4 posts tagged “saf07”
My collection of programme booklets and ticket stubs from this year's Singapore Arts Fest. Thanks to Jade Greenleaf, I was able to watch many more performances than I can actually afford.
I'm not going to write reviews, since there are already so many out there (Flying Inkpot has put some up). But to summarise ~
Would definitely pay to watch again: DollHouse
Huh? moment: Bones in Pages
Very cool: Georgette and Asian Infusions (cos I was watching my colleagues in action, so to speak)
Smug moment: Beijing Ren (cos I didn't fall asleep for a second during this marathon of a play)
What I watched:
Georgette the musical
Based on the life of Georgette Chen (1907-1993) - the most distinguished female artist in 1950s Singapore.
In collaboration with Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay
In conjunction with Singapore Arts Festival 2007
Written by Ng Yi Sheng • Music by Clement Yang
Music arranged by Esther Yang & Chris Nolan • Directed by Lee Yew Moon
Pioneer Artist. Painter. Woman Extraordinaire.
An original musical portraying the one great love of Georgette Chen’s life - the inspiration of some of her best loved works.
(synopses from the Festival website)
Sacred Monsters
Sylvie Guillem in a production by Akram Khan Company
with additional choreography by Lin Hwai-min
(France/UK)
A nickname used in 19th century France for big stars of the theatre, “Sacred Monsters” is now first and foremost a meeting and exchange of two such ‘stars’ of the present day dance world.
Sylvie Guillem – the Paris-born prima ballerina of our times. Celebrated for her stunning six o’clock leg-lifts, Sylvie amazes with immense strength and lyricism in her contemporary work.
Akram Khan – London’s hottest choreographer today. Steeped in classical Indian kathak and western contemporary dance, Akram dazzles with astonishing speed, precision and power.
Exploring the boundaries between two great classical dance forms of ballet and kathak with a live music ensemble featuring virtuoso cellist Philip Sheppard, Sylvie and Akram search and enter a tender dialogue in a union of rare honesty. When opposites do attract, sparks fly!
Lin Hwai-Min, eminent artistic director of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Theatre, adds a sublime touch as guest choreographer of Sylvie’s exquisite solo.
Bones In Pages
Saburo Teshigawara and KARAS
(Japan)
Lean cut, Teshigawara strikes a magnetic presence on stage. Moving like no other, his body dissolves into elemental qualities, combusting with molten mercury, steel-like grit, aerial grace, and earthliness all at once.
In Bones In Pages, Saburo and his dancers perform in an installation work Dance of Air created by Teshigawara himself. A wall lined with hundreds of books, pages flying in the wind, heaps of shoes, and panels of glass and acrylic traces the reflections of their bodies. Displaying his keenly honed sculptural sensibilities and powerful sense of composition, they move fluidly and effortlessly with complete freedom, uniting body and space.
Teshigawara is fascinating to watch. Moving with his trademark incisiveness, possessed by knowledge of the body that cannot be read like an encyclopedia, he can only be felt as dance – luminous, pure and profound.
An Arabian Passion
Ensemble Sarband & Modern String Quartet
(Germany/ Lebanon/ Iraq)
Sarband – the old Persian word for ‘connection’ – is an ensemble of artistic exception and mission. Led by Music Director Dr Vladimir Ivanoff, it bridges diverse musical cultures of the occident and the orient, creating a contemplative space for peace and respect in a world marked by difference.
In An Arabian Passion, an Arab-European cast of musicians and masters of European jazz transforms sound icons of classical music into a present-day statement on humanity, creating a respect.
Adapted from Bach’s Passions, the spirit of baroque is intertwined and reinterpreted with the living musical traditions of the Middle East together with the improvisations of jazz. One of the most famous singers of the Arab world, Fadia el-Hage, reprises Bach’s arias as healing songs bridging the conflicts and differences between the Arab world and the West, between different faiths, between believers and non-believers, between modernists and traditionalists.
An Arabian Passion evokes a musical plea for peace, voiced with photographic art images depicting the plight of ordinary people of Iraq. Taken by ‘unembedded’ photographers Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner, they serve as a pressing reminder of the human ordeals of our contemporary times.
