SITE-SPECIFIC
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Blue Moon - When Magic Stirs《月兔》
27 & 28 September 2024
7:30pm & 8:30pm
Clarke Quay's Read Bridge
FREE ADMISSION
A bridge over water is often the focal point of many classical Asian paintings especially when it is part of the depictions of early urban towns or marketplaces. Just think of the hustle-bustle municipality scenes of the famous Song dynasty handscroll, Along the River During the Qingming Festival 清明上河图 , and also the Japanese woodblock prints of Ukiyo-e 浮世绘 of the Edo period that showed city folks engaged in various everyday activities along the bridge.
Comparing to modern time, many of the depicted activities of early city life have not changed that much. Hence the annual Moonstruck Series by ARTS FISSION, BLUE MOON - When Magic Stirs also takes place at a bridge and pays homage to the Read Bridge at Clarke Quay.
The site-specific performance chooses the bridge’s backdrop of repurposed historic godowns (or warehouses) along the river. The bridge site, together with the music motif of the familiar folk song Dayung Sampan, recall Singapore’s once busy waterway of maritime trades in bygone days. But the river has now been transformed into places of urban leisure and recreations.
These historic and cultural references give our bridge-performance extra layers of nuances when viewedalong the Singapore River. The performance conjures up scenes and characters of whimsical urban encounters. The movement work explores the brisk dynamics of urban body language while the original music composition is infused with the undertone of multi-ethnicity pulses of Singapore.
We may have missed August’s sturgeon moon (also known as blue moon or super moon). But anytime when people stroll along the bridge, we firmly believe that magic would happen. Afterall, how can one not be bewitched by the moonlight, a luminous bridge filled with music and movement, and come face to face with the giant shadow of the sturgeon fish?
Amazing Beasts & Botanicals《神木灵兽》
26 & 27 July 2024
8:00pm
Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre Auditorium, Level 9 新加坡华族文化中心表演厅，九楼
BACKGROUND
When the Sanxingdui ruins (translated as three-star mound 三星堆) was first excavated in Sichuan China, it literally rocked the world! Some of the bronze masks and figures, bearing bulging eyes and huge ears, resembled more like outer space aliens than the traditional aesthetic of the han 汉Chinese artefacts.
The making of AMAZING BEASTS & BOTANICALS 神木灵兽 is pretty much like picking up archaeological fragments and piecing them together in a jigsaw puzzle. Many of the scenes are served up in broken parts with abrupt beginnings and endings. The intentional scrambling of parts are much like the remnants of ancient ruins.
The performance does not provide a linear story but opts to create heightened sense of theatre from the artefacts with mysterious origin. Hence the stunning bronze statues of the man-face with bird-body, the regal standing tall man, plus the sky-high Tree-of-Life and the delicate sacred bronze tree have all become compelling theatre making material for the creative team of collaborators.
SETTING THE STAGE
The performance imagines the Sanxingdui ruins as an ancient slumber jolted by the clamour of modern archaeological dig. During the unearthing process, lapse of time space is triggered, collision of light and darkness ensued, and undisturbed earth is turned into crumbling soil and dust, with fiction and reality merged into one.
The stage design presents the tri-level relationships of heaven/man/earth – an important Chinese metaphysical concept since ancient time. Four mandala brackets also marked the reference of the Sanxingdui ruins which was once a walled city.
In the performance, dancers and musicians are the contemporary intruders who stumbled into the realm of amazing bestial encounters. Banal as well as enigmatic episodes of sound and movement expressions collide and evolve. Some of the musical instruments like the bone flute with its shrieking pitch practically shoves the listeners into the mythical realm of unknown.
Just like the ancient ruins of Sanxingdui, the dance and music pieces in the performance are symbolic of remnants reminiscent of the once walled city. The performance served up intentional scrambled parts of abrupt dance and music segments. They are equivalent to excavated fragments for the audience to piece together at the end of the show.
AMAZING BEASTS & BOTANICALS 神木灵兽 wants people to retrieve the ancient sense of awe and mystery of nature that has been lost in modern progress.
Moon Rabbits
《月兔》
29 & 30 September 2023
7:30pm & 8:15pm
Yishun Pond Park Promenade
90 Yishun Central, Singapore 768828
FREE ADMISSION
MOON RABBITS – more than just cute little bunnies! Celebrate this Mid-Autumn Festival and experience an enchanting intergenerational performance at the Yishun Pond Park Promenade right by the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. Inspired by rabbit myths from many lands, MOON RABBITS will enthrall you with whimsical ethics in a show all about rabbits!
ARTS FISSION dancers and musicians from wind and percussion group Reverberance, together with children dancers from the Young Fission Benefit and senior performers from NTUC Health Senior Activity Centre (Boon Lay) are set to offer you magical encounters of music and dance in celebrating kinship reunion of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Come with families and friends and bring lanterns for the musical Lantern Walk through the serene water garden and pavilions at the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.
