This September, Alliance Française de Singapour and Singapore contemporary dance company ARTS FISSION are inviting audiences to find out, transforming the gallery on Level 2 into something far more alive than a conventional exhibition space.

Premiering on 4 September and returning on 11 September 2026, The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary is a new site-specific contemporary dance production conceived by ARTS FISSION Artistic Director Angela Liong in response to the exhibition A Tale of Wondering Wilds.

Rather than simply placing dancers among the artworks, the production treats the gallery itself as a living choreographic landscape — a place where visual art, movement and soundscape converge to explore humanity’s increasingly fragile relationship with the natural world.

A Tale of Wondering Wilds is essentially a symbolic journey inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, moving from innocence to subjugation and, ultimately, rebirth. The exhibition brings together works by French artists Gaël Davrinche, Quentin Garel, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Julien des Monstiers and Lionel Sabatté.

For Liong, however, the artworks are not simply backdrops or illustrations for the dance. Her choreography enters into dialogue with them, creating an ephemeral layer that moves among the paintings and sculptures. The result is an exhibition that changes as audiences watch, with bodies, sound and movement becoming another medium through which the story can be experienced.

The idea feels particularly relevant to the world outside the gallery. As natural habitats disappear and wildlife increasingly finds itself navigating urban environments, The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary imagines hybrid human-animal beings seeking refuge within architecture.

They move between instinct and adaptation, vulnerability and resilience, with creatures shaped by a world where forests replaced by concrete and survival increasingly depends on the ability to transform. The central question is both simple and unsettling: what remains of the wild within us? And, perhaps more importantly, what might coexistence look like when the boundary between human and animal begins to dissolve?

The production has an unusual history of its own. The choreography was originally conceived during the global lockdown of 2020 as a virtual work exploring confinement and displacement. For A Tale of Wondering Wilds, Liong has reimagined it as an immersive, site-specific performance.

Its visual and conceptual world draws from two very different traditions: the medieval Bestiarum, or Book of Beasts, and the ancient Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shān Hǎi Jīng 山海经). Together, these references inform a contemporary mythology populated by elusive creatures navigating an increasingly unfamiliar world.

Their movements suggest memories of forgotten habitats, while confronting very present-day realities — environmental degradation, urban expansion and ecological uncertainty. It is dance as a kind of modern bestiary: not a collection of creatures preserved in a book, but one that emerges temporarily in front of an audience and disappears once the performance is over.

The production will anchor two distinct evenings at Alliance Française de Singapour. On Friday, 4 September, The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary takes place from 7pm to 10pm, followed by a complimentary screening of The Animal Kingdom by Thomas Caillez. Presented with VOSTEN subtitles, the film extends the evening’s conversation between contemporary image-making, human identity and our relationship with the animal world.

A week later, on Friday, 11 September, the experience begins at 7.30pm as part of Night at the Gallery. This second evening expands the sensory palette even further, pairing the dance performance with an acoustic concert, Light or Shadow, by singer-songwriter Flanery, alongside three wines curated to echo the exhibition. Complimentary tasting samples will be available.

In other words, audiences can encounter the same choreographic work through two very different cultural evenings: one pairing dance with cinema, the other bringing together dance, live music and wine.

The collaboration reflects a broader ambition shared by Alliance Française de Singapour and ARTS FISSION: to rethink how contemporary art can be encountered. With The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary, the gallery stops being a static container for artworks and becomes part of the work itself.

The choreography effectively becomes another curatorial medium, creating a temporary ecosystem in which paintings, sculptures, performers, music and audience members occupy the same space. For visitors, that means A Tale of Wondering Wilds can be experienced not only through the eye, but through movement, sound and atmosphere.

With The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary, ARTS FISSION’s ongoing interest in experimentation takes a particularly physical form, asking audiences to step inside an artwork and, for a little while, see the city and the natural world through the eyes of something less human. And perhaps that is the most intriguing proposition of all. In a city where concrete, architecture and urban development dominate so much of everyday life, the performance asks us to reconsider the wildness that might still exist beneath the surface, and whether humans and the natural world can find new ways of sharing the same environment.

The Secret Room of Urban Bestiary takes place on 4th and 11th September 2026 at Alliance Française de Singapour, Gallery, Level 2, 1 Sarkies Rd, Singapore 258130. Bookings are available through the Alliance Française de Singapour event pages for the 4 September and 11 September performances.