★★★★★ 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: Blind Runner by Mehr Theatre Group and Amir Reza Koohestani

A deceptively simple premise of a husband and wife’s relationship torn apart by imprisonment turns into something much more devastating in the face of political activism. Performance watched on 1 August, 8pmDuration: 60 minutes In Iran, where dissent can turn an ordinary life into one shaped by surveillance, imprisonment and separation, freedom is never simply an abstract ideal. In Iranian theatremaker’s Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Blind Runner by Mehr Theatre Group and Amir Reza Koohestani

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Le Père (The Father) 父亲 by Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

by D.Y. Mandarin adaptation of acclaimed Florian Zeller play finds heartbreaking new resonance; spotlighting the Asian sensibilities of a family at war with Alzheimer’s disease.  In theatre, there are few plays that break the trust between audience and performer in its storytelling; And with an unassuming title such as ‘The Father’, the audience is lured into a false sense of familiarity. But, when the naturalistic, … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Le Père (The Father) 父亲 by Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

★★★★☆ Dance Review: Diary VII ・ The Story Of…… by Mui Cheuk-yin

Mui Cheuk-yin transforms a chance encounter with a stray cat into a profound reflection on migration, memory and the circular nature of time. Diary entries often feel like streams of consciousness, a flow of thought. So for a dance piece to take inspiration from one, that results in a performance where there is no dramatic overture, no attempt to overwhelm. Instead, the theatre fills with … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Dance Review: Diary VII ・ The Story Of…… by Mui Cheuk-yin