Wong Kar Wai Dreams
The Finger Players
(Singapore)
A woman dreams of the feted art-house film director, Wong Kar Wai, dreaming of her. She is his leading lady and Singapore is the exotic backdrop of his dream as he slips into nocturnal oblivion.
The wall between fiction and reality crumbles as the characters in her dreams come alive on the set, each caught in a vortex of unrequited love, damning secrets, buried memories and missed chances; each laden with longing hearts as they dance the waltz of the wounded soul.
The award-winning theatre company, The Finger Players, presents a visceral production that plays on the themes of Wong Kar Wai’s films.
In a signature blend of human actors, puppetry and lush visuals, director Chong Tze Chien (Young Artist Award 2006) creates a theatre of imagination that is heartfelt and hauntingly true.
Asian Infusions
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Conductor: Tsung Yeh
Under the artistic leadership of Maestro Tsung Yeh, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra is irrepressible in its spirit of innovation and respect for tradition.
In Asian Infusions, the Orchestra prepares a refreshing and aromatic aural experience as Asian instruments like the Japanese shakuhachi, Indian tabla and the Vietnamese dan bau blends with Chinese instruments in new commissions by Japanese, Vietnamese, and Singapore composers.
These music premieres take centrestage alongside award-winning compositions from the Orchestra’s international composition competition held last year.
Come immerse yourself in a new Asian sound world.
Jeremy Monteiro
with jazz luminaries Jimmy Cobb, Jay Anderson, Bob Sheppard and Roberta Gambarini
(Singapore / USA / Italy)
Jeremy Monteiro, Singapore’s “King of Swing” celebrates the 30th anniversary of his professional jazz career with a stellar line-up of jazz luminaries.
Joining him are Jimmy Cobb, legendary jazz drummer and elder statesman of one of the seminal Miles Davis bands; award-winning double bass player Jay Anderson; Bob Sheppard, one of the most prolific saxophonists today; and Roberta Gambarini, one of the brightest new stars in jazz vocals today dubbed as “the true successor” of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae.
With well-loved jazz standards, original compositions by Jeremy Monteiro, Bob Sheppard and Jay Anderson, and the distinct chic and vocal prowess of Roberta Gambarini, the concert promises a warm and sparkling evening of jazz not to be missed!
Taraf De Haïdouks
(Romania)
Infectious and intense, this is gypsy music at its unstoppable best!
Speedy Balkan melodies plucked on wild fiddles, swirling cymbaloms, and swaying accordions create a joyous riot that has stolen the hearts of audiences around the globe.
Taraf De Haïdouks – or the “band of honourable brigands” – trump out breakneck tunes, vocal trills, and some of the fiercest pizzicato notes ever played. Representing three generations of musicians, it is the most famous Romanian gypsy orchestra of all time and one of the best of its kind in the world.
Made up of three generations from a small village near Bucharest, a dozen or so extraordinary and colourful characters are ready to energise Singapore audiences with their rhythmically complex songs, and enthuse with their grace, easy camaraderie and sense of mischief.
Mabou Mines DollHouse
Mabou Mines
(USA)
At the forefront of the American avant-garde theatre since the 1970’s, Mabou Mines has stayed solidly fresh and formidable. In his magnificent staging of DollHouse, acclaimed director Lee Breuer radically deconstructs Henrik Ibsen’s bourgeois tragedy into high comedy with a deep political bite.
Taken literally out of proportions, the psychological drama of Nora the faithful wife and her misogynistic husband Torvald is set in a playhouse-sized dollhouse complete with period mini-furniture and a toy store’s worth of dolls. Inhabiting it are very short men no more than four feet in height and statuesque women, some a full six-feet, towering over them.
The politics of gender and power are played out within this domestic household. Incorporating romantic parodies of dance, opera, puppetry, lavish declarations and gestures of melodrama, the physical intensity, emotional violence and pained recognition juxtaposed against humour and pathos makes this a compelling theatre masterpiece.
Mabou Mines DollHouse won OBIE awards for director Lee Breuer and actress Maude Mitchell.
北京人 l Beijing Ren
Beijing People's Art Theatre
(China)
Cao Yu, the father of modern Chinese theatre, revolutionised the art of playwriting through his sharp observations of human behaviour in a fast-changing society.
