and confine, this precious star they have found — lifting her high above to the stars, Shan’s hands entwined with hers as if he is waltzing with her; Satoru kneeling and offering his back as the shelf on which she rests, while Shan turns her round and round; they raise her aloft as one might a pennant in the winds.

 

 

 

 

There’s an unanswered yearning in the push and the pull, the tugging and tension – caught between them as, her arms still in their grip, she travels across the ground on her knees; her feet beat out a struggling tattoo on the ground; she wriggles as if to break free from Shan’s embrace. Perhaps she should fly, and they keep her on the ground. Perhaps there is a struggle between the two men for her – witness Satoru’s anguished leap away when she is coiled across Shan’s thighs.

 

Shan eventually breaks from the trio and circles the stage, one arm across his stomach and the other arm up vertically. This is the signal for all the other dancers flee out of the wing, arms poised similarly, and stand in a line, starting from the gentlemen to our right. The voices have grown to a large chorus and the lights throw a sunset-like glow upon the dancers, who lean their heads upon their neighbour’s shoulder; then they line up expectantly as Chihiro faces them.

The dancers hold on to one another’s elbows, forming a link chain that undulates like a long snaking jump rope while she, too sways as a wisp of smoke rising out of the ground and then she now turns and at last seizes control, grasping one end of the jump rope and compelling it to freeze and lock into position, one arm at a time.

Now it is her turn to discover this whole new world. The dancers turn, kneel and form a double link chain with their arms – and when she opens the ends of the link and slides her head between them, the arms open and separate as if they formed a giant whale’s mouth.

Chihiro is the leader of the orchestra, stepping forward. The dancers behind are lilting trees in a river, moving their heads in a circle in one direction, then another, so that their heads are tilted off axis; putting a decisive hand on their neighbour’s head to right it back in line; sliding one hand along the horizontal axis of the other arm as if zip-locking a bag. Chihiro arcs her arms and legs through a decisive solo while the dancers follow pace behind. In a particularly stunning moment, she turns her back to us and everyone claps their hands lightly in an arc overhead, mimicking the fluttering of butterfly’s wings.

 

When Chihiro rejoins the line, it sways once more in a final sigh, and then Shan lifts her up high and she is passed down the line over the heads of the male dancers while the female dancers break away from the line and run away. Shan swings her down and clasps her and drags her across the stage. More couples enter, the ladies with arms frozen in the L-arm manner as the men draw them in –you can hear their feet sliding across the floor.

Bright lights blazing down now, for the final act, which is calligraphy in motion—the undulating shapes, the arabesques –and everyone looks generally seamless and works their hardest at their pas de deux. There are little whimsical moves that remind you that you’re watching Evening Voices, the little coloured pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that form content that recognisably belongs to this box of 2000 pieces and not any other box: little arms frozen in a stiff-mannequin manner and cocking heads to the side; kneeling dancers waving a pointed finger upwards to the ceiling; a full 180 bow on tip-toes from the waist, to almost rest a hand on the ground; the fluttering of butterfly hands in a moment of silence; looping their arms about their thighs and circling the loops (ala the earlier pas de deux); men rolling over on their backs and holding up their feet as little shelves for the ladies to sit on for the briefest of moments.

Amidst the rhythms and delightful shapes, little thoughts cross the harbour of the mind – Ma Ni’s beautiful charismatic dancing (you can see her bringing out her interpretation of the music in her moves!), how solid and clear Yeo Chan Yee and Jessica Garside’s dancing looks, how well the dancers all fit into this; how Shan’s dancing is what breathing looks like – it looks so natural; how May Yen Cheah’s dancing clearly connects with the music and tells us what it is saying, and is so characteristic – lithe turns, arms sweeping up invisible waves; how emotions seem to pour out of Chihiro, feelings that you can’t quite put words to.

Waves of motion until at the very last, each female dancer is swept up into the arms of a male dancer – one last body springing upwards in a backwards lift, and exiting, leaving Chihiro back where she was at the beginning, in mournful solitude, and the lights go out.

 

Spiritual – evocative – expressive, delicate, haunting, poignant, lyrical, tender, wrenching. These are words that you know will have crossed the human mind, watching this piece.

It is not enough to watch this once. It is not sufficient. I tried to consider what I’d like to see again, and I came back to all the parts, that made the sum. It is all fascinating and interesting, and it was a new look for SDT. I think it is a piece that can be shown again at BUTS, or (in particular, given its length) at Masterpiece in Motion. I am personally very happy to see many of the younger non-soloist dancers in it, because giving new and challenging things to folk helps everyone (including the audience) grow.

