Choreographer

SEA Dance Collective

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SEA Dance Collective

Trần Minh Hải (b.1993) is a contemporary dance artist and choreographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ny&Khun: Sreynoch Khun (b.1996) and Ny Lai (b.1997) are a contemporary duo based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Muhamad Erdifadilah (b.1997) is a musician from Bangka Island, Indonesia.
Pebri Irawan (b.1997) a dancer-choreographer of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Briefly accompanied by Chan Kar Kah, artist and educator of Marrow Collective and Suiyi Dance Company, Malaysia.

We are Southeast Asian artists who met at Southeast Asian Choreolab 2024 in George Town, Penang. During the program, we formed a strong connection not just through training, but through deep conversations about our work, ideas, and what matters to us. We shared how we create, what inspires us, and our thoughts about art, culture, and the world. Even though we come from 3 different countries, we found many similarities in our culture, how we think and work. This connection is still new, yet we want to keep exploring it. We hope to create something special together. We believe in strong visuals and the idea of “less is more.”

On Sunday 24 July, together with invited members of local dance community, we will perform a short outdoor ritual in the garden at Rimbun Dahan. What you’re about to witness is a living painting. Over the past two months, we’ve been living, listening, moving, and creating at Rimbun Dahan. In the stillness surrounded by nature and time, we found something we now want to share with you, not to impress but to express. This is a spiritual offering and meditation in motion. We’re not here to show off yet we’re here to show up. With every step, every pause, every breath, we’re painting. Painting with the colors of silence, of calm, of curiosity. This is a time for simply being.

Hwa Wei-An

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , , , ,
Photo by Nicholas Chung @nicchunglow

Photo by Nicholas Chung @nicchunglowWei-An has spent his whole life falling down; it’s a by-product of perpetually thinking he can do more than he actually can, whether that meant trying to spin on his head or backflip before he was ready, or learn how to snowboard on his own. And though he may not be the best at those activities, he’s become quite good at falling. He has, in fact, built his contemporary practice around his love-hate relationship with gravity, and the connections this relationship has with the psychological state of flow.

Out of this practice, Wei-An created The Art of Falling during his first residency at Rimbun Dahan in April 2018. This work has since been performed in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, and South Korea. This period also saw Wei-An begin working on translating the movement language of action sports – freeride mountain biking in particular – into a dance form, during a residency at Dance Nucleus in Singapore, with mentorship by Arco Renz (Belgium).

Currently, Wei-An is building on these two lines of inquiry, to develop a full-length solo that continues to delve into falling, freeriding, and the flow state. (Working title: A Reason for Falling)

He will be working on this solo at Rimbun Dahan throughout the month of July 2020.

Since mid-2017, when Wei-An started working as an independent artist, work has taken him to places such as South Korea, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and most recently, Luxembourg.

On top of his choreographic and performance work, Wei-An organises an annual event called Paradigm Shift in Singapore. First held in 2017, the event brings together street and contemporary dancers in an experimental jam and competition, aimed at discovering creative opportunities that arise when these dance forms interact.

Note: A Reason for Falling is being co-produced by Dance Nucleus (Singapore).

You can follow Wei-An on his Instagram and found out more on his website.

Annalouise Paul

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Annalouise Paul

Annalouise Paul is a contemporary-flamenco choreographer and performer from Australia whose works explore identity and transformation through the intersection of contemporary and traditional forms.

Annalouise has been working in the field of intercultural dance in Australia and internationally for over thirty years. More recently she has developed choreographic tools to push dance hybridity. There is no established ‘method’ for creating cross-cultural movement or for practitioners to model from, so there has been slow but constant emergence of process and vocabulary, evolving out of a pool of processes for various works. ‘Hidden Rhythms’ is one process that employs traditional rhythms for shifting the dynamic of dance movement. ‘Dance DNA’ is the most recent method Annalouise has been investigating largely through workshops internationally and in Australia. She has held cross cultural workshops in Singapore, France, India, Melbourne and Sydney supported by World Dance Alliance, Create NSW and Critical Path.

Developing cross-cultural and hybrid processes with local dance artists at Rimbun Dahan, Annalouise will research and create material for new interdisciplinary works, Mother Tongue and Self Portrait exploring the existence of multiple cultural affinities, histories and languages in the single body.

Annalouise is the recipient of the Australian Arts in Asia Award in Dance. Creative Exchange at Rimbun Dahan is supported by Asialink Arts and the NSW Government through Create NSW.

