When artist Choy Ka Fai reflects on his collaborators, his language meanders like a dance itself; improvisatory, sudden shifts, and heartfelt pauses. “In the arts scene, no matter how close or friendly you are, it’s rare to remain friends and collaborators,” he says. “Which is why SoftMachine is such a rarity. We premiered it in 2015 with four solos, and toured two of them all the way until the pandemic. And through it all, we’re still in touch.”

That’s what makes SoftMachine: The Return so special; it’s proof of how these artists have held on, across ten years, across everything that’s happened. Premiering this September as part of the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay’s 2025 da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN),  this landmark presentation revisits and reunites four extraordinary Asian dance artists: Rianto (Banyumas, Indonesia), Surjit Nongmeikapam (Imphal, India), Xiao Ke x Zihan (Shanghai, China), and Yuya Tsukahara of contact Gonzo (Osaka, Japan). Led by Choy Ka Fai, together, they form a living archive of contemporary Asia, where their four solos come together to display a choreography of survival, resilience, tradition, and technological reinvention, and the decade-long life journey they’ve each taken since the original SoftMachine.

This staging is less a reproduction than a reweaving: four biographies unfolding as performance, threaded together by Ka Fai’s role as witness, archivist, and fellow traveler. The result becomes an evening of dance, provoking meditation on how art and life grow entangled over time.

SoftMachine first emerged in 2012, when Ka Fai had just graduated from the Royal College of Art in London. “I was watching this show at Sadler’s Wells titled Out of Asia: The Future of Contemporary Dance. All these artists were on the big stage with production teams, and I thought, what’s the independent scene in Asia like? Who are the friends I want to make?”

Over the next several years, Ka Fai travelled across Asia, mapping networks of independent dance practitioners. “It was totally non-academic, with no real methodology. Just people I knew, who helped connect me to people and artists that I appreciated,” he recalls. These connections became the backbone of the original SoftMachine, which premiered in Singapore in 2015, also as part of the Esplanade’s da:ns programme.

Out of this patchwork, Ka Fai began to imagine a map of Asian contemporary dance that went beyond geography and countries of origin, and explore people and their stories. The original presentation consisted of four solo performative experiences, each reflecting the respective artist’s biography and practice. Ten years later, The Return is not a restaging, but a reimagination and evolution. “Faith [Tan, the original commissioner] asked if we could just restage the four works as they were 10 years ago. But I suggested something more instead” Ka Fai explains. “It’s not just about nostalgia but about process. About what happens when you follow these artists for ten years and see how their practice, their lives, their countries have changed.”

Born in 1981 in Kaliori village, Banyumas, Indonesia, Rianto is a master of lengger lanang, a form in which men perform as women. His early training combined classical Javanese and central Javanese folk dance, laying the foundation for a lifelong negotiation of identity, tradition, and performance. Since 2003, Rianto has lived between Indonesia and Tokyo, where he founded the Dewandaru Dance Company to introduce Javanese dance art to Japan. “Rianto’s segment is about the search for love within the spectrum of dance, gender, and tradition in Indonesia, and revisits three scenes from 2015,” Ka Fai explains. “He goes from traditional female dance to traditional male dance, and then to erotic or social dance. Historically, women weren’t allowed to dance at certain points, so men performed both roles. It’s about how identity is constructed.”

Watching him, Ka Fai says, is to watch centuries of gender codes slip and shift in a single body. What once belonged to ritual now slides into spectacle; what once signified masculinity now flickers into femininity. “He embodies all these contradictions,” Ka Fai notes, “and yet he makes it look seamless.”

The second half of Rianto’s segment is entirely new. Now he choreographs hundreds of children for national events and has set up a heritage house in Banyumas to preserve and teach lengger lanang. Rianto’s story is both personal and emblematic of SoftMachine’s broader themes: how tradition, identity, and community survive in the modern world. “He’s also an influencer, like a Kim Kardashian in high heels, which you might get to see during the show itself,” Ka Fai jokes. “He’s living, breathing history, but also shaping a contemporary life and community.”

From Imphal, India, Surjit Nongmeikapam has long been a force in contemporary dance. Trained in Kathak, Kalaripayattu, Manipuri dance, contemporary dance, and Thang-Ta, he founded the Nachom Arts Foundation to support young dancers. For years, his work radiated outward, training children, touring festivals, bringing the rhythms of Manipur to stages across Europe and India. But in 2023, that momentum was brutally interrupted. Surjit’s work was halted by civil unrest. “The internet was cut and there were curfews. People couldn’t protest openly,” Ka Fai recalls. “All the young dancers left to work in Bollywood and the company dissolved. There were people killed by ethnic terrorists. I could never comprehend what he experienced. And yet he dances, and through that dance he shares his life, his history, his survival.”

