Can I use the word \u201cinscrutable\u201d to describe an ethnic Chinese\nman without being accused of resorting to clich\u00e9?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because inscrutable is\nreally the adjective that springs to mind when I think of James Lee, the chess\nmaster, moving bodies like pawns in Myra Mahyuddin’s A Sleepwalker in\nTransit<\/em>, on a rainy Sunday afternoon outside Central Market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not stoic, not\nimpassive, and God forbid, not neutral<\/em>. Inscrutable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See, the problem\nsometimes with trying to avoid the pitfalls of clich\u00e9 is that it can deprive\nyou of the most appropriate, concise way of describing something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I felt that as I watched\nthe performance that resulted from the Choreography for\nNon-Choreographers<\/em> workshop, helmed by Marion D\u2019Cruz of Five Arts\nCentre. Organised as part of a year-long series of workshops under the \u2018Krishen\nJit Experimental Workshop Series 2006\u2019, CNCW<\/em> saw 11 individuals,\nnone of whom had any formal dance training, work with choreographer Marion\nD\u2019Cruz over six weeks towards a public performance in a site specific space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The CNCW<\/em> clearly\nfollows on the success of Marion\u2019s earlier work using non-dancers in dance. Such\nwilful disregard for genre is of course, not new. Having first surfaced in the\nhothouse of the 60s, it has in fact suffered the fate of all innovation \u2013\ninstitutionalisation. It nonetheless remains a useful means of freeing dance\nfrom the confines of bodies schooled in a particular movement vocabulary. If I\ncan use a sports analogy, imagine teaching Thierry Henry to dive. How does the\nagility, speed, and stamina required of a field sport transform itself into the\nsingular moment of control and release in diving? If you can get past imagining\nThierry in Speedos, you\u2019ll see what Marion, in another context, was getting at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CNCW<\/em> is framed within this\ntrajectory \u2013 a democratisation of the process of choreography. It can be argued\nthat choreography is perhaps less codified in its publicly accepted meaning\nthan dance is. The term itself, while originally used to describe dance\nnotation, is, today, easily applied to any deliberate act of creating a\nsituation, movement, and action. Presumably, this makes it more readily entered\nupon by those not formally trained in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, if you\naccept that all movement is thought, then it can be argued that choreography is\nthe deliberate objectification of that thought, into a process of creating\nmovements whose ultimate aim is to draw attention back to the thought that\ndetermines the movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of this\nspinning in my head, I arrived to James Lee\u2019s \u201cWill you Please Be Quite\nPlease?\u201d, the first of 11 pieces, all strung together by Marion to form a\n55-minute non-stop performance. With its dependence on verbal rather than\nphysical movement, it was an interesting choice to open the show with. Phrased\nas request-demand-implore-retreat, the piece was marked by an apparent\nrandomness of movement that in fact is structurally designed to lead June and\nGabrielle into direct confrontation with each other. The group then forms a\ncocoon into which the plaintive voice of dissent \u201cI will not be quiet please\u201d\nvoiced by Gabrielle, retreats, thereby immediately relegating her counter stance\nas an act of capitulation rather than defiance. It was an in-your-face\nbeginning that unfortunately, fizzled out into a nothingness almost\nimmediately. Opening gimmick rather than opening piece perhaps best describes\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next piece,\nGabrielle Low\u2019s \u201c24 minutes in Kuala Lumpur, 64 minutes in Jakarta\u201d explored\nthe variances of income and spending power between the two cities. While\nperhaps predictable in its use of the ubiquitous icon of American imperialism,\nthe Big Mac, the piece was conceptually sound, and successfully distilled the\nstatistics of inequality and CPI into a delightful depiction of gluttony. June\nTan\u2019s \u201cCita-Cita Saya\u201d, was of a piece with Gabrielle\u2019s in its look at the\ncreation of collective consumer desire. Both pieces also neatly reconfigured\neveryday movement into the performative through repetition and exaggeration,\nwhich \u2013 and this is important I think \u2013 spoke in a humorous and direct manner\nto the Central Market crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vernon Adrian Emuang\u2019s\n\u201cUnrequited\u201d takes as its departure point the dilemma of the non-bumiputra\nMalaysian. Structured as a slow moving ensemble of layered bodies shadowing a\nleader, the work evoked a strong sense of ritual which develops into a kind of\ncollective miasma. While it perhaps adequately comments on our willingness to\nsubjugate ourselves in the hopes