You can view more of her works at her website.

 

SEA Choreolab 2015

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SEA Choreolab 2015
14690552-STANDARD

From 30 May to 7 June 2015, Rimbun Dahan hosted the Southeast Asian Choreolab 2015, a meeting of 15 emerging contemporary dance choreographers from Southeast Asia.

This was the second edition of the Southeast Asian Choreolab, which brings together emerging contemporary dance choreographers from Southeast asia. The participants in 2015 are from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. They worked under facilitator Arco Renz, a German choreographer based in Brussels.

Each of the participants had the opportunity to run their own group session during the Choreolab, sharing their particular movement style or choreographic method. Arco led the group in integrating this material into choreographic and analytical exercises. ‘Zeitguest’ speakers about topics not related to dance also addressed the group, providing impetus information about ‘real world’ topics: regional security, economics and marine biogeography.

The group went on a field trip to Kuala Selangor, a tour of Klang Valley arts institutions Temple of Fine Arts, ASWARA, DPAC and klpac, and watched performances by Dua Space, Pierre Rigal Compagnie and Wild Rice.

On the final day of the Choreolab, the participants of the Southeast Asian Choreolab 2015 shared snippets of their studio exercises during the event with a small audience.

The Southeast Asian Choreolab 2015 is supported by Goethe-Institut Malaysia, and hosted by Rimbun Dahan. It is a joint project between MyDance Alliance and World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific.

See more images from the 2015 SEA Choreolab here.

About the Participants

The participants of the 2015 SEA Choreolab were:

  • “Ong” Nitipat Pholchai (Thailand)
  • Sonoko Prow (Thailand)
  • Faillul Adam (Malaysia)
  • Tan Bee Hung (Malaysia)
  • Japhet Mari M. Cabling (Philippines)
  • Lygie Carillo (Philippines)
  • Al Bernard Garcia (Philippines)
  • Siko Setyananto (Indonesia)
  • Darlane Litaay (Indonesia)
  • Fadilla Oziana (Indonesia)
  • Chy Ratana (Cambodia)
  • “Kaka” Ounla Phaoudom (Laos)
  • “Buddha” Thanh Nguyen Duy (Vietnam)
  • Eng Kai Er (Singapore)
  • Foo Yun Ying (Singapore)

About the Facilitator

aRco_Chalon_DSC_4991_Crop_0-bg-300x317Arco Renz productions with Kobalt Works reveal an intense physicality and explore the emotional force of abstraction.

In his creations, he consistently broadens the principles of Abstract Dramaturgy to light, sound and multimedia interfaces; and his choreographies go beyond pure, formal dance, displaying “a graceful expressionism that can be situated somewhere between the German expressionist films of the 1920s and traditional Eastern dance and theatre forms.”

During 2014 and 2015, Kobalt Works|Arco Renz is engaged in collaborative performance projects of very different nature in Indonesia (KRIS IS), Vietnam (Hanoi Stardust), the Philippines (COKE), and Singapore (ALPHA).

Among over 20 evening length choreographies, other major Kobalt Works’ productions include .states. (2001), Mirth (2002), heroïne (2004), Bullitt (2006), i!2 (2008), PA (2009), 1001 (2010), CRACK (2011), solid.states (2012), or Discografie (2013).

In addition, Arco Renz has regularly created commissioned works for the Brussels Opera House, the Festival d’Art Lyrique d’Aix en Provence, the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norvegian National Company of Contemporary Dance, among others. In the field of opera he has extensively worked with Robert Wilson, Luc Bondy and on several occasions with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.

A central focus within Arco’s specific choreographic idiom is the comparative study of various Asian and European performance traditions. He has developed Monsoon, a series of transcultural and multidisciplinary research and
exchange programs with editions in Asia, Europe and coming up in 2015 in Australia. Arco Renz studied dance, theatre, and literature in Berlin and Paris and was one of the first generation of graduates of P.A.R.T.S., the dance school founded by Anne Teresa De Keermaekers in Brussels.

Lina Limosani

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Lina Limosani

lina

Australian dancer and choreographer Lina Limosani undertook an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2008, during which time she developed and presented the full-length contemporary dance work A Delicate Situation. Lina returned in 2012 for a short redevelopment of the work, with Australian dancer Carol Wellman-Kelly.