I will admit (in a small voice) to entertaining the same thoughts I had in Unknown Territory (the review of which is in draft) – curiosity about seeing a different version by someone else dancing Chihiro’s role (e.g. Bi Ru, who has a certain spark and incredible voice, and who visibly feels the music in her own way).

On Satoru – I think from the moment he sprang onto the stage he has been quite a shot of energy, strength, technique, rolled into a powerful bundle. At this year’s BUTS, he was put out front and centre a fair bit, for good reason – and as he takes on each role, we look forward to seeing him grow with each performance, and with each story – growing the story as well. There is an abundance of possibilities.

A moment of self-reflection: I wonder if trying to remember / recording the moves takes away from the spirit, the voice of the piece. Does it all become too pseudo-technical? I don’t know but that I hope that visualising it in the mind helps one to sense the emotions. I admit that, as I said — I know what will have crossed people’s minds as they watched the piece — but as to what I actually felt — I was intrigued by the beauty and the look, and — I want to see this again, because on another day, in another time, it will speak to me in a different way.

It was lovely seeing (and hearing) so many appreciative young members of the audience who watched open-mouthed, and who completely enjoyed it. Here’s to hoping they continue loving dance and loving to dance, too.

Passages 2018, Part 1 – Another Energy (Tim Harbour)

/ ladysquadron / 4 Comments

Reviews first, will assemble thoughts properly subsequently 🙂

That said, when I woke up on Sunday morning (28 Oct 2018), I could smell ‘winter’ in the air. We don’t experience four seasons exactly, but — perhaps because of the wind in the trees — you can smell the differences between winter aka December school holiday season (cold, brittle, distant, rainy, brief) and spring (Chinese New Year – warmer and fresher), and trumpet flower (exam) season. Anything in the middle is monsoon/ rain/ haze/ heat.

0 Passages cover

The above is Nakamura Kenya for Passages 2018.

The Artistic Director, Mr Janek Schergen, said that the programme of Passages is one that meets the intent of the co-founders. What is that intent? See the photograph below.

0.1 About Passages

This is really important. Quite honestly, after watching Passages, I pondered about the direction of the choreography, about how similar or how different it looked. A brief dalliance with imagining a different palette of colours. The write-up above confirmed some of the thoughts – see carefully the concept of venturing forward into the world of neoclassical and contemporary choreography and the use of Passages to introduce choreographers that are new to our audiences. The look must go on ever up (is there a Hobbit song like that – the road goes ever on, sorry) and we shall grow with that.

Another interesting tidbit shared by Mr Schergen was that Passages grew out of the Singapore Dance Theatre choreographic workshop – originally a platform for showing such works, it’s now a sort of spin-off of that.

1. Another Energy (Timothy Harbour)

01 Another Energy_Evening Voices

Timothy Ng debuts in this piece, taking on Tony Chen Shi Yue’s part, and he fits into the performance seamlessly. Here is a un-caffeinated review from Passages 2016.

This 2018 viewing has helped me better appreciate Another Energy. It’s truly a light, uplifting, joyous and kind of humorous piece, in a way. The viewing also reminded me of how different it looked when it first was introduced, which harks back to the usage of Passages – this dance was so linear and angular and different from the others I’d hitherto seen, which had been quite thematic and emotional. That is the voice of Timothy Harbour, who was thusly invited to make Linea Adora for the 30th Anniversary Gala.

The music is seen below. I am not sure all of it was used, but that is most definitely the opening and hearing it makes me smile.  When used in this performance, the violins sound like the humming of fluorescent lights.

The dancers wear dark blue leotards with white oval whirls on them and – a tiny detail that is visible at curtain call and makes me smile – they appear to be wearing pink socks.

We open with everyone filing in to form a line at the back of the stage, in the darkness. When a great oval of light behind is turned on behind the dancers, some of the men break out of line and shift forward, and then everyone breaks out of line and shifts into groups. They are the silvery darting raindrops on your car window. Then a trio of men starts dancing – bent knees, staring at us out of the frame of one L-shaped arm while the other arm crosses behind at their waist, stamping their feet on demi-pointe in rapid beats to wake you up.

