Published August 20, 2010
By LYNN KAN

CHOREOGRAPHY is a slippery routine, changing during rehearsals and production in a way that is supposed to lead to a final state of completion.

Raw and open-ended: Though it was enjoyable to get a glimpse into the hearts of the THE dancers, ‘Man In The Centre‘ was sometimes ragged at the edges

Symptoms of this shape-shifting peeked through in Kuik Swee Boon’s new work Man In The Centre, which ended its three-day run last weekend.

In the programme, Kuik wrote: ‘It is difficult to critique the work at this stage and I will leave this task to the audience. I hope the work will eventually take on its own identity and character as it is performed over time.’

Kuik’s creation benefited from his free hand in choreographing and deciding his subject matter, which grew out of his own questions about human existence – the ability to know others and one’s self despite the noise and distractions of daily life. The result is the free yet intimate composition of his company, The Human Expression (THE).

It was a refreshing change to see Kuik develop his dancers as characters replete with their own stories, rather than as messengers in a larger abstract production as in Silence. Each of the six dancers had their ‘say’ in the second half of the performance, when film snippets of their lives showed each confessing when they felt most at peace with themselves – making origami, picking out prawn crackers from a kacang puteh mix, or simply being simply alone.

The stories of the individual dancers were kept honest by the documentary, honed by Brazilian video artist Gabriela Triopa. It was ‘very slick‘, in the words of one audience member in the post-performance talk.

But as enjoyable – and rare – as it was to get a glimpse into the hearts of the THE dancers, Man In The Centre was sometimes ragged at the edges. In the post-performance talk, Kuik let on that the last section of the dance went through four or five different versions, and the constant re-working of the piece was felt.

Domestic props – like a mop and a pillow – made cameos into the dancers’ pas de deux and pas de trois, to illustrate the distractions and mundanity of everyday chores that intrude into a person’s space. However, the interjections were sometimes half-formed, and the effect could be exaggerated by frequent appearances or the use of more household or office items.

The dream-like first half and last third of the dance were the most unforgettable – but not without some problems. At first, the dancers were spread far apart from one another, and coupled with the slow swell of music, this made it difficult at first for the audience to trace the thread of Kuik’s thought.

However, once the the dancers coalesced from their atomised singular solos into distinctive narrative groups, Man In The Centre became more cogent. Especially strong was the duet in the first half, danced by Zhuo Zihao and Yarra Ileto, portraying an ambiguously intimate yet estranged couple. Zhuo’s isolation was near palpable which, paired with Ileto’s subtly commanding presence, made for a solid pairing.

The ensemble piece, when the company danced as people swept up in the motions of everyday life, could not quite convey how hapless being caught up is. The soundtrack of reality – a clever cacophony of bicycle bells and whispers, akin to the eerie hyper fast-forwarded murmurs heard in the jungles of TV series Lost, mixed by music artist Darren Ng – was the perfect backdrop to the hustle and bustle.

The transition out of the busy ensemble back to the last third was similarly bumpy, and could have done with more fine-tuning.
In a way, the rawness and open-endedness of Man In The Centre worked – because of the elusive character of its subject matter. Answers to questions about human existence change, and are impossible to pin down. Still, the work could have grown even richer if Kuik had had the time to take a step back and critique the piece.