About the Artist

Lina Limosani graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999 and became a member of the Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) from 2000-2005. In 2003 she was awarded the Emerging Artist award by the Adelaide Critics Circle for her works in ADT’s in-house choreographic seasons of Ignition. In 2004 Lina was nominated for a Green Room Award for her performance in The Age of Unbeauty at the Melbourne Festival. She also featured in Anton’s dance film When You’re Alone, which was a finalist in the 2004 Reel Dance International Dance on Screen Awards.

After leaving ADT Lina worked with artists including Narelle Benjamin, Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek. She has since maintained a performance career both in Australia and New Zealand, and gone on to create her own works independently. Lina’s works are known for their fast, aggressive movement style, as well as their humour, and use of speech and theatre.

Below: Suhaili Micheline rehearsing for the redevelopment of ‘A Delicate Situation’ in the studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Residency in 2012

Australian choreographer Lina Limosani has returned to Rimbun Dahan on a short redevelopment of the work A Delicate Situation, which she created at Rimbun Dahan in 2008.

Accompanied by Australian dancer Carol Wellman-Kelly, and reconnecting with Malaysian dance Suhaili Micheline Ahmad Kamil who was involved in the original work, Lina reformed A Delicate Situation to confront different cultural approaches to death, dying and the afterlife.

The original work investigated Malaysian superstition through the story of the pontianak, a female vampire ghost believed to have died at childbirth. The redeveloped version is also set in Malaysia, but is the story of a Western woman’s struggle to come to terms with death surrounded by a culture saturated in legend, myth and superstition.

“What I found compelling [with the pontianak] is the seemingly universal necessity for humans to personify death,” says Lina. “This tendency became central to A Delicate Situation and it was through the character of Death that I invite the viewer to be deeply drawn into the work. Death, its personification in the lore surrounding it, and the fear that accompanies it remain fundamental in A Delicate Situation.”

The finished work will premier in the inSPACE program at the Adelaide Festival Centre in August 2012. Lina Limosani and Carol Wellman-Kelly’s residencies at Rimbun Dahan in May 2012 are supported by Arts SA.

govt-sa-arts-sa

Below: Lina Limosani, Carol Wellman-Kelly and Suhaili Micheline learning the classical Malay dance tari inai from Malaysian dancer Hasmizan Abdul Hamid from ASWARA.

Residency in 2008

Lina was resident at Rimbun Dahan from September to December 2008, with the support of a performing arts grant from Asialink. During her stay, she created a new contemporary dance work for performance in December 2008. She collaborated with physical theatre artist Al Seed and costume designer Eve Lambert who were resident at Rimbun Dahan for short periods.

Lina Limosani worked with four accomplished local dancers — Elaine Pedley, Suhaili Ahmad Kamil, Low Shee Hoe and Rathimalar Govindarajoo — to create A Delicate Situation, a full-length performance with a strong visual and emotional impact, which was performed at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre in December 2008.

Paloma Calle & Joavien Ng

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Paloma Calle & Joavien Ng

ALICE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Alice comes from Texas, but lives in Portugal. Sometimes her English is perfect, and sometimes it isn’t. She won a million dollars in a lottery and every day she paints her fingernails red. She might be someone you know, or perhaps you have never heard of her. So does she really exist?

Singaporean choreographer Joavien Ng and Spanish choreographer Paloma Calle are currently undertaking a one-month residency at Rimbun Dahan supported by the Asia-Europe Foundation. During their residency, Joavien and Paloma are collaborating to create a new performance work entitled ‘The Diary of Alice’, intertwining the concepts of fiction and identity.

A 3-hour performance laboratory exploring creative processes associated with the body, objects, space, image and sound will take place on Sunday 14 March, from 12pm to 3pm, at The Annexe Gallery, Central Market Annexe. Artists in all genres are invited to participate, while Paloma and Joavien facilitate a development process involving their new work, ‘The Diary of Alice’.

Each participant should bring a digital camera (a mobile phone with camera is suitable), and an object with special meaning to the participant, either positive or negative. Participants are requested to wear loose comfortable clothes, as some movement will be involved.

A lecture presentation of the artists’ previous works will take place at The Annexe Central Market on Monday 15 March, from 8pm to 10pm, followed by a discussion and Q&A session.

About the Artists

Photo of Joavien Ng by Matthew G. Johnson.
Photo of Joavien Ng by Matthew G. Johnson.

Joavien Ng began her choreographing and performing career in 1997, after graduating from La Salle School of Performing Arts in Singapore. Her works have since been presented by various Singapore and international arts organisations such as Esplanade Theatre (Singapore), Singapore Arts Festival, Kampnagel (Hamburg), Contemporary Dance of Fort Worth (USA), Little Asia Dance Exchange Network (Asia), Alkantara (Portugal), and Singapore Art Museum.

