Dive into the captivating world of dance film, where cinematography and movements intertwine to create a unique cinematic experience. Six dance films will be presented in this upcoming exhibition.
Location: *SCAPE #03-07/08/09
Dates: 13 January to 28 January 2024
Time: 1pm to 8pm (Thursdays – Sundays only)
Admission Type: Free
Title: Body Missing Body
Artists and Collaborators: Grace Song, Xue, PD150, Alexander Lee and Shaun Neo
IMDA Rating: No Children Under 16
Butoh, also known as the ‘dance of darkness’, is a post-war Japanese avant-garde form of dance theatre. A butoh dancer embodies a castaway doll and performs in a shifting landscape of disappearing bodies of water – a tidal phenomenon caused by the gravitational pull from the interaction between the sun, moon and earth. The intertidal zone where land and sea meet, separates the island into two during low tide. The doll, bound to the island and its past, recalls a distant memory of the violent separation from her owner and experiences a celestialencounter with the Super Blue Moon. An invisible performer takes precedence, the analogue DV camera known as PD150 reveals its inherent imperfections of glitches in its act of recording. It becomes a paradoxical force of writing and erasure of performance and memory. Memory then, evokes the fleeting nature of presence and follows the feeling of absence through a span of space and time with objects, locations, stories and people.
Title: hard boil, soft centre
Artists and Collaborators: Elsa Wong, Sonia Kwek and Mervin Wong
IMDA Rating: No Children Under 16
Unfolding as a series of vignettes, hard boil, soft centre reimagines four female archetypes, threaded together with the symbol of the egg. Inspired by mythological figures intermingled with personal dreams, each story features a character of each archetype and their associated landscapes, lending each a distinct colour, atmosphere and quality of movement. Mother of creation NuWa walks through her garden of eggs; each egg entwined with a woman, each woman with her own egg-bearing story. Butterfly Spirit frolics free as can be as a Lover of the world, until the world decides to burst her bubble. Across a ravaged landscape, Queen Leda walks on eggshells, unfazed and continuing on. The Shadow is simultaneously peeling into and shedding her body, a faceless shell facing herself. Each story reveals a peek into these women’s hidden pains – of labour, not being taken seriously, untold violence, not being seen – and how the women continually overcome, just as how the egg transforms.
Title: FR:AGILITY
Artists and Collaborators: Amanda Tan, Rachel Liew, Jonit On, Kenneth Chia, Siti Khairunissa, Eugene Seah and Louis Quek. Special thanks to: That One Studio and Gorilla Cinema Force
IMDA Rating: Parental Guidance
FR:AGILITY is a film exploring abstract structures within the human form and its movement. The film lenses the body and its form as sculpture; its undulating curves and slopes as landscape; and the skin we live in and shed as texture. It views movement and dance through the breath that heaves and fills our lungs; the muscles that stretch, tense and pulsate; and the limbs that elongate, contract and feed us the language of our bodies. Studying the parallel lines of strength and fragility, the piece inquires how the human form and its gestures are the embodiment of these seemingly contradictory elements.
Title: I Summon You
Artists and Collaborators: Jeremy Ho and Liz Sgt Tan
IMDA Rating: Parental Guidance
I Summon You is an autobiographical expression of the artist’s journey, and how it intertwines with the memory and influence of her late mother, performer and arts educator Christina Sergeant. Her current practice is based in the contemporary expression of classical Indian Odissi, and in the film, danced to the music of The Observatory. Grappling with yearning, she searches for echoes in familiar childhood locales—her family’s old plant nursery, and in Cairnhill Arts Centre, where Sergeant had her mime studio. Seeing her mother in the long graceful arms of rain trees, she tries to pull memory into being through movement. Overwhelmed by a world that moves too fast, she copes with grounding and gliding steps. In these places, she uses the embodied geometry of her dance to elaborate on the contrast of being present in her journey, while yearning, like many do, for halcyon days gone past.
Title: Words and Worlds
Artists and Collaborators: Zachary Yap and Pang Xue Jing
IMDA Rating: Parental Guidance
A body illuminates behind the screen like a ghost attempting to break free. But space has a way of revealing secrets.
Title: LAUGHTER IS A TRAUMA EXITING THE BOD
Artists and Collaborators: Jaymes Wong, Tamie Wong and Rachael Soh
IMDA Rating: Parental Guidance 13
LAUGHTER IS TRAUMA EXITING THE BODY is a dance film that contemplates on what it means to embody intergenerational trauma through movement.
