A Reason For Falling - Putting Things Together
Links, blurbs, and other things.
It’s been a busy coupla weeks, and I haven’t been writing much, or thinking about writing. But with the December show coming up, I thought I’d compile some of my notes, videos, and so on from the past few years, so that those who are interested can go down the rabbit hole, seeing where this piece came from, and what it’s turned out to be!
I’ll continue to update this as time goes by, so that this one ‘blog post’ becomes a hub of sorts for finding out information on A Reason for Falling. Things will be posted in reverse chronological order (newest at the top) so that what’s most current is the first thing you’ll see.
Have fun. =.)
(NB: This post will be updated periodically.)
Table of Contents
Work-in-Progress showing at Forward Shift, as part of the Esplanade’s da:ns festival.
Credits
Choreographer, Performer, Producer: Hwa Wei-An (MY)
Dramaturg: Arco Renz (BE)
Additional Mentorship: Tang Fu Kuen (SG), Nick Power (AU)
Performance Coach: Lee Ren Xin (MY)
Composer: Kent Lee (MY)
Lighting Designer: Liu Yong Huay (SG)
Production Manager: Low Pey Sien (MY)
2024
International Premiere at da:ns focus. Presented by Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay (7 & 8 December)
This is the culmination of the commission by Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay.
And in many ways, a coming home for me too. I lived in Singapore for many of my formative years, 2005 till the middle of 2017, more or less. I became an adult in Singapore, and many of my friends didn’t realise for ages that I’m not Singaporean. Also, most of my professional career has been Singapore-based, in one way or another. I trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), then worked in Frontier Danceland, then once I became an independent, spent many years working in close association with Dance Nucleus.
Over the years, I’ve also spent a lot of time in close association with the floors of the SMU Underpass, and the Esplanade Underpass too (which I’ve been told does not officially belong to the Esplanade, just so we’re all on the same page). Here’s some proof of that affiliation (you might have to turn your phone/computer sideways, thanks Instagram formatting).
There will be more to say when this one is over. For now, to those of you in Singapore, I hope to see you at the show!
Links:
Review by Bakchormeeboy (Spoiler Alert! Do not read if you are intending to watch the show.)
Malaysian premiere of the work at KongsiKL.
KongsiKL again! This space has been one of three that have been very special to me over the course of the development of this work, the other two being Dance Nucleus and Rimbun Dahan (more on both below).
This is such a cool space for the arts, and as distant as I sometimes feel from the scene in the Klang Valley and Malaysia as a whole, I think that KongsiKL has done great things for artists and aficionados in the region. There are so many things that can be done with the space, and even when very little is done to it (as with the 2021 video version of ARFF), it still has such an ambience and a character that make this a wonderful place to dance.
Yes, even with the hard, concrete floor. It’s rough on the body, and a few days of rehearsals leave me with the feeling of worn-out feet, but it still feels good to dance here. Especially when the lights and music come on.
I wanted to perform this solo in this space while I had the chance, and am thankful that it was possible, in the middle of my Master’s programme, to do so. Many thanks to Pey Sien, who really helped pull things together!
Also, it was really nice to perform back home, in front of family and friends, and others in the community whom I’ve heard of but never conversed with or met in-person before.
For more on my thoughts on this experience, check out this post. There is also an interview with BFM Radio Malaysia about this project.
This version of the work was part of the commission by Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay.
Link to Programme Booklet, designed by Low Pey Sien.
2022
Late-stage work-in-progress showing at Forward Shift
This was Part 1 of the Esplanade’s commission, a way to get me to bring the work up to a final stew, on Forward Shift, the Esplanade’s work-in-progress platform, for Asian works. I was honoured to be part of this platform (the second one ever!). A big reason was that for the first edition of this Forward Shift, Pichet Klunchun, one of the choreographers that I had the opportunity to work with back in dance school (I see you, 2012), was working on his piece, No. 60, and shared the work-in-progress on the very same platform!
And now there I was, doing… choreographer things, together with Liu I-Ling, a dancer and choreographer from Taiwan. It was exciting, and such a pleasure to also be a part of the very last edition of the da:ns festival, the Esplanade’s programming shifting to a number of weekend’s spread out over the course of the year, now.