Joavien’s most recent work, Body Swap, in which she collaborated with Germany-based American choreographer Dani Brown, was presented at Kampnagel and Esplanade Theatre in 2009. Other works include LAB at the Esplanade Theatre in 2008 and Body Inquireat Singapore Arts Festival 2008.

 

Paloma_CallePaloma Calle was born in Madrid in 1975. After training and working for more than 10 years as a performer in experimental dance and theatre companies in Spain, Germany and Italy, she began to develop her own projects in performance art, staged performances and video in 2004. Her work is usually based on autobiographical material that she explores and reconstructs from an ironic and artifactual perspective. There is a constant questioning and experimenting with the conventional use of space, resulting in works in different formats conceived for diverse spaces ranging from a theatre to a walk with the audience through the periphery of a city, or a performance in a private house. Paloma also regularly questions the role of the audience in her work, encouraging the audience to enter a state of alertness and activity.

Paloma’s work, presented in a number of centres and festivals in Europe and in Spain, include des-trozos, lovely epi-ladies, parlez moi d’amour, ZOO, simple present, SECRET, territorio: sad y k, DE MANO, 1, 2, 3, 4 partes, EVEREST/príncipes, 100 cosas que hacer la noche en blanco mejor que ver la noche en blanco, concierto y subasta, and hello myself.

 

This residency is supported by the Asia-Europe Foundation as a follow-up to ASEF’s Point to Pointe dance forum in Portugal last year.

Angela Goh

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Angela Goh

Angela

The current choreographer-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Australian dancer-choreographer Angela Goh graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Arts (Dance) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2007. Since then, she has performed in Lisa Wilson’s Elbow Room and in Soft Landing directed by Solon Ulbricht. As a founding member of the independent dance collective little moving poets, Angela has choreographed and performed in three shows at The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Art in Brisbane. She also created Like No Place for the Judith Wright Centre last year.

Angela previously performed in Kuala Lumpur with QUT at Tari! 07, and is excited to return to explore her Malaysian heritage through new choreography. She presented a site-specific solo performance entitled Octagon in the Round for ‘Dancing in Place‘ at Rimbun Dahan from 23-24 May.

After two months of physical and conceptual experimentation and investigation as resident choreographer at Rimbun Dahan, Angela presented the new works she created at Rimbun Dahan — see I’m seen it seems and filled and spilt — at a work-in-progress performance at KLPac on 11 July.

The Choreographer’s Residency at Rimbun Dahan provides accommodation, studio space and limited funding and production support for contemporary dance choreographers from Southeast Asia and Australia to live and work in Malaysia. For more about the residency, click here.

Workshop

Angela will conduct a contemporary dance workshop in the main dance studio at ASWARA on Friday 17 July from 10am to 12.30pm. During the workshop she will teach a class and excerpts of her new group work, see I’m seen it seems.For more information about the time and location of the workshop, contact Yunus 012 332 1657.

Performance

Angela will perform the solo work she created at Rimbun Dahan, filled and spilt, in a group show at ASWARA:

Lepas….tetap menari
17-19 July 2009
8.30PM
Experimental Theatre, ASWARA
Entrance free

The show will also feature work by Liu Yong Sean, Kim Jungyeon, James Kan, Wendy Rogers and Jennifer Twilley (guest lecturers at ASWARA from UC Riverside), Shafirul Azmi, Naimsyahrazad, Melinda Kwong and Fairul Zahid.

For more information, please contact Bilqis Hijjas at 017 310 3769 or bilqis@rimbundahan.org

A Delicate Situation

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A Delicate Situation

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The contemporary dance work A Delicate Situation was created by Australian choreographer Lina Limosani. It was first developed during Lina’s Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2008, and was aso redeveloped with a short residency funded by Arts SA in 2012.  Lina initially worked with four Malaysian dancers to create the version of A Delicate Situation which was performed at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre, 12-14 December 2008.

A Delicate Situation (2008) was nominated for 3 awards at the 7th Annual BOH Cameronian Arts Awards:

  • Best Featured Performer — Elaine Pedley
  • Best Choreographer in a Feature-Length Work — Lina Limosani
  • Best Costume Design for Dance — Eve Lambert

Performance Notes

In the darkness, things are waiting. Their past is sorrow, their
future is pain, and their hunger cannot be satisfied.

