In the Esplanade’s latest edition of their da:ns focus series, they’re turning the attention back to Asia with a series of programmes for 2024’s Connect Asia Now (CAN). The annual programme is a dedicated platform that sees the Esplanade supporting artists from the region and introducing their work to Singapore audiences, connecting them to each other to advance Asia’s contemporary dance scene together.

This year, CAN focuses on work that engages with the embodiment of ritual, resistance and metamorphosis. The programme is headlined by the premiere of TOTEM – Void and Height by Japan’s Sankai Ju, who are returning to the Esplanade after eight years. Choreographed and directed by the late Ushio Amagatsu, who passed away in March earlier this year, TOTEM captures Amagatsu’s signature minimalistic and elegant choreography to produce visual spectacle, and is rooted in the art of butoh. Each work anchored deeply in themes of birth, death, the body and gravity, this promises to be a work that at once challenges your senses and welcomes you into a world of heightened beauty.

As Amagatsu himself put it – “There are several definitions of what a totem is. It can be a specific object that functions as a mark or a symbol of a certain group, tribe or blood relations, and in some cases, it can be a wild animal or a wild plant. The subtitle this time, Void and Height, was chosen as a concept inspired by a particular work of stage art created by Natsuyuki Nakanishi. It refers to the space that rises between four places.”

In Magic Maids, Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Venuri Perera (Sri Lanka) collaborate for the first time, and explores how their respective countries have created an industry out of the domestic worker export, examining oppressive power structures through an embodied inquiry into the entanglements between witch hunts and female labour.

Interweaving ritual, pageantry, performance and possession, Magic Maids presents an encounter with two figures engaged in the ritual act of sweeping. The broom, a domestic tool for cleaning and the vehicle of the witch, becomes a symbol of both oppression and resistance. The artists call upon practices of incantation and intention, using their bodies to traverse multiple territories: physical, conceptual, transnational, emotional, and gendered. The labour in performance enables an embodied inquiry into questions of representation, political subjecthood and histories of oppression. Rewilding the domestic, the artists aim to release, reclaim, rejoice, and reconnect with the primal energies.

Finally, in the Asian premiere of PEARLS, Joshua Serafin (Philippines/Belgium) explores nonnormative genders celebrated in precolonial Philippines. Together with fellow artists Lukresia Quismundo and Bunny Cadag, Serafin abandons the binary they have inherited from colonial culture and returns to the ancient past in search of the spiritual roots of Filipino society. The three performers then advance gender-diverse existence as an alternative blueprint for the future, forging an opportunity for queer and trans people of colour to transfigure dark and traumatic histories into something beautiful, similar to pearls formed from foreign particles which irritate the oyster’s mantle. 

Gathering these artists together, watch as CAN presents Asian contemporary dance at its finest, touching on pertinent social issues and platforming these distinct voices and creative impulses from the region. Move your mind, and move your body, as CAN returns to the Esplanade this October.

da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) 2024 runs from 4th to 6th October 2024 at the Esplanade. Tickets and full programme available here