★★★★★ Dance Review: Planet [wanderer] by Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa (SIFA 2026)

Awe-inspiring, hypnotic dance-installation, that takes audiences on an existential odyssey through a world that’s hostile, hauntingly beautiful, and beyond our control. Some performances tell stories, but Planet [wanderer] creates a world. Surreal, unnerving, and at times profoundly unsettling, Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa’s latest collaboration unfolds less like a dance performance than a waking dream. Playing as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of … Continue reading ★★★★★ Dance Review: Planet [wanderer] by Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa (SIFA 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 30, 2026May 30, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Review

★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)

T.H.E toes the line between human and machine in this visually ambitious production, occasionally overwhelmed by technology superseding the very humanity it seeks to explore. Playing as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, before T.H.E Dance Company’s Strangely Familiar even begins, the world of the performance is already quietly consuming us. The soundscape hums through the theatre with an eerie, dystopian distance, … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 29, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Interview, Preview

SIFA 2026: Planet [wanderer] – An interview with choreographer Damien Jalet and scenographer Kohei Nawa in search of the body’s place in the world

Strange and bewitching, Planet [wanderer] is a rare theatre production that unfolds like a dream one cannot quite hold onto. Created by choreographer Damien Jalet and visual artist Kohei Nawa, the work brings eight dancers into a shifting terrain of textures and matter, where bodies bend, sway, and reorganise themselves like reeds in the wind, caught in a fragile balance between “power and vulnerability, harmony … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Planet [wanderer] – An interview with choreographer Damien Jalet and scenographer Kohei Nawa in search of the body’s place in the world

bakchormeeboyMay 26, 2026May 29, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, festival, Review, Theatre

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)

Five masters of performance confront mortality and artistic legacy in Liu Xiaoyi’s ambitious, cathartic cross-border work. What has always made theatre so beautiful is its temporality. Every performance exists only once; even repeated over multiple nights, no show will ever look or feel exactly the same again. It is fragile, fleeting, and alive precisely because it disappears the moment it is completed. By extension, the … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 26, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, festival, Hong Kong, Review

★★★★★ Dance Theatre Review: Dream In The Peony Pavilion by Suzhou Song and Dance Theatre (HKAF 2026)

Li Xing’s Dream in The Peony Pavilion transforms theatre into a living, visually stunning poem about love, desire and transcendence. HONG KONG – Watching Dream in The Peony Pavilion feels less like witnessing a dance production and more like entering a dream that slowly swallows the theatre whole. Before the show even begins, smoke blankets the stage, already creating this dreamscape as though we are … Continue reading ★★★★★ Dance Theatre Review: Dream In The Peony Pavilion by Suzhou Song and Dance Theatre (HKAF 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 23, 2026May 23, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, festival, Review, Theatre

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Makan Culture by Jo Tan and Krish Natarajan (SIFA 2026)

Earnest, wry and smile-inducing commentary on pride, joy, and criticism in the local arts and culture scene. Singapore has long measured success in terms of efficiency, practicality and polish, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the local arts scene often finds itself trapped in an exhausting cycle of comparison. Why watch a homegrown production when there’s Broadway and West End to assure us of ‘quality’? Why … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Makan Culture by Jo Tan and Krish Natarajan (SIFA 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 20, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Review, Theatre

★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Tempo by Kalle Nio and Fernando Melo (SIFA 2026)

Moments stretch, reverse and repeat through magic, circus and dance in this frustratingly slow meditation on time. Time is supposed to be objective, but more often than not, it is deeply relative; stretching, compressing and slowing according to emotion, attention and memory. Presented as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, Tempo takes that idea and turns it into a performance experiment, where … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Tempo by Kalle Nio and Fernando Melo (SIFA 2026)

bakchormeeboyMay 20, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Interview, Preview

SIFA 2026: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 – An interview with choreographer Kuik Swee Boon on coexistence and projection

In Strangely Familiar, the stage becomes a meeting ground between worlds. A shifting digital presence, neither fully human nor entirely machine, moves alongside five dancers, blurring the boundaries between body and projection, instinct and invention. Created by Kuik Swee Boon, founding artistic director of T.H.E Dance Company, the work unfolds less as a linear narrative than as an evolving encounter: a space where the human … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 – An interview with choreographer Kuik Swee Boon on coexistence and projection

bakchormeeboyMay 18, 2026May 23, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Interview, Preview, Theatre

SIFA 2026: Last Rites – An interview with director Liu Xiaoyi on the temporality of live performance and preparing for the end

What would it mean to stage your final act, not as a last bow, but as a reflection of everything that came before? In Last Rites, Liu Xiaoyi brings together five veteran performers from across Asia to confront this question, weaving their personal histories into a meditation on life, art, and what remains after both have passed. Presented at the 2026 Singapore International Festival of … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Last Rites – An interview with director Liu Xiaoyi on the temporality of live performance and preparing for the end

bakchormeeboyMay 18, 2026Leave a comment

Arts, Dance with Me, festival, Interview, Preview, Theatre

SIFA 2026: Hamlet – An interview with director Chela De Ferrari on inclusivity and who deserves to be seen onstage

At the heart of Hamlet lies one of the most enduring questions in Western theatre: who has the right to exist, to speak, to be seen. In her radical reimagining of the play, Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari shifts that question off the page and into the bodies of her performers: actors with Down syndrome who take centre stage in a work that refuses both … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Hamlet – An interview with director Chela De Ferrari on inclusivity and who deserves to be seen onstage