If we put our ears to the Earth and listened, what would we hear? In Suara / Oro Rua, Singapore’s Safuan Johari and New Zealand’s Eddie Elliott come together in an unexpected cross-country collaboration to imagine the sound of fossilised voices emerging from the deep, and what we leave behind year after year, as the dance performance premieres this May as part of the 2024 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA).

“The project started when Festival Director Natalie Hennedige asked me about doing a show that would feature the voices of singers, and then talked about how there was this great choreographer from New Zealand,” says Safuan on how the two of them met. “I thought it was a great idea for finding resonance between my own practice of exploring the Nusantara Malay world with the Maori world, and we started developing ideas over Zoom.”

“I met Natalie at the PANNZ Art Market, when she came over and saw my work, and did exactly what Safuan said to me – that there was a great composer from Singapore that she thought would collaborate well with me,” says Eddie. “So we initially began with a 6 month remote creative process, speaking over Zoom and trading PDF files, before we flew over to meet up in person and really develop the work together.”

Much of the initial work came down to understanding each other’s artistry and culture better, a true form of cultural exchange that would eventually work its way into the final performance. As such, while Safuan was the composer and Eddie was the choreographer, there was enough space for both to contribute to the overall vision, and deciding what exactly it wanted to convey to the audiences, from mythologies to practices. “While I’m making movement, Safuan is also given tasks that can shape the music that in turn shapes the movement, and vice versa – we’re sharing the roles in a way, and in knowing each other’s strengths, we’re better able to develop the work and the vision Safuan has proposed,” says Eddie. “In a way, I’m helping support and provide structure to the idea, while Safuan is really moulding it according to this final idea that he has for how it’ll end up looking.”

“I think that over the time we’ve worked together, we’ve been discovering a lot of connections between both cultures as well, like how there is so much potential for both the Malay and Maori words to come in, and how there’s this shared sense of connection to ad acknowledgement of the land,” says Safuan. “It helps develop this sense of meter and rhythm in both the music and the dance, and that provides some broad strokes driven by the oral tradition that helps inform us how we can carry it even further within the work.”

The work’s title directly translates to ‘a voice that resonates’, where ‘suara’ means ‘voice/sound’ in Malay, and ‘oro rua’ in Māori, means ‘to resonate’. From Safuan’s initial vision of focusing on the human voice, Eddie also brings in the Māori concept of Te Kore, the ‘void’ that exists beyond the world of everyday experience, together with the sonic history of the Earth — which tells us how hundreds of millions of years of evolution and communication happened in silence before living creatures found their voices. All this is present in Safuan’s compositions, which in part drive Eddie’s choreography, performed by dancers from Aotearoa.

“There’s a lot of transcultural and intercultural conversation going on in this work, which all comes together in the speculative, post-anthropocene world it’s set in, and we’re focused on using both the music and the choreography to create different images with these bodies, and embody the quality of the singers’ voices,” says Safuan. “A lot of it made more sense once everyone came together in the same space, when we could really do the world-building and immerse audiences in this world we’re creating, so they can understand it, and amplify these different emotions we’re trying to communicate, and see the links between it and this world we’re living in.”

“There’s only so much research you can do about cultures online, and the best way of understanding them is to experience them, and continue preserving them as we pass them down orally and witnessing them, which ties both our cultures together,” says Eddie. “The work ends up telling a lot of stories, symbolising and referencing parts of both cultures, and leading audiences on this natural progression deeper into this world, and finding this intentional connection as it all comes together. We’ve really selected the best contemporary dancers in New Zealand to perform this, and because they’re choreographers themselves, it ends up becoming a collaborative process, where we listen and respond to each other, making sure they feel comfortable enough to explore the environment through movement, and connecting to Safuan’s music.”

Speaking of his dancers, we ask Eddie about the arts scene in New Zealand, and the opportunities such an international collaboration offers. “New Zealand is a small country, where everyone knows everyone, and all the dancers have worked with each other and with each of the four main companies at some point,” says Eddie. “There’s a lot of outlets for creation, but we’re also looking further afield to see how can we stretch our artistry further still, building a company up to foster the next generation of dancers and movers, and thinking about where we go from there. And at the same time, we’re also such a multicultural country now, and so open to cultural exchange and opening up the doors to new possibilities in art, or dancers travelling abroad to find new opportunities.”

Every new work is an opportunity to learn more about one’s self and develop artistically, and Suara / Oro Rua is no different, offering both artists a chance to deepen or reflect on their practice. “I was thinking very hard about how to incorporate concepts of history and time into my work, and after RATA, I became more interested in geological ideas of deep time and land formation, beyond just mythologising culture and now mythologising ecology and natural history,” says Safuan. “Last year, I worked on a project with indigenous Australians, and I think a lot about how they acknowledge over 40,000 years of history of the land, and how so many things have evolved. You start to see all these cycles, where we’re already in the sixth mass extinction. You begin to think about yourself, for me, as a Malay Singaporean in a highly urbanised world, and think about how nature still has a chance to regenerate even after all the destruction – and you feel hopeful.”

“As Maori people, we think about our place in this world, and how we never ‘own’ any land, but are merely caretakers and visitors to it. With every work I do, we always start by acknowledging our connection to the land, the waterways, our families and lineage, before finally introducing ourselves last, because it is important to understand where we came from and who we have become. It means a lot to be able to share that culture onstage with international audiences, and what it means for us,” says Eddie.

Ultimately then, what do they hope this work ends up conveying to the audience? “There are so many voices out there that are important, and often they end up competing with one another to see who has the loudest voice, resulting in the world being what is is today,” concludes Safuan. “But that’s why I keep thinking about how we can instead use our voices to be more reflective and meditative instead, and resonance and unison with all these other voices. We need to think about what exactly is this world we’re creating – and what the future will say should they ever look back and excavate these voices.

“We’re constantly reminding ourselves that the self is not always the centre, and that we need to look around and see what’s in the immediate environment, and think about where we stand in the universe. There’s a need to see where you stand in the universe, and how there’s a greater need than ever to look inward, spiritually, and meditate on life instead of constantly reacting to everything around you.”

Featured Photo Credit: Andy Yang and Akbar Syadiq

SUARA / ORO RUA plays from 24th to 26th May 2024 at Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade as part of the 2024 Singapore International Festival of Arts. Tickets available here

SIFA 2024: They Declare runs from 17th May to 2nd June 2024 across various venues. Tickets and full programme available here