Another group starts dancing; and another, and another. Waves of energy pulsating rapidly across the stage: dancers reaching for the light, their outstretched arms forming a  straight line with the leg reaching out behind them; legs raised in swift kicks almost to 6 o’clock (ala Sylvie Guillem), arms up in triumphant Vs; men reaching down to touch the ground while their legs kick up behind in arabesque penche to form a figure 1; planar arms and legs; ladies throwing their heads and arms back like birds, or even lying prone on the ground, legs together and feet perfectly arched, or actually seated on the ground, heads bent to touch their legs, arms thrown back like wings. Endless shifting shapes and planar lines of legs and arms – dancers shift and change groups like cards shuffled in a deck.

Admittedly, this initial group work sometimes had a slightly raw edge to it that I couldn’t totally put my finger on; something to do with the achievement of shape in time with tempo. (I have edited my NDT1 review slightly as there was also a rather raw look to the group work in its last piece.)

Still, at last I kind of better appreciate the opening scene. It grows on one, with viewing.

Next up we have the well-matched trio of Huo Liang, May Yen Cheah, and Yorozu Kensuke. More lines and planes: While May Yen Cheah waits for the entrance of the other two, her entire torso, legs and arms by her sides lean forward while she remains on demi-pointe. I love the moment where the trio bow as if before a court, legs at wide fourths and arms almost in wing-shapes – before breaking out into a series of moves  where their arms are held up parallel at angles, and slide up and down as if whittling wood across; and at some point in time, dancers freeze for a moment with arms angled and parallel over their faces, looking away.

May Yen Cheah is a guitar string, the whorl in the body of a guitar; living and breathing the music – the slick tilt of a shoulder blade, the unstoppable beat and rhythm flowing out in every move. Huo Liang and Kensuke channel strength and grace in their every move; they are experienced, and you can feel them their voice flowing out through their dancing. If you read the 2016 review and compare it – I think one can safely say that Huo Liang’s voice is loudly audible and clear in his contemporary dancing.

At first glance, the pas de trois work here appeared to be echoed in the second work, which made for extremely startling viewing on the first night I watched Passages. There are similar moments – a lady held parallel to the ground, and tossed and turned (so to speak).

But the story is different and the mechanics may differ. For Another Energy, we are planar people. Even a leg whirling in the air is in a plane, the y-axis. At the very moment that May Yen Cheah wheels her leg in the air in an echo of the white oval in the background, Huo Liang ducks and kneels to grab May Yen Cheah’s ankle, and Kensuke takes her raised leg, and they lift her and turn her round and round along the x-axis while her leg swings up straight and round up to the vertical – lines, planes. Even at exit, again May Yen Cheah’s leg wheels in the air and Huo Liang ducks again, and they hold her about the waist as if to restrain her, while she freezes as a deer in headlights even though the lights on them are already fading…

…and Kwok Min Yi and Li Jie enter for a most enjoyable high-speed double dance. They have very different styles, yet they fit together well for this: arms swinging out in lines rapidly, high arabesques behind, high kicks up with hands nearly touching ankles; fluid moves and sharp lines, and perfectly-timed. Curiously, there’s a part where they pause and reach behind their heads – one does it slowly, deliberately, as they wait for the music; another does it quickly, following the earlier tempo of the dance. Both look good and correct. Their portion ends with the incredible split you see in the pamphlet, above.

Chihiro and Jason Carter have a pas de deux that’s essentially a pleasant, tender waltz, contemporary-style. I love the opening: their hands are joined and their arms form a giant loop, and he bends his legs so that the loop is low enough for her to step over his arm, through the loop, and she bounces back out of the loop and he shifts sideways to our left, so that she can bounce through the loop and backwards out of it; and this happens as they proceed so far left they’ve almost left before they’ve begun, but then he swings her up into a sky-dive belly lift in the air, her arms raised delicately.

That opening signals the strong, tender, delicate and — yes, light-hearted — latticework of a pas de deux that follows. Chihiro walks in a circle, he leaning lightly on her in an attitude promenade (a role reversal – usually the man walks round and the lady, holding on to him and leg lifted behind, is led round in a promenade); she falls backwards, straight as a plank, and he catches her lightly; he holds a hand and an ankle of her arabesque; his line of sight follows his arm as it swings out in a plane, while she swings down pendulum-like, to touch the ground while her leg leans straight up; she kicks out in a flat circle and he delicately wriggles out of the way; hands always locked together as she turns in arabesques and he wheels her in split over his shoulders. At the end she is lowered into a side split and then, incredibly, raised part of the way via a lift by the armpit while she rests a hand on Jason’s chest and they freeze for half a second until darkness descends on them. Told you: it’s light, and pleasant.