While Cao’s Thunderstorm and Savage Land are among his most frequently staged plays, it is his fifth play Beijing Ren, completed in 1940, which he proudly proclaimed as his most personal and powerful work.
Set in 1937, the Zheng family is torn apart by selfishness, divided loyalties, unrequited and unfulfilling love, and yet unable to escape its own entrapment. A sold-out hit in Beijing last year, the production boasts a vast paper-house set that bespeaks the fragility and fractured emotions of the people who live in it.
Director Li Liu Yi portrays a powerful epic about an old feudal family’s crippling strife and decline at a time of great social change in China.
I'm ashamed to say that I did not watch the 3-hour long Lithuanian production of Romeo and Juliet, despite the offer of a free ticket. I was curious, just not curious enough to stay out till 11 plus on a school night.
Anyway, for everyone else who didn't watch it either, the story was set in a pizzeria. Which leads me to this side-splitting article from The Onion.
Cute right?
The only problem is that the text label on the back of my tee does not say "twoplusoneequalsthreepluszero", as per the website and the graphic label. It says "twoplusoneequalthreepluszero". It's ungrammatical! Wahlau, how to walk around like that...
I also really like the grey-blue Mabou Mines Dollhouse tee. Unfortunately, I made up my mind way too late to see this - the tickets are all sold out!
I am just so thrilled by the day I had that I have to post this now, despite being dead tired. I had attended the opening of the Singapore Arts Fest last night - very good except I was too short to see what wasn't going on in the air, and the MC was honestly really crap. I got myself a really cute commemorative t-shirt, though.
Of course, I had already celebrated my birthday last Saturday with Jade Greenleaf at Sun With Moon, but the actual day itself was kind of a non-event. I had birthday wishes from as far away as the UK and Australia, and my folks gave me ang baos, but it was still a rather sian way of passing my 30th birthday.
Today was our monthly get-together, and the biggest yet since I started this thing. Aiingel, Cat Flying, enq and JusChev all came, and we were also joined by Dimples from CozyCot. We had a really delicious dimsum meal at Lei Garden (Somerset), where the service - and perhaps the food - was way better than at Crystal Jade Dining IN, and after the meal, the girls surprised me with a cake! It was my favourite cake from Spinelli, Chocolate Chocolate Rumba. I was really touched! Thank you, girls! Especially to enq for ordering and collecting the cake.
(Thanks to enq for the Lei Garden pictures :-) )
I got a lot of stuff today too! Aiingel got me the Russian Doll I requested for from Moscow, as well as something more for my birthday (which she really didn't have to - thank you!) JusChev brought me my KATE cp from Hong Kong. Cat Flying my UD cp from NYC, together with lots of wonderful extras. Thank you so much, everyone, for making this a day to remember :-)
Aiingel and I then shopped till really late. I was looking for a nice pair of dressy thong sandals and also a nice bag to bring to yoga. During lunch, JusChev and enq had suggested the "dumpling" bag from agnès b., so we checked it out at Taka. Service at the shop was kinda lousy though, so we moved off. I was interested in a pair of Nine West shoes, but didn't get them because I wasn't sure of the colour. Later on we went to the agnès b. concession at Isetan Orchard, and had really excellent service there. They had more colours for the size I was interested in too (second largest). Aiingel wanted one too, and we spent too much time deliberating on the colour we wanted. In the end she picked the green (lined in dark grey), and I got the taupe (lined in maroon). This bag is stylish, yet practical. You could take it from work to gym, and it would also be perfect for travel. It's made of sturdy, lightweight nylon, and is very roomy, yet compact. After discounts, it was less than S$160, with is really quite decent for a branded, if not quite "designer", bag. Better value than LeSportSac, which I was also considering.
Aiingel's hubby, D, picked us up and we drove to Serangoon Gardens. It was already 11pm by then and we were pretty much starving. We wandered into Friends At Chomp Chomp. These people are really serious about good food! I indulged in a porterhouse steak, while Aiingel and D had a pizza and pasta respectively. I mentioned that it's my birthday (more or less lah), and the manager brought me a fresh oyster on the house. Mmm! We ate till they were pretty much closed for the night. I think we all agreed that we'd go there again.
[Steak pic HERE ;-)]
Altogether a really excellent day - I think I finally gave my 20s the farewell it deserves :p
