Dance

Silver Yee & Chloe Tan

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Silver Yee & Chloe Tan

Malaysian dance artists Silver Yee and Chloe Tan are in residence at Rimbun Dahan for a month in October-November 2020. Here is what they’re working on:

“Since the MCO, we have been spending way more time behind our screens. Both of us recognized the importance of bringing ourselves back into the present moment by moving. Through exploring different exercises and movement practices, we are hoping to connect ourselves and our body the best we can, giving ourselves the space and time to feel, dance, and explore the most. We are also documenting our daily practices and short movement phrases created, intending to make it as a journal of our process.”

 

About Silver Yee

Silver Yee is a Malaysian contemporary dance artist. She graduated in Cultural Studies and Criticism (MA) from Graduate Institute of Dance, Taipei National University of the Arts. During her MA study in Taiwan, she has performed works for local and international artists, including Remember Not to Say Goodbye by Lucas
Viallefond, But You Didn’t by Jack Kek, Thought and Voice of the Body by Kathyn Tan, Mary Wigman’s ‘Dance of Death II’ reconstructed by Henrietta Horn, and Unspeakable by Su Shu. In 2017, she made her choreography and production debut Kill Your Darlings, with Jason Yap in klpac indicine. In 2020, she collaborated with Kyson Teo and Lim Thou Chun to create a full length site-specific performance piece Where Souls Meet at Kluang. As a dancer and arts administrator, she has toured internationally including Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Scotland.

About Chloe Tan

Chloe picked up dancing after she finished her Degree in International Business and graduated from ASWARA with a Diploma in Dance. Afterwards she worked as a full-time performer in a musical called MUD: Our Story of Kuala Lumpur. After returning from a working holiday in New Zealand, Chloe has been performing with a modern circus group called Psycusix since 2017. She also participated in various projects/productions including Choreolab in Wellington (2018); Dancing in Place at Urbanscapes (2018); In/Out, a devised physical theatre (2019); Kandang (2019); her very first shadow play experience with MasaKini Theatre Company, Wayang: Mak Yong Stories (2019); and Rashomon (2020) as co-movement director and actor.

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

Bilqis Hijjas Asialink, Resident Artist , , , ,
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.

 

Carol Brown

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PAH, Auckland Arts Festival, photo by Solomon Mortimer
Carol Brown in the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan.

I am an inter-disciplinary choreographer working in sustained collaborations with artists and experts from other fields. My research-led practice attends to the creative potentials in working between the cracks; between histories, temporalities and disciplines. Nourished by creative collaborations that explore diverse spaces, places and body memories, my choreographies take multiple forms, as dance installations, inter-media events, site specific performance and theatre dance, and have been presented internationally.

My current research, which I will pursue at Rimbun Dahan involves choreographic writing that negotiates the page, the stage and the ‘outside’. This will lead to a book I am developing on how performance remains rather than disappears through the transmission of body archives and the staging of performance cycles connected to the rhythms and ecologies of place.

I visited Rimbun Dahan in 2015 as part of an Asia New Zealand Performing Arts Tour and am very pleased to be returning with my partner Russell Scoones (musician / sound designer) and children, Rafe and Cass. This visit is part of a period of research leave from the University of Auckland, Creative Arts Industries Faculty where I am an Associate Professor in Dance Studies.

Find out more about Carol’s work at her website.

  • Releasing the Archive, New Zealand Dance Company in Berlin, photo by Carol Brown
  • PAH, Auckland Arts Festival, photo by Solomon Mortimer
  • Singularity, Q Theatre, Auckland, photo by Kathrin Simon

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.

Rochelle Haley

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Rochelle Haley drawing during a rehearsal of 'Strings' in the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan.
Rochelle Haley drawing during a rehearsal of ‘Strings’ in the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Rochelle Haley was one of the Australian resident artists of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residence at Rimbun Dahan in 2009. In addition to her practice creating works for the joint exhibition with Australian artist Monika Behrens and Malaysian artist Shamsudin Wahab which was presented in the Underground Gallery at Rimbun Dahan from 28 February to 14 March 2010, Rochelle also participated in the contemporary dance performance Strings at The Actors Studio Theatre in January 2010.

high_teaThe exhibition at Rimbun Dahan included the ancillary event, ‘High Tea at the Pleasure Garden’, a discussion moderated by the managing editors of online arts writing platform ARTERI (Eva McGovern, Simon Soon & Sharon Chin) based on the site-specific installation Pleasure Garden by Monika Behrens and Rochelle Haley in the newly constructed Penang House at Rimbun Dahan.

