SoftMachine: The Return

Choy Ka Fai is a Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body.

In 2019, Ka Fai started working on the CosmicWander series exploring shamanic dance culture in Asia. CosmicWander produced a collection of performances, exhibitions and VR works. It premiered in 2021 with a solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, followed by a VR experience Blue Sky Academy at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf. In Berlin, the performances of Postcolonial Spirits premiered at Tanz Im August Festival in 2021 and Yishun Is Burning was presented at Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2022.

Ka Fai’s projects have been presented in major institutions worldwide, including Sadler’s Wells (London), ImPulsTanz Festival (Vienna) and Kyoto Experiment (Japan). He was the resident artist at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf (2017 – 2019) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2014 – 2015). Ka Fai graduated with a M.A. in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom.

Japanese performer, director, and choreographer Yuya Tsukahara is a co-founder, together with dancer Masaru Kakio, of the improvisational performance collective contact Gonzo. Formed in 2006 in Osaka, contact Gonzo developed an improvisational style of physical practice in which fluid movements are accompanied by blows and slaps that resemble physical altercations, thereby blurring the boundaries between violence and trust. The collective, which currently comprises five members, performs in public space, nature, galleries, museums, theaters, dance festivals, and also stages urban interventions in cities around the world.

Besides performances, contact Gonzo creates and exhibits installations made with video, photography, and zines. Tsukahara additionally works as a solo artist and directs performance programs for festivals. He was the scenographer and choreographer for the theater piece Prathana, which was directed by Toshiki Okada and based on a novel by Uthis Haemamool. Since 2020, he is a co-director of KYOTO EXPERIMENT, an international theater arts festival. Tsukahara also teaches at art schools in Kyoto.

Xiao Ke is a performance artist who has been pioneering the pathway for performance art as physical art. She also creates and is a leading figure in contemporary social theatre about the reality of today’s China, while also branching out with other artistic forms that are not limited within the theatre. She won the ZKB Award in Zürcher Theater Spektakel in 2006.

Zhou Zi Han is a performance and audiovisual artist. He keeps moving forward by engaging in comprehensive visual art and live music for theatre performance. His works includes photography, video, contemporary art and sound.

The collaborative works between Xiao Ke and Zi Han involve photography, video, live art and installation that focus on the personal body, exploring the extremities of expression under the public context in China. By restoring the artists’ ideas back into life, their collaboration is to fulfill the life process of the idea itself, that what comes from life vanishes into life. Their works have been invited and shown in different art, dance festivals and theatres in Europe and Asia. They have toured nearly 20 countries in different cities and built up an extensive network to introduce China’s independent theatre art.

Surjit Nongmeikapam is an Imphal-based choreographer and dancer. He is the founder and artistic director of Nachom Arts Foundation. Born in Manipur, he has a B.A. in Choreography and has worked with the Natya Stem Dance Kampni and Natya Maya, Bengaluru, as a contemporary and traditional dancer. He is trained in Kathak, Kalaripayattu, Manipuri dance, contemporary dance and Thang-Ta, a form of martial arts. His notable works include OneVoice, a solo piece shown at Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zurich in 2013. Surjit is also a co-founder of Arts and Imphal, an upcoming international contemporary arts festival in Imphal, Manipur. Surjit was also a dance therapist at H2H, Human to Humane, Imphal, from 2009 – 2013. He has given awareness and dance workshops to several trauma victims in Manipur.

Surjit has toured and participated in major dance festivals in Switzerland, France, Singapore, Belgium, Japan, USA, Germany, Spain, Portugal, UK and more. He is one of the few dancers and choreographers in Manipur to engage with contemporary dance forms and seek to promote its development beyond the traditional conservative Manipuri culture. He is also an award-winning choreographer: Nerves won the PECDA in 2014 and Folktale in 2016.

Rianto is a master of lengger lanang, a dance that expresses gender, body, and construction through a man performing as a woman. He was born in 1981 in Kaliori village in Banyumas Indonesia, and received training in classical Javanese dance and central Javanese folk dance from a young age. Since 2003, Rianto has been living between Indonesia and Tokyo, Japan, where he founded Dewandaru Dance Company to introduce Javanese dance art to Japan. He has collaborated with a number of international choreographers, performance makers and companies.

In early 2017, Rianto joined Akram Khan’s company to take on Akram’s role in the feminist reworking of the Mahabharata, Until The Lions, with which he began touring in 2017. Rianto’s highly acclaimed solo work SoftMachine: Rianto, directed by Choy Ka Fai, continues to be performed throughout Europe and Asia Pacific. Since 2020, Rianto has worked to preserve the dance by establishing Rumah Lengger, a center in Banyumas that trains young dancers in the style; and collaborating with the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) to document the dance using motion capture technology.