It has been a while since we stopped by Lo Hey Seafood at One Holland Village. They have downsized the menu and narrowed the offerings, which differentiated it from their sister outlet Hey Kee at Guillemard Road, but still offering good familiar items. I prefer to come to Lo Hey for a simple reason — the floors are more conducive for my floofs. Hey Kee's floors are rough af, asphalt-like. Ugh.
The menu refresh offers claypot things. Sure. As long as they don't douse everything in oil. The husband blinked at the signature hairy crab roe noodles (蟹黃麵) and immediately ordered it. I laughed. It's such a C-drama dish! #IYKYK I don't bother with hairy crabs, and certainly no crab roe. Not today. But I like the noodles loads because they it's pretty much scallion noodles (蔥油麵)! It was delicious! At S$23++, these noodles are pretty good!
Also had claypot wagyu black pepper angus beef slices. I'm usually wary of ordering beef or 'venison' at these restaurants because the meat always taste damn weird. I have no idea what they marinate it to 'soften' it, but it's gross. This version didn't turn out too bad. The salted egg Japanese pumpkin in claypot was delicious! They fried it dry and crisp. Lovely. Although at this point I laughed. You could just wok-fry everything and dump it in a claypot, and call it a claypot dish lorrr.
Had a pork rib soup with uhh one tiny abalone. Blink and you'd miss the abalone. LOL I wouldn't have minded another dish of pork-something. But they use all belly. I wasn't interested in a sweet-sour pork tonight. Never mind. I'm not particularly keen on pork belly in this amount. Anyway... we had leftovers of beef and pumpkin. So we ordered an egg fried rice, and packed it all up to-go.
It was a hot afternoon, but lunch was made comfortable by the lovely staff of Wild Coco at Boat Quay. There is an overhead fan that's struggling against the mid-day heat, so the staff brought out another floor fan, and that was really helpful in circulating air around.
The restaurant has a few locations now. There're two outlets at Hamilton Road and McCallum Street at Amoy that are convenient to us too, but this Circular Road outlet is the most conducive outdoors for us and the floofs. The sun does hit at noon, so a table of four seated outdoors is not feasible. Two pax is fine.
This hot weather has no bearing on whether our cravings for hot soup and spices. It's weird not to have spices in our bowls. Hehehhe. A premium laksa for me, and ayam goreng berempah (breast meat) for the husband. The laksa is really pretty good, so much better than the weaksauce bowl that degenerated at PS Cafe before they took it off the menu. The husband really liked the breast meat option here. We also shared a burnt green chilli eggplant, and a house-made thick mackerel otah. They were all super satisfying.
It was a sweat-fest. But lunch was soooo satisfying. It stormed this morning, and oddly, it was still cloudy at mid-day. It wasn't as blistering as we expected hot today, so we took an easy stroll around the area for the floofs to make a piddle before retreating back to air-conditioning, chilled water and some lunch for them.
I was so pleased to be able to make it to Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa's 'Planet [wanderer]'. I watched their first collaboration 'VESSEL' when it premiered in Kyoto in 2016 at the redeveloped-new ROHM Theatre(Kyoto Kaikan). I was absolutely blown away. It remained one of the most memorable contemporary dances I have watched.
'Planet [wanderer]' is a stunningly gorgeous show. Surreal, fragile, overwhelming and yet strong. I don't even know how the choregraphy was imagined and brought to life. French-Belgian choreographer and dancer Damien Jalet is known for his strong visions for modern dances and bold presentations. The dancers were magnificent. Talented and precise, I almost forgot that they are humans. They were like... humanoids, or new human bodies inhabiting a new-old world.
This dance is both a performance choreography and a visual art in a perfect partnership. It was such a glorious hour. I can't compare 'VESSEL' and 'Planet [wanderer]'. They're not exactly separate, yet they are distinct. This show felt like a continuation of how we explore this cosmic tension of creation myths versus the harsh realities of the human world.
The first collaboration between Kohei Nawa and Damien Jalet was Vessel, which premiered in 2016 at ROHM Theatre Kyoto, creating a portrait of two worlds from the Kojiki, the oldest Japanese book: Yomi (the underworld of the dead) and Takamagahara (the Plain of High Heavens where the gods dwell).
Planet[wanderer] takes place in the world in between those two: Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, the Central Land of the Reeds—the world we inhabit. The human being is but a reed, the feeblest one in nature and the performance captures that oscillation in a fragile balance between power and vulnerability, harmony and survival, evolution and destruction. The subtitle gestures toward the Greek etymological root of “planet” as meaning a wanderer. Planet[wanderer] conjures up a unique world onstage as imagined by a Japanese sculptor and European choreographer: a liminal place between the living and the dead, showcasing the constituent elements of the human body and the cosmos as well as their inseparable relationship with gravity.
The music too. I wished it could have been louder. That would have really completed the show. Canadian composer Tim Hecker's synths were amazing. The performance blends Tim Hecker's signature heavy electronic drones, reverb, and noise with the traditional tones of Japanese gagaku instruments. His music placed the dancers and even the audience smack into this creation myth in the 'Kojiki' (古事記).
The set design is amazing. The logistics were impressive. We were totally transported into a surreal and planetary landscape right from the start. Polyurethane foam, starch and mineral powder, silicone oil and viscous gel are all scenographer and sculptor Kohei Nawa's signature use of modern, earth-like, and semi-liquid mediums. They represent shifting cosmic textures, meteor dust, and primordial fluids to explore humanity's fragile relationship with the planet. The dancers interact with the landscape as it physically changed and modified as the piece progressed.
'VESSEL' (2016) introduced us to The Realm which represents the first two levels of the creation of the world — Yomi(the Underworld) and Takamagahara (the heavens where the gods dwell). The set design utilized sculptural forms, isolating lighting to give the illusion of floating, fragmented bodies coming out of an abyss. Stark and otherworldly.
We were taken to the third and final level of The Realm in 'Planet [wanderer]' —Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni(the middle land of reed plains), which refers to the earthly human world. Then there's The Body. We explore how The Body holds human vulnerability, as though we are reeds, and each generation dancing between survival, evolution, and destruction on this planet.
