Dances All Day

The friends are in town again for the Singapore Arts Festival. Our weekend started with wandering around the very unforgiving, demonically hot and cruelly suffocating Biennale venue at Old Kallang Airport. Then it was blessed relief at SOTA for the Festival's new commission- Arco Renz' 'Crack'. We watched the Cambodian dancers from Amrita Performing Arts explore the pain of Pol Pot's era to the measured enjoyment of its current-day energies, from isolation to integration.

The evening saw us stroll around the Festival Village and then park at the cafes at the Esplanade for drinks and food. Half of us eagerly anticipated Joe Bonamassa's gig and couldn't wait to hear him and see his Les Pauls. The rest of us were looking forward to Alain Platel's 'Out of Context - For Pina'. The conversation couldn't be more dichotomous.

Sunday night and I wasn't exactly dressed to the nines for a dance. Ah well. It wasn't a gala! So I wasn't bothered. The theatre wasn't full for the performance. A pity. It was kinda cool to see the 8 dancers get up from among the seated audience and stroll up to the stage, setting the tone of it all. The background music was more of background noises emulating animal grunts. In those minutes of silence amidst grunts, I was most tickled to hear the stomachs of fellow audiences growl and whine, almost in accompaniment to the grunts over the speakers.

On stage, everything is pared down to the minimum including lighting, props and soundtracks. In summary, this dance explores the self versus the crowd, loneliness versus acceptance, accepted social norms versus the visceral ecstatic. It draws inspiration from Alain Platel's earlier experiences as a movement therapist.

It was a tad confusing as the dancers also took on roles of an actor, a singer and the audience; the expressions on their faces matter as as their body movement. But this is contemporary dance. I often struggle with it the way I sometimes don't get surrealism. 'Out of Context' is similar. However, I think it throws in too much imagery and mimicry that slows the pace of the overall effect and leaves me wondering what exactly and what else is the choreographer hinting at.

I leave you with a clip of the dance to boggle your mind.