liTHE 2025

liTHE 2025 marks the return of T.H.E Second Company’s main season platform, spotlighting the next generation of contemporary dance voices through bold experimentation and shared discovery.

T.H.E Second Company is the semi-professional wing of T.H.E Dance Company, providing advanced training and performance opportunities for emerging dance artists and choreographers. This year’s edition features two new creations by Billy Keohavong and Klievert Jon Mendoza, full-time dance artists from the main company of T.H.E, developed in collaboration with the second company’s dance artists and apprentices. The evening also includes a guest performance by the main company: a restaging of Un-form, choreographed by Founding Artistic Director Kuik Swee Boon.

Each work navigates the complexities of selfhood and belonging, offering a glimpse into the personal and social tensions that shape contemporary life.

In Misfits, Billy embraces the quirks and contradictions of those who never quite fit in, drawing out discomfort, humour and vulnerability in equal measure. Klievert’s Hawla (a Tagalog word for “cage”) explores the feeling of being emotionally trapped, shifting between force and fragility in its negotiation of restraint and release. Originally created in 2013, Un-form asks what it means to be an artist in Singapore today, revealing, through the lived bodies of its performers, the quiet conflict between purpose, identity and survival.

The performance will be preceded by a pre-show programme at 7pm, featuring the Training Initiative, a 10-month developmental programme for young movers aged 16 to 30. The initiative is designed to strengthen technical foundation and be exposed to T.H.E’s training environment. Participants will present excerpts from Spare Room by Yarra Ileto and Silences We Are Familiar With by Kuik Swee Boon, both of which reflect the initiative’s emphasis on honest embodiment, rigorous training and artistic growth.

Held at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, liTHE 2025 offers a glimpse into how T.H.E stands alongside dancers at different points in their journey. Whether it’s taking those first steps in the Training Initiative, finding space to grow in Second Company, or working at a professional level with the main company, the evening brings these different paths together—each one shaped by its own questions, risks and discoveries.