EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

CEREMONIAL ENACTMENTS

By MAX.TAN (Singapore), Nadi Singapura (Singapore) and Bhaskar’s Arts Academy (Singapore)

21 & 22 May, Sat & Sun 7.30pm Esplanade Theatre

2h, No Intermission

Rating to be determined Recommended for audiences age 6 and above

Tickets: $38*, $48*, $58

*Limited concessions available for students, NSFs and seniors

Also available on SIFA On Demand $15 per show $25 for bundle of 4 (U.P $60)

In Ceremonial Enactments, three Singaporean companies imagine a resplendent tapestry of local customary rituals, told with a contemporary twist.

Drawing from customs and rites within Singapore’s diverse cultures, Ceremonial Enactments features three festival commissions, woven into one seamless performance experience.

Held at the Esplanade Theatre, Ceremonial Enactments flips conventional notions of staging and the audienceto-performance relationship within a traditional proscenium theatre.

In Act I, designer powerhouse and label MAX.TAN opens the evening with ANG, a fashion performance inspired by Chinese and Southeast Asian birth rituals. Conceived as a sartorial love letter to designer Max Tan’s mother, Tan constructs and weaves garments of ethereal beauty, layered with ideas of birth, re-birth and Samsara.

In Act II, percussion ensemble Nadi Singapura, led by Artistic Director Riduan Zalani, presents one of the grandest ceremonies within the Malay community – the wedding or the majlis persandingan. 293NW elegantly weaves dance and narrative, along with Nadi Singapura’s signature style of traditional Malay percussion rhythms. In Act III, Bhaskar’s Art Academy presents Yantra Mantra, an enactment of an ancient dance ritual performed in Hindu temples. Choreographed by Cultural Medallion recipient the late Mrs Santha Bhaskar and Meenakshy Bhaskar, the creation draws from compositions by the Indian classical composer Sri Muthuswamy Dhikshitar and poetry by the 18th century Tanjore Quartet, where dancers pay obeisance to the nine celestial custodians that guard the eight directions and the centre of the earth.

Ceremonial Enactments features a stellar team of creatives, including Randy Chan of Zarch Collaboratives Architectural Studios conceiving the startling set design, Brian Gothong Tan, Andy Lim and Philip Tan designing multimedia, light and music respectively, Gino Babagay lending choreographic unity along with fashion designer Max Tan conceiving costumes for the entire work.

Grand and gorgeously realised, Ceremonial Enactments is a sensorial awakening celebrating customary rituals in a highly contemporary performance.

REMOTES X QUANTUM

By John Torres (The Philippines) and Eleanor Wong (Singapore)

25 – 27 May, Wed – Fri, 8pm 28 – 29 May, Sat – Sun, 4pm & 8pm The Arts House

1h 20m, No Intermission

Rating to be determined Recommended for audiences age 13 and above

Tickets: $35*

*Limited concessions available for students, NSFs and seniors.

From playwright Eleanor Wong and filmmaker John Torres comes a gripping multi-disciplinary work, reimagining life in Singapore and the Philippines on the brink of a dystopian world order.

A leading artistic force in New Philippine Cinema, independent auteur John Torres’s poetic sensibility and anthropological eye fuse to create films utterly his own.

Matched by acclaimed Singaporean poet and playwright Eleanor Wong – known for her wit and dramatic range – Remotes x Quantum is a thrilling collaboration between two seminal artists, marrying themes from Torres’ futuristic film The Remotes and Wong’s recent text, The Quantum of Space.

In Remotes x Quantum, two countries collide in their contrasting realities. In the Philippines, ordinary people sell the control of their bodies to become avatars purely to survive. While in Singapore, an island ladened with first-world preoccupations, people struggle to find new meaning in the face of existential challenges.

Blending film, poetry, theatre and sound in a swirling multi-disciplinary live installation, Remotes x Quantum is a searing examination of the state of possession, both as noun and verb.

Wong and Torres conjure a dream language, set against their home cities on the brink of a dystopian world order, to meditate on the physicality, spirituality, and politics of human bodies limboed in varied states of possession. In a universe where our moral codes and human desires drive the need to possess, are there other roads to nirvana?