of gaining acceptance, it failed to fully\ndevelop the twin emotions of desire and rejection that is at the heart of this\nrelationship between non-bumiputra citizens and state. I have to say that the\nopening gesture of the daulat made me physically cringe \u2013 talk about a clich\u00e9\nthat can be done without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conundrum of course\nis that as boundaries of genre and form become more and more blurred, the old\nmarkers of \u2018dance\u2019, \u2018physical theatre\u2019, \u2018theatre\u2019 become increasingly\nunreliable. One is generally reluctant to say that something is this or that,\nor is not this or that, for fear of being exposed as hopelessly conventional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I watched the\nperformance though, that word \u2018dance\u2019, like \u2018inscrutable\u2019, kept insinuating\nitself to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the works, or\nparticular movements within pieces, drew a direct line back to the conventions\nof both traditional and modern dance \u2013 the hold and release, the lifts and\nrolls, the cluster and scatter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appeared that rather\nthan utilise their non-choreographic sensibility within the realm of\nchoreography, the participants choose instead to work within the safety net of\ntheir newly acquired knowledge of dance movements. Too few of them broke free\nfrom the accepted idea of choreography and its relationship to existing\nimages\/movements of dance. It seemed like a missed opportunity to use their\noutsider status to energise the act of choreography, and dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDamaged\u201d by Adrian\nKisai for example seemed like a primer on contemporary dance movements \u2013 from\nstupor to frenzy, from contortions to cartwheels, from loose pairings to strict\noppositional structures \u2013 but begged the question: to what purpose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likewise, Hari\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t\nWake Me Up, I\u2019m Sleeping\u201d. While it transitioned beautifully from the preceding\npiece by Kim (\u201cThe More We Get Together\u201d) like an unfolding flower of bodies,\nit then committed the unforgivable sin, in my mind at least, of using silat\nmovements in its lament of the lack of personal courage in the face of great\nevil. Perhaps there was a time when such use was revolutionary, relevant,\nnecessary, etc. Today, it is the dance equivalent of \u201cmuddy bunga\u201d, to quote a\nrecent attempt at musical theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was also disappointed\nthat despite the much-bandied about ‘site specific’ claim, none of the works\nactually engaged with the dynamics of the public space in a meaningful way. In\nfact, almost all the works were confined to the square dance lino set on the\npavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A further complication,\na fundamental one at that, was the fact that the pieces were performed by the\nparticipants of the workshops themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Predictably, Mark, who\nis the most experienced performer of the lot, was the most watchable. The\ndynamics of performance in improvised spaces also seem to fit his demeanour\nparticularly well. He has an angular rigor mortis frenzy (you have to see it to\ncomprehend the oxymoron), which was put to good use in Hari\u2019s, Gabrielle and\nPang\u2019s pieces. June Tan may be a performance virgin, but she has the kind of\nchutzpah that makes her a natural on stage. She turned in a highly sympathetic\nperformance in the opening piece, and again in Gabrielle\u2019s and Pang Khee Teik\u2019s\nworks. The revelation for me however was Myra Mahyuddin. She has a certain\nself-contained power on stage that makes you watch her carefully, desiring both\nthe secret of her calm, as much as a glimpse of the inner turmoil that, surely,\nsurely must lie beneath. Or so her stage presence makes you believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n James Lee was, as I\nmentioned earlier, particularly effective in Myra\u2019s piece, while Gabrielle Low\nalso was noteworthy for her ability to appear detached, which invokes a\nparticular kind of danger \u2013 of the unpredictable perhaps \u2013 when she works it.\nAdrian Kisai conveys a committedness in performance, but I did feel that this\nis perhaps not the best medium for him. He may be body-beautiful, but he\u2019s\ncertainly not body comfortable on this stage. It would be interesting to see\nhim in more character driven work in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which leads me to\nquestion the framing of the workshop. Was this a choreography for\nnon-choreographer cum dance for non-dancers workshop? Because as an audience,\nwe were cued to deal with the intentional distancing between form and skills\npresented by the workshop, but there was literally no discourse about the imposition\nof non-dancers into the mix. One therefore was dealing with the lack of skills\non a performative level, which distracted from any