Greetings from the Singapore Arts Festival!
The theme for this year’s Festival is, I want to remember. It comes from a deep personal desire not for nostalgia but for a reconnection to memories, histories and places that we have forgotten.
Living in a fast paced city like Singapore often requires us to forget and erase memories. Sometimes, we don’t even have the capacity to remember. And memory is a funny thing; it is never absolute or complete. At best, we try to piece together fragments and imprints, usually ending up reinventing as we reconstruct these memories.
With this theme in mind, a key highlight of the 2011 Festival is a collection that recalls the dance legends, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Kazuo Ohno, all of whom passed on between 2009 and 2010. We revisit their universe through current dance exponents making waves in their own right. They are Alain Platel/les ballets C de la B with Out of Context: For Pina; Boris Charmatz's reconstruction of Merce’s choreography in Flip Book and Kazuo Ohno’s son, Yoshito Ohno, performing Kuu (Emptiness), a solo tribute to his father.
On the local front we have commissioned one of the largest number of Singaporean artists in recent memory to reconnect with our histories, dialects and lost civilizations dating back 3,500 years. A selection of local films will also explore memories in movement, song, time and space. One of them includes a short film by Royston Tan, commissioned for the 2011 Festival addressing the theme, I want to remember. Featuring five ordinary Singaporeans from different backgrounds, it explores our relationship with memories through an original song that will be extended into a community sing-a-long project. The film will run on free to air TV, outdoor and online.
Other highlights of the 2011 Festival include a series of works that will give audiences a totally new experience, that of physically engaging with the performances. For instance, in Teatro de los Sentidos or Theatre of the Senses with Inhabitants, the work will be developed through a deep engagement with the local community. Audience members will experience an intimate one-on-one performance blind-folded, depending on their smell, touch and hearing to remember their own city.
2011 will also see the return of the Festival Village, recast at the Esplanade Park. It will host a variety of free and ticketed performances as well as be a gathering point for all. The Festival Village will also play host to the first ever Kids Arts Village, curated, performed and managed by children.
Come join me in this journey of remembering. I look forward to seeing you at the 2011 Festival.
– Low Kee Hong (General Manager)
(Source: National Arts Council Programme)