For Surjit, dance becomes therapy and testimony. In rehearsals, Ka Fai observed the personal toll and the courage required to continue. Surjit’s segment in The Return reflects this journey. It is intimate and political, a window into the ways dance sustains community even amid upheaval. “Imagine how he was training young kids, touring Europe and India, and suddenly everything stops. It’s a constant cycle of losing and gaining. His story is about resilience, about using art to endure and document.”

Xiao Ke and Zihan operate at the intersection of performance art, visual arts, and social commentary. Their collaboration spans photography, video, live art, and installation, reflecting the extremities of expression in China’s public sphere. Their segment in The Return then interrogates identity, censorship, and the impossibility of a single Han Chinese narrative. Audiences witness how personal, political, and social realities collide in contemporary China.

Ka Fai recalls their early work together: “When I first worked with them, it was about China emerging as a global superpower. We wanted to travel from Shanghai to Singapore to perform, to see how the Belt and Road Initiative was affecting Southeast Asia. How does a powerful China reshape social realities?”

But their collaboration is not just political; it is also deeply personal. After years of working together, they separated, only to reunite two years later. In their segment, this rupture and return becomes part of the performance itself, a choreography of absence and presence, silence and speech. “They stayed collaborators despite some personal history,” Ka Fai reflects, “and I find it so beautiful how art becomes a way to stay connected when everything else changes.”

Finally, Yuya Tsukahara, co-founder of Osaka-based contact Gonzo, is known for a style of improvisational performance in which blows and slaps blur the line between violence and trust. Ka Fai first met Yuya in 2009. “Sixteen years ago, they were punching each other. But there was no hatred, no retaliation, just contact improv, just energy. I was fascinated.”

For The Return, rather than having Yuya physically, he is instead digitally reconstructed as a metahuman through Unreal Engine and motion capture, while Ka Fai also takes on a transformation into Yuya himself. This performance combines ten years of archival documentary with playful, bruising live experimentation in trust and improvisation. It bridges past, present, and digital future, showing how technology can preserve and transform art without freezing it. “I perform as Yuya, and I teach the audience how to be a Gonzo member,” Ka Fai explains. “It is not imitation but co-authorship, carrying on a practice even in another body.”

Ka Fai sees himself as more than just the person gathering these artists, and finds meaning in documenting their journeys. As a whole, these performances combines ten years of archival documentary with playful, bruising live experimentation in trust and improvisation. It bridges past, present, and digital future, showing how technology can preserve and transform art without freezing it. But how can we as the audience see and feel that, when so many audiences have never seen the previous versions? Ka Fai turns to technology, motion capture, digital avatars, documentation, and emphasises that traditions evolve, homing in on how dance itself is a temporal art form, and can be appreciated as it is.

In this way, SoftMachine: The Return becomes a living archive of contemporary Asia, showing art as a medium of adaptation, memory, and survival. SoftMachine: The Return keeps traditions and practice alive through change, treating memory as choreography and the change in medium as a natural part of its evolution. “Just because an Indonesian dancer puts on a traditional costume and dances, doesn’t mean the dance remains unchanged,” he says. “I worked with dancers who dressed as Dutch colonial masters in the 1930s. Today, young girls perform dances on TikTok. It exists and justifies itself as a function of society, for entertainment.”

Ka Fai resists defining the project by national boundaries. “Someone asked if it’s still considered a Singaporean production since none of the artists are Singaporean,” he recalls. “But Singapore is a confluence of cultures. We don’t need to justify it as Singaporean first. Think of these four stories as human stories, that’s the connection, and how Singaporean culture itself is rooted in diversity and how it can all come together organically, across countries, traditions, languages, and socio-political realities, so it ends up reflecting Asia as a constellation of lived experience, not a monolith.”

SoftMachine: The Return is also Ka Fai’s most personal work, blending documentation, co-authorship, and performance. “I remind myself not to dwell on nostalgia,” he says. “This isn’t about looking back. It’s about process, about piecing it together into something new. About staying connected in spite of all our differences, and telling these stories in their own dance language.”

Audiences will witness ten years of transformation, of artists, societies, and dance itself, in four acts that are intimate, rigorous, and alive, a testament to friendship, resilience, and the enduring power of the body to remember, resist, and transform. “I think about how diverse Asia is, with forty-plus countries, so many different cultures, different economies,” Ka Fai concludes. “But if you think of these four stories as human stories, that’s the connection. And that connection is what makes it worth doing again.”

SoftMachine: The Return plays from 26th to 28th September 2025 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Tickets available here

da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) taking place from 25th to 28th September 2025 at the Esplanade. Tickets and full programme available here