Movers and shakers
The Straits Times Monday, June 12 2006
DANCE
FORWARD MOVES
Danny Tan/ Elysa Wendi/ Kuik Swee Boon/ Aaron Khek
Esplanade Theatre Studio
Last Friday
JUNE CHEONG
Arts Reporter
This show nudged the dance scene here in the right direction.
By pitching Forward Moves (below) as the creation of four home-grown choreographers, rather than the dance companies the represent – namely, Odyssey Dance Theatre, Arts Fission, Compania Nacional de Danza and Ah Hock and Peng You- the attention of the audience was drawn to their individual strengths.
Freed from such tagging tyrannies, the four – Danny Tan, Elysa Wendi, Kuik Swee Boon and Aaron Khek – gave free rein to their imagination and expressed their personal obsessions.
In telling reflection of the minor status of dance as an art form here, the mixed bill of contemporary works featured few props and even fewer performers in each dance.
Instead, the choreographers told simple stories of loves and battles lost, making for a night which was accessible as it was affecting.
The first half was a heavy with mood, showcasing Providence by Tan and Touch-Me-Not Wendi.
Using as his props watersleeves- long, trailing sleeves used in Chinese classical dance to accentuate a performer’s femininity – tan weaved a metaphor of the burden and yet necessity of tradition in modern society.
As Tan put on watersleeves, his body became subservient to the undulations of the soft, billowing curves of the cloth as his arms waved and slashed about in the air.
When he threw off the watersleeves finally, his body regained its freedom. Like a snake shedding skin, he heaved a sigh of relief before launching into a dizzying round of spins while he gestured limply with his hands.
Next up was Wendi who, with her work Touch-Me-No, created a paean to those abandoned in love.
Accompanied by a haunting remix of Cyndi Lauper’s If You Go Away by artist Roslina Yusoff, dancers Scarlet Yu and Bobbi Chen echoed each other in their spins, tumbles and convulsions.
While the performances in the first half were evocative of single ideas, those in the second half were layered more densely.
Exploring the issue of migration, Kuik earned brownie points for finding humor in a serious topic, but he was ultimately unable to reconcile the weightier, introspective second segment with the first.
Kuik’s first segment had four dancers cavorting about with four suitcases to an increasingly frenzied rhythm, reflecting the excitement and hopes of new migrants.
The pace built to a punishing intensity and was abruptly broken off to phasing a graceful series of balletic leaps to express a migrant’s anxiety and loneliness.
Meanwhile Khek’s piece- more physical theatre than dance- was a droll observation on the ways in which real life silences one’s inner child.
It had him and dancer Ix Wong engaging in a series of petty competitions such as leaping over each other or walking faster than each other.
Most poignant of al was the scene in which Wong struggled to put on a shirt, jacket and a pair of trousers as Khek tugged at them desperately, as if he were hanging for dear life.
The four choreographers showed amply that they have what it takes to reach out to, and sustain, the interest of the audience.
The next move for them would be to keep creating and delivering on that latent talent.