Flower Moon Over Singapore River
《花月夜》
A Celebration for the Commoner
9 & 10 September 2022
7:30pm & 8:30pm
Cavenagh Bridge
1 Fullerton Square, Singapore 049178
Flower Moon over Singapore River《花月夜》– the annual Moonstruck Series by ARTS FISSION, will be presented at the historic CAVENAGH BRIDGE. The performance is offered free to the public as a celebration of respite to ease social isolation under the COVID-19 pandemic in the past two years.
The staging at a bridge is inspired by the famous long Chinese scroll – Upstream at Qing Ming Festival 清明上河图. Original music for the performance is by composer Zechariah Goh Toh Chai. Using contemporary composition treatment, he deconstructs the familiar Chinese music melody of Spring. River. Flower. Moon. Night. 春江花月夜 and presents his version with suona, flute and drums performed by the Chinese percussion group, Reverberance.
The dance works are created by ARTS FISSION Dancers and curated by artistic director Angela Liong. Two duets of note featured myth-inspired dances. DRAGON MORPHING by Aisha Polestico and Andine Elaina references the story of the fish that leaped over the mountain top and transformed into a majestic dragon. GOBBLING THE MOON by Marveen Lozano and Cymone Woo depicts two frogs vying to swallow something more than the animals could handle.
Moon Musing
A Mid - Autumn Celebratory Performance
6 & 7 Sep 2019
13 & 14 Sep 2019
8.30 - 9pm
PUB Boardwalk at Jurong Lake Gardens
104 Yuan Ching Rd Singapore 618665
MOON MUSING is a lunar theme dance performance that takes place by the lake. The performance makes reference to the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and triggers off our never-ending fascination of the moon.
The performance pitches old stories and cultural musings with the lunar phenomenon that resulted in an amalgamate of moon related music from operas like Puccini’s Turandot and Dvořák’s Rusalka, a dubstep remix of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and new rendition of the Chinese Suzhou pingtan (苏州评弹)music.
Part of the set-up also includes a 2-meter floatation moon that lends luminescence to the performance space at the PUB Boardwalk in Jurong Lake Gardens, the third national garden of Singapore.
MOONSTRUCK
Fri, 29 Sep @ 9pm
*Gardens By the Bay, Supertree Grove
Sat, 30 Sep @ 7pm
**Singapore Botanic Gardens Shaw Foundation
Symphony Stage
Sun, 01 Oct @ 7.45pm & 9pm
Phoenix Avenue
Wed, 04 Oct @ 9pm
*Gardens by the Bay, Supertree Grove
Moonstruck is a whimsical dance-theatre piece conceived by professional contemporary dance group The Arts Fission Company. A cultural collision of the familiar Chinese legend of Chang Er (嫦娥) with the Apollo 11 moonlanding is sure to delight audience of all ages with a new riveting mid-autumn story.
What’s exciting about Moonstruck is that the dance performance takes place on an open top 41-foot trailer as a pop-up stage (except the performance at Botanic Gardens).
The dance performance features well-known music that are inspired by the moon like Dvorak’s opera aria Song to the Moonand even a metalized arrangement of Beethoven’s famous Moonlight Sonata.
* Held in conjunction with Mid-Autumn @ Gardens by the Bay 2017, jointly organised by Gardens by the Bay and National Arts Council, in partnership with Chinese Media Group of Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore University of Technology and Design, and People's Association.
** Singapore Botanic Gardens performance will be held at the Shaw Foundation Symphony Stage without a trailer and will be joined by musicians from National University of Singapore.
SHAMAN/PEASANTS
Dance of the Barefoot Guardians
14 & 28 July 2017
5pm & 7.30pm
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art @ Gillman Barracks
In collaboration with NTU CCA Singapore as part of Stagings, Arts Fission presents a dance performance inspired by the film and photographic works of acclaimed German Artist Ulrike Ottinger. China. The Arts – The People. Photographs and Films from the 1980s and 1990s is the first large scale exhibition of the Artist in Asia presented by NTU CCA Singapore*.
The Exhibition captured and framed in her films and documentaries, China and Mongolia’s everyday life, from its urban to rural environments. In a direct response to Ottinger’s images, Cultural Medallion choreographer Angela Liong created the dance work, Shaman/Peasants – Dance of the Barefoot Guardians.
The performance intercuts urban trance music with traditional sounds from China’s minority tribes, setting a disparate cultural quiltwork where shaman figures transgress through ancient and modern times, and an urbanite ensemble in blue and black garbs morphs between the ambivalent realms of cultural and political affinity.
FIRE MONKEY
9 & 10 December 2016
Arts Centre Melbourne Lawn
100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Presented by Multicultural Arts Victoria
In association with Victoria Chiu and The Arts Fission Company (Singapore)
Organiser
Presenter
The Arts Fission Company
Venue Supporter
With the Support of
The Year of the Fire Monkey has unleashed increasing uncertainty and disruption in the world. The collaborative dance creation between Melbourne and Singapore, made across two countries separated by oceans, reflects on the anxiety of our time and invokes collective memories across cultures in the hope to mending broken myths and finding human connection.
