A choreographer conveys notions of self-identity and dependency through dance.
Silence was no soft, gentle tiptoe through the mind of choreographer Kuik Swee Boon. Fresh from a five-year stint with the renowned Spanish choreographer nacho Duato in the latter’s compania nacional de danza troupe, Kuik crafted a dance suffused with an immigrant’s rambling notions of home and self-identity.
The 60 minute dance turned out to be an impressive affirmation of the 34 year olds talent for inscribing the longings of the spirit into flesh and motion.
The classical inflections of the ballet-based piece softened a work pumping with raw, animal energy and added a touch of melancholy to the dancer’s frenetic movements.
The dance began with Kuik’s dancer-wife Silvia Yong wandering amid a darkened landscape and hooded figures. Pulling a poncho off another dancer, she assumed his position while he tumbled onto the floor before running wildly about the stage, flailing his limbs in confusion.
As the dancers grappled with one another, wrenching the ponchos from others and disappearing under the unprotesting material themselves, one understood that the ponchos were nifty defenses against existentialist doubts about oneself and the world.
With the ponchos, one was secure in a bubble of purpose and community but without them, one was reduced to a lone self.
The busy choreography reminded one of a Friday night scene in a big bad city, rowdy with the drunken revelers, harassed workers and belligerent homeless beggars.
In between the restless group of dances, Kuik inserts scenes of disarming intimacy.
One such scene was a pas de deux between Spanish dancers Jonatan de Luis Mazagatos and Cristina Garcia Fonseca.
As Mazagatos lowered himself on all fours, burdened by the weight of carrying fronses on his back, she swung herself around, clutching onto him like a baby koala.
The image of the duo both entwined and on all fours, was a touching picture of mutual dependency.
The solo sequences by various dancers helped to create a surreal dream world. At times, their jagged movements resembled images glimpsed while a video tape is on fast rewind.
Perhaps the only wrong notes Kuik hit were often brutally quick steps he punished his dancers with and his solo dance sequence.
In the former, his dancers appeared out of breath and straining to keep up with the furious pace of his vision.
In the latter, Mazagatos’off key singing distracted one from Kuik’s expressive dancing and reduced it from its intended pitch of completive reflection to that of false emotion.
But if Silence was occasionally wrong-footed by too many things happening all too quickly, it’s cacophony of images and electronic soundscapes could not drown out the heralding of an emerging choreographic talent on the local scene.