In an empty house, a cold room, they cling tenaciously to the walls.

Are her fears normal, or is her imagination running away with her? Is
he a prisoner or merely insane?

Choreographed by Lina Limosani (and dancers)

Performed by Malaysian dancers Suhaili Micheline, Rathimalar Govindarajoo, Elaine Pedley and Low Shee Hoe
Sound design by Hardesh Singh
Costume design by Eve Lambert
Photography and graphic design by David Loke

12-13 December 2008 (8.30pm)
14 December 2008 (3pm)
Pentas 2, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre,
Jalan Strachan, off Jalan Ipoh,
Sentul 51100 Kuala Lumpur.

Supported by MyDance Alliance, KLPac, Asialink, Arts South Australia and Scottish Arts.

Promotional Images

Photos by David Loke

In Rehearsal

Photos by Bilqis Hijjas.

Media

Check out the photos of ‘A Delicate Situation’ in performance, taken by Philip Craig.

Mcebisi Bhayi

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Mcebisi Bhayi

South African dancer-choreographer Mcebisi Bhayi first came to Rimbun Dahan on a residency with Singaporean choreographer Joey Chua. He returned to Malaysia for a short residency in September 2008, during which time he taught a workshop in Afro-contemporary dance to members of the local dance community.

Bio

McebisiBhayi was one of the three finalists of the Shell Road to Fame Talent Search in Johannesburg in 1995. In 1999 he participated in the Community Dance Teachers Training Programme at Moving Into Dance. Bhayi was a nominee for Most Promising Male Dancer in Contemporary Style at the FNB Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg in 2001. In 2002, Bhayi won the Peak of the Stepping Stones Award. He attended the FNB Dance Umbrella Young Choreographers’ Residency in 2007 and 2008. His works ‘Free Us Now’ and ‘Muntu’ were featured in FNB Dance Umbrella in 2007. He recently attended the Young Choreographers’ Residency in Senegal in March-June 2008. He performed in Gregory Maqoma’s ‘Skeleton Dry’ at FNB Dance Umbrella in 2008.

Workshop

20 excited dancers filled the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan, to take part in Mcebisi’s Afro-contemporary dance workshop. It was an exhausting high-energy romp of furiously contracting rib-cages, cat-like leaps, and endless sequences. Mcebisi’s constant cheery exhortations — “Keep on pouncing!” — and fantastic accompaniment on the drums by Rimbun Dahan resident artist Justin Lim made it an experience to remember. Afro-Contemporary dance combines the spirit and technique of African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian and Contemporary dance styles. It is a grounded, rhythmic dance form with movements originating from the pelvis and core.

Photos below by Foo Chiwei.

Donna Miranda

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Resident Choreographer March-June 2007

Artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan from March to June 2007, Donna created new performance piece bringing together local Malaysian dancers, video and sound artists to explore the idea of waiting, passing time, momentum and interruption in Extended Periods of Waiting, which was performed on June 8 2007 at The Annexe Central Market. The work featured live sound by SiCKL, video projection by Saiful Razman and Au Sow Yee, lighting by Roman Cruz and performance by Donna Miranda, Bilqis Hijjas, Yuka Tanaka, Louise Yow Sing-Hwa, Low Shee Hoe, Shaifuddin Mamat and Chan Seau Huvi.

 

The trio section from Extended Periods of Waiting was performed again as part of the Tari! 07 festival at ASWARA in July 2007.

During her stay, Donna also created I Will Think About It, a contribution to the 2007 Art for Nature exhibition in collaboration with visual artist Saiful Razman, and featuring Poodien. She also conducted a workshop in contemporary dance, creative process and free movement improvisation at the Annexe Central Market in June 2007.

Donna and Poodien creating I Will Think About It.
Donna and Poodien creating I Will Think About It.

Donna received dance training as national government scholar of the Philippine High School for the Arts, pursuing professional practice and further training with Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theater, Myra Beltran’s Dance Forum and specialized training in contemporary dance at the 2005 DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Programme, in Vienna, Austria. She has since been actively involved in multimedia projects that explore new possibilities through works that combine contemporary dance, new media, fashion, physical theater, spoken word and sound. In 2000, she co-founded Green Papaya Art Projects, building a research platform for contemporary dance in Manila through its Anatomy Projects (AP+). Her solo ‘Beneath Polka-dotted Skies’ recently received 2007 Jury Prize Award in the Yokohama Solo X Duo Competition in Japan.