Staged at the iconic Art Centre lawn, this site specific piece embraces the energy of Melbourne’s arts epicenter and ties it to the Chinese animal zodiac with 2016 being the Year of the Monkey under the element of Fire. Fire Monkey also involves different communities in Singapore and Melbourne by asking participants to use 3000-year old Chinese oracle bone script to create hand-dyed fabric strips as modern text messages across oceans. The colorful strips made by community members are incorporated in a spectacular installation at the performance site.
MIRROR OF CLANDESTINE BLOOMS
镜花水月
29 September 2016 | 7:15 PM & 8:30 PM
ArtScience Museum
Presented as part of ArtScience Late at
ArtScience Museum in celebration of the opening
of Journey to Infinity: Escher’s World of Wonders.
Mirror of Clandestine Blooms [镜花水月] is a site-specific dance creation conceived by Cultural Medallion recipient, choreographer Angela Liong in collaboration with her dancers from The Arts Fission Company. Audiences are led through to various locations of the ArtScience Museum and encounter different performance segments.
The site-specific performance maps the architectural features of the museum and layers the space with temporal dance acts. The 4th level Expression Room is transformed into a pop-up club a la 17th century ballroom that plays electronic Bach pieces with dancers hopping on island-stages.
IN THE NAME OF RED
THE SCROLL OF NANYANG INK
4 - 6 December 2015 | 8, 9, 10 PM | National Gallery Singapore
Two site-specific performances by The ARTS FISSION Company
For the official opening of The National Gallery Singapore
In The Name of Red is a site-specific performance that takes inspiration and pays homage to the red hues and objects found in paintings under the different Southeast Asian collections of the National Gallery with dancers in red scaling the two grand staircases at the Padang Atrium.
The Scroll of Nanyang Ink visualized the idea of layering space and time through different movement scenarios along the 36 m long green corridor that serves as the unique performing space in the format of a Chinese handscroll at the Supreme Court Terrace.
INCIDENTAL PERFORMANCE
31 January, 6 - 7 February 2015
9:15 PM | National Design Centre
Encounter fresh takes on memorable dance moments from Arts Fission's seminal past works
Catch up with former company members Elysa, Scarlet and Bobbi who are back to celebrate Arts Fission's 20th anniversary.
Watch out for Arts Fission's dynamic company dancers as they navigate old and new spaces at the revamped National Design Centre.
Meet dance master Sukarji from Indonesia and Compagnie Irene K from Belgium as they share their creative impulses.
Created by present and former company dancers as well as past and new collaborators of Arts Fission, Incidental Performance features new creations that will be performed at various sites inside the National Design Centre, a building that has been ‘made new’ with its present spatial reincarnation. Presenting a series of simultaneous performances in the spirit of spontaneity and the incidental, the site-specific staging at the National Design Centre also throws historic reference to Art Fission’s seminal site-specific dance in 2000 at the 35th rooftop of the Centennial Tower.
HOMECOMING
The site-specific performance turns the building of the National Design Centre into a world where fragmented dance episodes collide into chance encounters. This life’s-coming-and-going is further encapsulated by the multi-layer narratives of the spiky tetrahedron installations with a complex soundscape.
All the movement works presented have a strong sense of journeying. Dancers constantly gathered and dispersed, drawing the changing dynamics out of our everyday existence. Be it a serendipity gathering of strangers, or planned meeting of acquaintances, the ever fluid crowds assumed a larger personae who speaks to the audience of the neverending search for dreams, companions, and a place to belong.
TO BEAT THE BUTTERFLY'S WINGS
17 - 19 April 2014
artspace@222, Queenstreet
Reverse the end to start,
Soothe the tremor to part.
Hold the wings ajar
and slow the fanning to halt.
But beating has turned to sighs
And gathered winds to rise.
The butterflies in our stomach
will never be still with fluttering declined
Choreographer Angela Liong collaborates with composer Joyce Beetuan Koh, sound designer Yong Rong Zhao, visual artists Sai Hua Kuan and Wang Ruobing, and lighting designer Genevieve Peck to present this multi-disciplinary performance at Queen Street 222 Artspace. The performance is staged in four small adjacent gallery rooms to present an immersive theatre experience for an intimate capacity audience (only 40 audience for each performance).
The artists play with the ideas of change inspired by the Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory. They start a chain reaction in a process that compressed sounds, lights, movement, and sights into intense performing pockets that shift around in different gallery chambers. These fragments of dramatic narratives engage the audience with simultaneous happenings that soon have them moving from room to room. This free milling generates similar dynamics as in the Chaos Theory and is unleashed within the rooms.
The performance alludes to spiraling changes of the fragile environment caused by human callousness. In the confine of four small chambers, we glimpse the peril of humanity if we continue with our oblivion at present rate.