real engagement with the\nchoreographic intent of the work. It\u2019s tempting to speculate the outcome of\nsupplying these same choreographers with formally trained performers. What\nviolence upon the sacred realm of movement would that have served up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pieces which worked\nbest were those which dealt with these limitations. Pang Khee Teik\u2019s Hallelujah<\/em> peopled\nthe dance floor with couples enacting minute dramas of desire and decline in\nthe guise of slow dancing. I felt that it was the first piece to bring a level\nof discomfort to the audience. Myra and Kim\u2019s caressing embrace, a whisper away\nfrom fulfillment juxtaposed beautifully against the struggle for disengagement\nthat seemed to be at the root of Mark and Vernon\u2019s wrestling. Gabrielle Low,\nimmobilised upon Adrian Kisai\u2019s back seemed to speak volumes in the blankness\nof her stare, while the act of reaching out and deflection between James Lee\nand Wyn formed a beautiful ballet of hands, where feet obviously had little\nrhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Teh\u2019s piece took\nthe idea of choreographer to its more abstract sense \u2013 choreography of\nnationhood via the state\u2019s largest organ, the mass media. Two performers, Myra\nand Gabrielle, write the day\u2019s headlines with chalk on the ground. With all the\nfrenzy of moving body parts it\u2019s not immediately obvious that the words form an\never enclosing grid which actually shrinks the movable space. Through a series\nof determining moves, the performers are corralled into a corner, like sheep.\nThere, a formation that replicates the spectacle of the national day parade\ntakes shape. Faster than you can sing \u201cMamula Moon\u201d, the performers whip out\nplastic flags, and begin to wave them. Then they eat them. Talk about being\nforce-fed a cheap, plastic form of nationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The accidental audience\nat Central Market seemed enthralled by the entire performance, and frankly, so\nwas I. Despite my very many problems with the performance, it was an afternoon\nof art with risks, and risk takers are what we desperately need today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, dance or not dance?\nIs that even a question worth asking? Because, stepping away from the\nindividual pieces, is it not possible to view the entire project-workshop and\nperformance as one tightly choreographed event? The choreographer, in the guise\nof the facilitator, organises a series of encounters with 11 individuals, which\nturns them into the building blocks, each unit not merely moving, as would a\ndancer, but first conceptualising, then creating, then enacting each movement \u2013\nwhich she then constructs into a full performance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And does not this act of\nmeta-choreography illustrate perfectly that choreography is manipulation – of\nlimbs, of stances, of desires, of thought, of actions, of citizens, of nations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Should we not be asking ourselves if we have just witnessed Marion D\u2019Cruz\u2019s most recent, most audacious and most accomplished choreography to date?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~ ~ ~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathy Rowland is co-director of Kakiseni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 12.07.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can I use the word \u201cinscrutable\u201d to describe an ethnic Chinese man without being accused of resorting to clich\u00e9? Because inscrutable is really the adjective that springs to mind when I think of James Lee, the chess master, moving bodies like pawns in Myra Mahyuddin’s A Sleepwalker in Transit, on a rainy Sunday afternoon outside Central Market. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7763,7780,7762,7779],"tags":[3060,4251,647,7113,234,247,1385,1420,575,1225,7114,7112,700,920,7117,1346,3621,6214,7115,7116,46,757,239,1239],"language":[7785],"writer":[7963],"class_list":["post-34344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-tarian","category-seni-persembahan","category-teater","category-bengkel","tag-adrian-kisai","tag-central-market","tag-choreography","tag-choreography-for-non-choreographers","tag-dance","tag-five-arts-centre","tag-gabrielle-low","tag-hariati-azizan","tag-james-lee","tag-june-tan","tag-kiew-suet-kim","tag-krishen-jit-experimental-workshop-series-2006","tag-marion-dcruz","tag-mark-teh","tag-musical-theatre","tag-myra-mahyuddin","tag-pang-khee-teik","tag-physical-theatre","tag-public-performance","tag-site-specific","tag-theatre","tag-vernon-adrian-emuang","tag-workshop","tag-wyn-hee","language-inggeris","writer-kathy-rowland-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39110,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34344\/revisions\/39110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34344"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=34344"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=34344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}