Among other things, this experience was really cool for me, having rehearsals for which multiple people showed up: stage manager, lighting designer, technical manager (for projections and such), various people from Esplanade’s dance department. It was the first time that such groups were gathering together for me, to come and watch and give feedback and see how things were going. A little surreal, for sure.
Something to be thankful for, when hard days arise.
2021
Video installation at VECTOR#1 - An Economy of Means.
Pandemic times! What fun.
Thanks to the whole lockdown situation, I wasn’t able to travel to Singapore to perform live, but things worked out in the end. If nothing else, because I had the chance to be the poster. (Thanks again, Nic Chung, for taking the picture!)
I ended up filming this version of ARFF, at KongsiKL, actually. It was a really small team: me and one assistant, Yee Heng Zeh, doing all the lighting and rigging and set-up. Chloe Tan helped out on the first day too. Then Farhan Rizuwan came in to film, over two days.
After filming ended, I went back to KongsiKL the next day to clean up the space and remove all the lights and return the key, then drove all the way back to Penang, stopping on the way to buy an almost new laptop (Zephyrus G15) from somebody, so that I’d be able to spend the next ten days editing the video for the show.
It was an adventure.
Also, to go with the video, I made a Miro Board filled with background information, exercises on flow (that I used to use at the time, and should get back into).
2019
Residency at Campbelltown Art Centre
Coming together, that’s what things were, here.
This was when I first tried putting my freeriding explorations and The Art of Falling together. It was a really nice two weeks out at CAC, with Nick Power coming in to advise and mentor me along the way.
During this residency, I met up with two Australian friends in whose work I had danced back when I was a full-time company dancer. I was a little stressed out when I met them, but they told me not to worry. Arts residencies don’t always work out. Sometimes nothing ‘good’ is found. That’s the nature of research and exploration. Some ideas are bad ideas, and finding that out is valuable, even if that means you don’t have a product to show for the time and money that’s invested into something.
Still a lesson I’m trying to learn today.
Thankfully, good things did come out of this residency, and I also did learn something to not do again: eat Vegemite on toast.
SCOPE#4 - A sharing at Dance Nucleus
Here is the freeriding again! Round 2 of explorations, building on some of the ideas from 2018. Jumping over people was pretty fun. The people were, in this situation, the ‘terrain’ that I was trying to navigate. It was a way to bring the audience in, also because audience participation felt like it was a very big thing in contemporary dance at that point in time.
I still didn’t know what I was going to do with this exploration, though. If it would just be an idea to play with, or become a ‘practice’, or something else. Things were pretty up in the air at this point.
2018
The Art of Falling
Immediately after ELEMENT#1, I went into the Southeast Asian Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan. This was a way for me to take some time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, post full-time contemporary dancer gig. Also, coming right off of ELEMENT#1, I was a little tired.
So instead of continuing on the track of freeriding — no pun intended — I returned to something more familiar. Falling, which I had started teaching as a class back in 2016, and had been exploring on and off for years prior. The video below is what emerged, as I tried to put together a technical demonstration of what falling might be, while inserting little metaphorical moments too. (Falling in love, falling asleep, falling away from danger… you get the idea.)
The reason why this is here is because this, together with the exploration of freeriding, has become one of the key pillars of A Reason for Falling.
This video was recorded back in Dance Nucleus, when I was preparing for a performance at the 2018 Echo Echo Dance Festival in Northern Ireland.
‘ELEMENT#1 - Foreign Languages’ Residency at Dance Nucleus
In a way, this was when it all began. Researching how freeriding might become a dance!
Who woulda thunk ‘o that?
But many thanks, to Daniel K and the then team at Dance Nucleus for pushing me to try something out of my comfort zone (still out of my comfort zone six years later), and to just… try.
This was also when I first connected with Arco Renz, who was my mentor for this residency. A whole bunch of years later, in 2022, I reconnected with Arco, and have been working with him on this piece up till today (Nov ‘24).
Links
2022 - It’s Alive! A blog post leading up to the 2022 Forward Shift presentation of A Reason for Falling.
2021 - How Did I Get Here? A blog post about my dance work, leading up to TalentLAB ‘21.
2020 interview with BFM Radio Malaysia, prior to sharing an excerpt of the work at Dancebox in August.
2018 - Reflections on ELEMENT#1