Sounding Light 定光: An interview with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre Artistic Director Cheng Tsung-lung on slowing down

It seems like an impossibility to ever ask people who live in bustling metropolitan cities like Taipei or Singapore to slow down. These are places built around movement: trains arriving and departing, traffic flowing through intersections, people crossing streets with somewhere to be, messages arriving before the previous ones have been answered. There is always another email, another meeting, another decision to make. Even our … Continue reading Sounding Light 定光: An interview with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre Artistic Director Cheng Tsung-lung on slowing down

Interview: Kuik Swee Boon and Kim Jae Duk on T.H.E Dance Company’s Pán《盤》

Five years after its digital premiere, the award-winning two-part dance work returns to Singapore for its long-awaited local live staging. Its choreographers reflect on cultural identity, artistic collaboration and why dance can express what words cannot. When Kuik Swee Boon watched rehearsals for Pán《盤》 ahead of its Singapore staging, there was a particular feeling of anticipation. For the founding artistic director of T.H.E Dance Company, … Continue reading Interview: Kuik Swee Boon and Kim Jae Duk on T.H.E Dance Company’s Pán《盤》

Interview: NTSO’s Tung-Chieh Chuang and pianist Albert Tiu talk about how music connects Taiwan, Singapore and the human experience

From folk melodies that evoke memories of home to classical masterpieces that transcend generations, conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang and pianist Albert Tiu reflect on the power of music to express the human experience ahead of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra’s Singapore performance. What can music express that words cannot? For Taiwanese conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang, the answer lies in the subtle complexities of human emotion, and the … Continue reading Interview: NTSO’s Tung-Chieh Chuang and pianist Albert Tiu talk about how music connects Taiwan, Singapore and the human experience

Interview: Drag queen Sammi Zhen talks 27 years in the industry, her first standup comedy show, and why ‘Love Cannot Wait’

For 27 years, Sammi Zhen has made a living knowing what to say. As a drag performer, comedian and host, she has spent much of her career in bars, at dinner-and-dance events, private functions and other spaces where audiences are rarely sitting quietly and waiting to hear a story. A typical performance might last 10 or 15 minutes, with people eating, drinking, talking, standing up … Continue reading Interview: Drag queen Sammi Zhen talks 27 years in the industry, her first standup comedy show, and why ‘Love Cannot Wait’

Film: Director/Writer Ervin Han on ‘The Violinist’, Singapore’s past and the long road to the Annecy win

For Ervin Han, The Violinist was never intended to be simply a film about Singapore. It was, more specifically, an attempt to tell a story that could travel beyond Singapore without losing the place that gave it meaning. That balance was something Han was conscious of from the beginning. The Singapore-Spain-Italy co-production, which he co-directed with Spanish animation veteran Raúl García, had to work for … Continue reading Film: Director/Writer Ervin Han on ‘The Violinist’, Singapore’s past and the long road to the Annecy win

Music: Milky Chance talk about their first Asian show at F1 Singapore, ‘Stolen Dance’ and discovering magic in the unknown

There is something incredibly poetic about discovering a band for the first time through a song that has already been around for more than a decade. For German indie-pop duo Milky Chance, whose 2013 breakout single “Stolen Dance” has surpassed two billion Spotify streams, music has always had a way of transcending generations and borders. Now, childhood friends Clemens Rehbein and Phillipp Dausch are embarking … Continue reading Music: Milky Chance talk about their first Asian show at F1 Singapore, ‘Stolen Dance’ and discovering magic in the unknown

Interview: Artistic Director Derrick Chew on the next chapter of the Crack The Case series and Sight Lines Entertainment

For Derrick Chew, the fifth edition of Crack The Case is both an ending and a beginning. The upcoming Crack The Case: Wonderland marks the final instalment of the immersive mystery series in its current form, but Chew is quick to point out that the mystery itself is not going away. After five editions, Sight Lines Entertainment is ready to take what it has learnt … Continue reading Interview: Artistic Director Derrick Chew on the next chapter of the Crack The Case series and Sight Lines Entertainment

BATU: Ayu Permata Sari and Hasyimah Harith on reimagining the kitchen, sharing stories and space

A kitchen can be many things. It is a place where food is prepared and domestic work is done, but it can also be where women gather, where stories are exchanged, where knowledge is passed between generations, and where rituals are repeated almost without thought. For Indonesian choreographer Ayu Permata Sari and Singaporean artist Hasyimah Harith, it is also a space through which questions of … Continue reading BATU: Ayu Permata Sari and Hasyimah Harith on reimagining the kitchen, sharing stories and space

Still Lives – Singapore: Daniel Kok and Luke George on using shibari to explore trust, tension and stories

A performance called Still Lives might sound, at first, like an exercise in holding still. But for artists Daniel Kok and Luke George, stillness is only the beginning. Built around rope, bodies, objects and the act of carefully binding people into sculptural compositions, Still Lives is less a fixed work than an evolving encounter with each place it enters. Since its beginnings during the pandemic, … Continue reading Still Lives – Singapore: Daniel Kok and Luke George on using shibari to explore trust, tension and stories

Art: Li Huayi – Unity of Man and Nature at Kwai Fung Hin

For Li Huayi, landscape is not a record of a place but an expression of an inner world. As his first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia arrives in Singapore, the artist reflects on tradition, freedom, memory and the enduring possibilities of ink. There are no travellers wandering through Li Huayi’s landscapes. No fishermen, scholars or tiny figures climbing the mountain paths that populate so much … Continue reading Art: Li Huayi – Unity of Man and Nature at Kwai Fung Hin