An Esplanade Co-Production
Apsaras Arts Dance Company
Featuring musicians from Singapore Chinese Orchestra (Singapore, Indonesia, India)

Singapore’s multicultural landscape and the many other Asian performance practices that extend their trellises here, are all part of the epic performance ARISI: Rice (2021), a co-production by Apsaras Arts and Esplanade. The performance, excerpted here, shaves off fine sheaths of this tiny grain, that is the source of life and of sustenance, inspiration for stories and myths, a grounding material for rituals and an impetus for performance practices across the continent.

Conceptualised by artistic director Aravinth Kumarasamy, ARISI: Rice blends the vocabulary and grammar of bharatanatyam while choreographing with Balinese music genres like kecak and gamelan. Live Indian and Chinese instruments are brought to life by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and dance performers from Singapore, India and Indonesia choreographed by bharatanatyam choreographer Mohanapriyan Thavarajah and Balinese choreographer I Wayan Dibia — a true crossroad of cultures and performances.

The performance draws from these various cultures celebrating the role of the arisi (meaning rice in Tamil), of which three excerpts are showcased as part of Cross-Cultural Frequencies. Here, the significance of rice in post-birth and post-death rituals is evoked through bharatanatyam. The very texture of rice grains as they are pounded at a funeral or fed in morsels to an infant, is visible through hand gestures. Blessings from Balinese deities and the sprinkling of holy water across the paddy fields create a tableau that reveals the close stylistic relationship between the lepong and bharatanatyam dance forms.

On the musical front too, Carnatic music and kecak music traverse and blend to the leaps of an east-Balinese stick fight dance, performed to invoke the rain. The grey clouds are urged on by bharatanatyam dancers as there are bellowing gusts of wind, lightning and thunder. Finally, the sky opens! Like the verdant stalks of rice reaching up to the sun in the paddy fields, the dancers move in graceful clusters.

Creative Team
Concept & Artistic Direction: Aravinth Kumarasamy (Singapore)
Choreography: Mohanapriyan Thavarajah (Singapore) & Prof I Wan Dibia (Indonesia)
Music Composition: Dr Rajkumar Bharathi (India)
Sound Design, Music Arrangement & Producer: Sai Shravanam (India)
Dramaturge: Lim How Ngean (Australia)
Costume Design: Mohanapriyan Thavarajah (Singapore)
Set Design: Wong Chee Wai (Singapore)

Performed by
Mohanapriyan Thavarajah (Singapore)
Periyachi Roshni (Singapore)
Nagalakshmi (Singapore)
Nitya Sriram (Singapore)
Janani A (Singapore)
Seema Hari Kumar (Singapore)
Deva Priya Appan (Singapore)
Priyadarshini Shiv Shankar (Singapore)
Gopika S (Singapore)
Nivedha Harish (India)
Vaishnavi Srinivasan (India)
Apeksha Kamath (India)
Rutuja Mane (India)

Prof I Wayan Dibia (Bali, Indonesia)
Gade Radiana Panjalbail (Bali, Indonesia)
Ida Ayu Triana Titania Manuaba (Bali, Indonesia)
Ni Ketut Santi Sukma Melati (Bali, Indonesia)
Inyoman Agus Hari Sudama Giri (Bali, Indonesia)

Project Team
Production Management: Praveen Selvanayagam (Singapore)
Light Design: Surya Narayana Rao (India)
Tour Manager: Sankari Ealavalahan (Singapore)
Make-Up, Wardrobe and Hairstyling: Nagaletchumi Balasupramaniam and Sankari Elavalahan (Singapore)

Musicians
Indian Flute: Flute Navin (India)
Sarod: Pratik Shrivastava (India)
Percussions: Ganapathi Venkatasubramanian (India)
Nattuvangam: Gaayathriy Satchithanandar
Erhu: Ling Hock Siang (Singapore)
Percussions: Benjamin Boo (Singapore)
Dizi: Lee Jun Cheng (Singapore)
Yangqin: Ma Huan (Singapore)
Guzheng: Xu Hui (Singapore)
Vocals: G Shrikanth (India)
Vocals: Chitra Poornima Sathish (Singapore)
Vocals: D Sathya Prakash (India)
Vocals: Meenakshi Ilayarajah (India)
Vocals:  Rahul Raveendran (India)
Vocals: Savitha Sai (India)
Konnakol: Mahesh Vinayakaram (India)
Nattuvangam: Sheejith Kirshna (India)

Supported by
Temasek Foundation (Singapore)
TVS Motors (India)

An Esplanade Commission
Kuik Swee Boon & The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company  (Singapore)

A masterwork of the choreographer Kuik Swee Boon, Infinitely Closer performed by The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company harks to many themes that were especially stark during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Yet, these themes are as current and universal now nearly five years on. Infinitely Closer is a choreographic exploration of what it means to sense, move and live with unabated freedom. In this process, it queries what freedom may mean in the shifting realities of our modern times. Emerging from and ensconced in Singaporean society, the work pulses to seek authenticity, value, raison d’etre, sense of self and stability.