 

Bio

pendulous
‘Pendulous Heart’. 2009. Reflective film, metallic paint and etching on glass. 30 x 21 cm.

Rochelle Haley is a Sydney based artist working broadly within the fields of experimental drawing and installation. She has recently completed a PhD at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales where she also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours degree. Haley has held several solo exhibitions of her work the most recent of which in February 2009 titled Land Incorporated at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney. She has also shown extensively in group exhibitions in Australia and abroad including the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship at Artspace, Sydney, CIGE, Exhibition Hall China World Trade Centre, Beijing, Fading Lines, Nomad Gallery, Islamabad and the 3rd International Triennial, Marmara University, Istanbul.

Central to Haley’s work is the exploration of the relationship between the human subject and their physical and social environment. Recently this concern has been expressed through a series of incised paper works investigating the relation between the land, the body and its representation. Imaging the landscape using unusual methods of ‘drawing’ with blades and carving into heavy white paper, Haley creates artworks that require a viewer to negotiate light and texture.  The appearance-disappearance of the landscape is dependant upon the proximity and changing position of the viewer as they attempt to achieve a clear view. The drawings create awareness in the viewer of the position and movement of their body in relation to the work. The subjects Haley primarily takes for her work are landmarks of great cultural value recognised by their inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Strings

In a collision between dance and drawing, the movements of a dancer are transformed into a series of lines drawn live by Rochelle Haley. Other dancers then use these visual cues to interpret their own movement. A unique performative process which changes every time it is performed, Strings gives us insight into new ways to produce art and movement.

Performed by Australian visual artist Rochelle Haley and dancers of Rimbun Dahan and ASWARA, at The Actors Studio Theatre at Lot 10, 23 January 2010.

Moves & Sorts is part of FUSED, a bi-monthly experimental series at The Actors Studio Lot 10, hoping to bring new audiences into theatres and to give emerging talents a chance to perform. Moves & Sorts is a joint production of The Actors Studio and MyDance Alliance.

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.

Eve Lambert

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One of Eve Lambert's costume designs, created from a parachute.
One of Eve Lambert’s costume designs, created from a parachute.

Thanks to the support of Scottish Arts Council, costume designer Eve Lambert spent three weeks at Rimbun Dahan in October 2008, working with resident choreographer Lina Limosani, designing and creating costumes for Lina’s contemporary dance work A Delicate Situation .

Eve Lambert first trained in fashion design at College Marie-Victorin, Montreal. During the course of her studies, Eve was selected for the final of a fashion contest in Paris, to participate in a design seminar in Copenhagen and was granted an award for best student of the Fashion Design Program in both her 2nd and 3rd years. Following this, she was awarded a scholarship from the Fashion Foundation of Montreal to study Performance Costume at the Edinburgh College of Art. Whilst studying, Eve undertook various work experience opportunities in order to gain experience in costume design and construction for theatre, film, television, dance and puppetry, in both Montreal and Edinburgh.

In 2007, Eve was invited to present her degree work at the West Kilbride Gallery, Scotland. Since then, her professional practice has included designing costume for X-Factor Dance Company (Edinburgh) on various productions such as ‘Ragnarok’ (2007), ‘Person or Persons Unknown’ (short film, 2007), ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ (site specific, 2008) and ‘Unspoken’ (2008). Other experiences include collaborating with puppet theatre company The Pupper Lab (Edinburgh), on ‘EH3’ (2006), ‘The Big Shop-Inverness’ (2007) and ‘The Gift’ (2008). Her most recent work includes designing costumes for ‘The Red Room’ by David Hughes Dance and Al Seed (Traverse Theatre, 2008). See attached for samples of Eve’s work.

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.