★★★★★ Dance Review: Sounding Light 定光 by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre

Cloud Gate invites us to pause and appreciate the little things all around us, and to rediscover the wonder and beauty of simply being alive. Duration: 60 minutes What if the world has never been quiet, but we have simply forgotten how to listen? In Sounding Light, which played last weekend as part of the 2026 edition of the Esplanade’s da:ns focus: Connect Asia Now … Continue reading ★★★★★ Dance Review: Sounding Light 定光 by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre

Review: Still Lives – Singapore by Daniel Kok and Luke George feat. RUDRA

Bodies, instruments and histories held in stasis, Still Lives: Singapore turns the act of tying into a meditation on care, memory and the communities that gather around them. Duration: ~105 minutes What does it mean to watch a metal band that cannot play its instruments, in a theatre where nobody is quite required to sit still? In Still Lives: Singapore, four members of pioneering Vedic … Continue reading Review: Still Lives – Singapore by Daniel Kok and Luke George feat. RUDRA

★★★★☆ Dance Review: BATU by Ayu Permata Sari and Hasyimah Harith

A multisensory fever dream that examines femininity in all its sorcery, esoterica, and erotica through the lens of the humble mortar and pestle, and the stories passed down from woman to woman in the kitchen. Duration: 75 minutes You can watch a dance, or you can feel it take hold of your body. BATU does both, pulling you into its strange, increasingly feverish world through … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Dance Review: BATU by Ayu Permata Sari and Hasyimah Harith

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

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

Preview: da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) 2026 by Esplanade – Theatre on the Bay

In a world where we’re constantly scrolling, multitasking and moving from one thing to the next, taking the time to truly see has become something of a luxury. This October, Esplanade’s da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) returns with a timely reminder that contemporary performance can do more than entertain, and encourage us to pause, pay attention and reconnect with ourselves and those around … Continue reading Preview: da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) 2026 by Esplanade – Theatre on the Bay

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Handle with Care by Ontroerend Goed (Esplanade’s The Studios 2026)

A tender, bewildering piece of participatory theatre where audiences learn to get things right (and wrong) together, revealing us at our most human selves. Performance attended 7 Aug 8pm60 minutes, no intermission In theatre, one would naturally assume that actors are required. There might be a director somewhere in the wings, technicians behind the scenes, a script determining what happens next, and an audience whose … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Handle with Care by Ontroerend Goed (Esplanade’s The Studios 2026)

Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An Interview with Samir Veen on participation and co-operation in Ontroerend Goed’s ‘Handle with Care’

When Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed first conceived Handle with Care, they knew almost nothing about the performance itself. There were no actors, no technicians, no script, and not even a clear idea of what would eventually be inside the box that sits at the centre of the stage. What they did know was that they wanted to make something they had never made before. … Continue reading Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An Interview with Samir Veen on participation and co-operation in Ontroerend Goed’s ‘Handle with Care’

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Fragments of Tuah by Mark Teh and Five Arts Centre

Mesmerising docutheatre production delves into the myth of Malayan national hero Hang Tuah while asking who gets to shape history, and why we continue to believe the stories we inherit. Duration: 90min Mythological figures have long served as vessels for morality, identity and national aspiration. Their stories are repeated until they begin to feel inseparable from the societies that tell them, their contradictions smoothed over … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Fragments of Tuah by Mark Teh and Five Arts Centre