Compare this light fishing expedition to the pas de deux later with Kenya.

Next we have ladies in a bent-kneed squatting position, thighs parallel with the ground, flat feet sweeping across the ground as the men sweep them in by the waist. The group breaks up, crab-scuttling into position, settles down. They are at the back to the audience’s left and are the flowers in the field: arms up, feet straight forward and apart, arms opening like the petals of flowers in a field, while Li Jie dances a solo to our right,  all flowing strong shapes and moves, a hand to the shoulder, a hand sweeping aside a veil in the air, dancing to us, and dancing to the flowers in the field. For if another energy is light, light is not only a particle, but also a wave…

On Saturday night, I had the sudden feeling that just as watching Shadow’s Edge made me feel nostalgic for how young I was back in the day, someday, Another Energy will bring me back to this moment in time.

Chihiro joins Li Jie – for a glorious moment you have the two principal ladies sharing the stage and matching move for move – and shortly we shall have upon us Kenya and Chihiro’s pas de deux while the five ladies in the background remain, dancing and keeping the stage alive with movement.

Kenya and Chihiro are the winning couple, burning with a flame of triumph and strength – her legs clasped in a swallow-tail hold about his waist as he wings about on the stage in a few strong circles; the extreme sky diver pose, belly across his shoulder blades, their hands clasped tightly ; he raising her aloft in an extreme statue lift, one of her feet planted upon his hand while his other hand supports her by the armpit; that incredible moment of trust when she pushes her foot off his back as he is crouched on the floor, then unbelievably wraps herself up into a trust fall backwards, and fortunately he bounces off the floor fast enough to catch her (but of course); the loop she forms with her hand round her ankle, a loop that is slung over Kenya while she rests across his trustworthy shoulder blades and he transports her across the stage. I call this the winning couple as this phrase blazed itself across my mind as they danced along, and raised their arms in a V-shape.

The finale to their pas de deux is the giant waterwheel turn, mentioned previously, wherein he turns her over and over and in each turn, she changes the pretzel poses of her legs.

It’s worth noting that Chihiro is different in each pas de deux for Passages; see Evening Voices and Shadow’s Edge. One person and so much expressiveness for so many different dances; it boggles the mind absolutely. The same must be said for May Yen Cheah, who simply funnels the music through dance such that music for each different contemporary dance performance brings out a different expression.

Everyone zips in, in bobs and bits, harking back to our opening sequence. The group dancing here is pin-point precise and slick. I like how there are moments of more fluid movement (light being a wave) and how everyone suddenly stops dancing in their own little groups and combines for the grand finale: the humorous moment where everyone, arms in very proper-looking port de bras suddenly leans back, one foot resting on its heel and pointing up; and then suddenly as one body they tilt forward in a mock-bow; I like the mini-waltz where, arms looking very classical, they move their feet out in little planted kicks, heels on the ground. Such a contrast.

Backs to us, they crouch down like beans, and various dancers leap up like frogs, or energy particles, and crouch down. I do like how when the dancers are on their feet, they suddenly shuffle outwards, leaving Chihiro dead centre in front and Min Yi at the back; and then they all shuffle inwards to form a tight cluster.

When they are separated into pairs, as seen below, the girls drop down into sliding splits, and the girls at the back are then lifted up high.

01.5 Another Energy poster

(This photo was deliberately left uncropped. It shows part of one of the posters that are put up at performances. Back row: Kensuke lifting Marina; Jason Carter lifting Kwok Min Yi; Miura Takeaki lifting Beatrice; Kenya lifting Nanase; front row: Huo Liang and Li Jie; Tony Shi Yue and Chihiro; Etienne and May Yen Cheah.)

At the very end, in their pairs, they start bobbing and ducking in side lunges, the dancers at the back doing a peek-a-boo peering out from the side of their partner; and the dancers in front alternating between facing us and facing each other. On and on they lunge and peer and duck as the string music dims, until full darkness.

At curtain call, after everyone is out in a line, it’s quite cute how they suddenly shuffle out and swap places.

Overheard in the audience, an irrepressible young girl saying to her friend: “Did you see all the girls? …all muscles, biceps and s***!”

 

This really grew on me with more viewings. It’s quite the work: pretty feet, angular arms, entertaining and quick and very, very modern-looking. If I had to pick any particular moments to rewatch, they would be the two pas de deux and the ending sequence.

This goes up first to make me look less slothful while I watch Kalaba Kadhala on Toggle (it’s a very good Tamil drama).