like a star
Last weekend my friends and I went to see Eonnagata, a dance performance featured as part of this year's Singapore Arts Festival. This year the number of shows I am seeing has taken a nosedive, mostly because nothing in the programming really called out to me, but also because I was lazy, I guess. There's only Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the fields to catch this weekend, and then I'll be done for the season.
But back to the show. I had high hopes for it because I've read and seen so many photographs of Robert LePage's stagings, and I am also a huge admirer of dancer Sylvie Guillem. She danced like the true star she is (in France, the rank of étoile [= star] is given to the principal ballerina of the company) and you'd never imagine that she is almost 43 this year - she reminded me of a young gazelle, her legs impossibly long and lithe, her grace, her poise, her sense of theatricality all polished to perfection. However, I didn't enjoy the performance as much as I thought I would. For starters, LePage tried to do too much with it - tell a long historical tale in eighty minutes, beat the audience over the head with lectures and subtitles, include segments of token and uninspiring martial arts 'dancing', so on and so forth. The part that annoyed me the most was how literal the staging was, as if they feared the audience would not understand the story. Too little dancing, too much storytelling.
To see Guillem in one of her best performances, check out this video of Sacred Monsters, a performance with Akram Khan. Now that is what I call dance.
I love watching dance because the sense of 'presence' is always so strong - there's never much of a plot (if at all) that occupies your mind, so you really get drawn into a mesmerised sort of trance, watching the bodies move, create art, meld with the music, everything changing from one moment to the next. I feel like sometimes I forget to breathe. And I always can't help but put myself in the dancers' shoes, imagining the flow of the body, the precision of each hand and foot, the discipline and the training behind it all. Awe-inspiring.
Years ago, back when I was still in school, my friend S asked me which creative gift I would like to have, if given the choice: music, dance, art, writing. I always thought it would be dance, seeing how klutzy I am in real life. It occurs to me that I have such a poor proprioceptive understanding of my body because my father was an overcautious parent when I was very young - I was discouraged from running too quickly, jumping and leaping, or even swimming. Or perhaps I was just born clumsy. With this in mind, I try to let go with The Bun as he explores his body and what it can do, as he reaches farther, crawls faster, climbs onto anything that stays still long enough. Watching Guillem dance on Saturday made me think wistfully about this, and how dancing like that is way, way, beyond me. Just getting through the rest of my life without breaking more bones is good enough, I think!
But back to the show. I had high hopes for it because I've read and seen so many photographs of Robert LePage's stagings, and I am also a huge admirer of dancer Sylvie Guillem. She danced like the true star she is (in France, the rank of étoile [= star] is given to the principal ballerina of the company) and you'd never imagine that she is almost 43 this year - she reminded me of a young gazelle, her legs impossibly long and lithe, her grace, her poise, her sense of theatricality all polished to perfection. However, I didn't enjoy the performance as much as I thought I would. For starters, LePage tried to do too much with it - tell a long historical tale in eighty minutes, beat the audience over the head with lectures and subtitles, include segments of token and uninspiring martial arts 'dancing', so on and so forth. The part that annoyed me the most was how literal the staging was, as if they feared the audience would not understand the story. Too little dancing, too much storytelling.
To see Guillem in one of her best performances, check out this video of Sacred Monsters, a performance with Akram Khan. Now that is what I call dance.
Click to viewI love watching dance because the sense of 'presence' is always so strong - there's never much of a plot (if at all) that occupies your mind, so you really get drawn into a mesmerised sort of trance, watching the bodies move, create art, meld with the music, everything changing from one moment to the next. I feel like sometimes I forget to breathe. And I always can't help but put myself in the dancers' shoes, imagining the flow of the body, the precision of each hand and foot, the discipline and the training behind it all. Awe-inspiring.
Years ago, back when I was still in school, my friend S asked me which creative gift I would like to have, if given the choice: music, dance, art, writing. I always thought it would be dance, seeing how klutzy I am in real life. It occurs to me that I have such a poor proprioceptive understanding of my body because my father was an overcautious parent when I was very young - I was discouraged from running too quickly, jumping and leaping, or even swimming. Or perhaps I was just born clumsy. With this in mind, I try to let go with The Bun as he explores his body and what it can do, as he reaches farther, crawls faster, climbs onto anything that stays still long enough. Watching Guillem dance on Saturday made me think wistfully about this, and how dancing like that is way, way, beyond me. Just getting through the rest of my life without breaking more bones is good enough, I think!