The HollowBody methodology, developed by Kuik Swee Boon — now a signature exploration of T.H.E. Dance Company — manifests diversely in each unpacking of freedom. In their exploration of practical freedom and freedom of the mind, the dancers move lithely like water, now leaping and then shrivelling — nearly appearing to lose the skeletal limitations of the body.

Kuik’s conceptualised set design and the light design by Adrian Tan together create constantly transforming layers of illusion throughout the performance. Three large moving panes propose new perspectives in each position. To grasp what it means to have unabated freedom, the choreographer creates conditions of supposed unfreedom on stage when one performer is trapped in a chamber made by the three panes. As one discovers, this notion of unfreedom too appears to be only an illusion, as conditions change onwards in the dance piece. Holographic projections, islands of darkness and stark light transitions between warmth and frigidity, create a visual feast of illusions.

Having the opportunity to watch the archival recording of the work, we witness a second layer of the theme’s interpretation as we see the audience members physically present in the venue, back on that evening of the performance in 2023. The audience has the freedom to move around in the space through the performance. Do they use their freedom to move? Do they seem concerned with how to be in a performance space?

Can we give ourselves the permission to not act in accordance?

Learn more about T.H.E Dance Company and how to support its work here.

Concept & Artistic Direction: Kuik Swee Boon
Choreography: Kuik Swee Boon in collaboration with the performers
Dramaturge: Kok Heng Leun
Rehearsal Assistant: Brandon Khoo
Understudy: Marcus Foo
Lighting Design: Adrian Tan
Sound Design & Music Composition: Kent Lee
Projection Content Design: SEESAW (Jay Lei & Jay Lee)
Filming of Projection Content: Pangolin Films & melonrock
Projection System Design: Wee (Ctrl Fre@k) & Gary Chan
Spatial Sound Design: Guo Ningru
Set Conceptualisation Design: Kuik Swee Boon
Costume Design: Choi In Sook
Production Manager: Tennie Su
Technical Manager: Terence Lau
Projection Technical Realisation: Wee (Ctrl Fre@k)
Projection Technical Consultant: Gary Chan
Live Video Elements: Pangolin Films & melonrock
Soundscape System Support: d&b audiotechnik Asia Pacific 
Set Realisation: ARTFACTORY
Set Fabrication: INDC Pte Ltd 
Costume Realisation: Fertileland
Stage Manager: Lee Xinzhi
Assistant Stage Manager: Koh Yi We

Performance

From T.H.E Dance Company
Brandon Khoo
Ng Zu You
Klievert Jon Mendoza
Fiona Thng
Haruka Leilani Chan
Chang En

Guest performer from Australia
Billy Keohavong

A Project by Choy Ka Fai (Singapore/Germany)

With English and Japanese subtitles

With SoftMachine (2015), Berlin-based Singaporean artist Choy Ka Fai embarked on a multimedia exploration of contemporary performance made in different parts of Asia. Instead of the often conceptual abstract qualities associated with the contemporary, this excerpt of the docufilm SoftMachine Redux: Yuya POV Edition is an encounter with something that appears quite universal: a good old sibling tussle among children; an exchange of smacks and fists that is in fact connection, disguised as animated friction.

This edition showcases contact Gonzo — a collective from Osaka (Japan) who practise a movement method of the same name developed by Yuya Tsukahara and Masaru Kakio. It is robust with harsh physical contact but in some moments, flows into the tender elements of contact improvisation. contact Gonzo’s inspiration from football is evident in its improvised approach of playing and inventing in its environment. SoftMachine: Yuya takes the audience back and forth between an Osakan play area shown in a docu-style video to a nearly bare performance stage, inspiring new interactions and dynamics between the performers.

Yet, Tsukahara reminds Choy in this lecture-performance of showing-by-doing, that for contact Gonzo, he needs to unlearn the performer in him. Truly, the busyness of the two, and later three performers on stage appears to be from instinctive responses alive to the experiences of the body — in attack, in pain, in play, in defence, in anticipation, in deference. For the audience, this is captured not just in the movements but in the flashes of photographs that the performers take of one another during the show — eventually projected on the screen.

Within the frame of Cross-Cultural Frequencies, one witnesses the artist Choy Ka Fai’s juxtaposition too — between pain and humour next to one another, collaboration and friction — both without emotion, but full of somatic charge.