'Re-Membering Identities' in Review - 14 Jan 2017

Paragraph presents
Re-Membering Identities
Goodman Arts Centre Blackbox
Singapore
2017-01-14
8pm

A Review by Hawk Liu

The dance concert is a triple bill of interdisciplinary works of an abstract nature.

The first piece by choreographer Royston Fan features two female dancers and a tall, speaking actor, dapperly dressed in a white suit, white pants and white shoes (Alvin Koh). There is a good mix of monologues, dance and mime. By the end of the piece, one wonders about the relationship between the three characters. It is well performed. However, on the sound balance side of things, the music level is too high for the monologues to be heard. Also, please do not use excessive percussion in the music if words are meant to be heard.

The second piece by Vroom Broom Group uses repeated techno music where two females dancers go through the same set of movements on a circuit round the entire stage and different times while a lone be-muscled man in the centre spot does his own sets of movements. At the end of the piece, one of the female dancers takes over the centre spot to replace the lone guy, thus completing one cycle of the dance. That is an interesting idea.

The 3rd piece by Max Chen is the longest one involving a number of dancers and an opera singer (soprano Satsuki Nagatome). There is an integration of operatic singing, mime, speech, story telling and dance. This piece is engaging as there is a variety of art forms and movement material than the previous two pieces. It is also humorous in nature and entails a fair bit of audience participation, most notably a latecomer who had his lack of ballet skills cheekily pointed out by the cast of dancers. The mobile phone becomes an object of focus too, likely linking our current obsessive devotion to it.

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This article in its original form can also be found on Hawk Liu's website http://hawkliuh.wixsite.com/singing/re-membering-identities-2017-01-14.