Legacies both old and new

After taking a break last year, the Singapore Arts Festival returned on August 12 with a new name and a new direction.

The Singapore International Festival of Arts or SIFA, as it’s now known, presents fewer productions despite enjoying a similar state budget, at fewer venues and with only a few productions over any weekend. 

For this, the first year, with their commissioned works not yet realised, SIFA has been inevitably more “International” than “Singapore”. Last weekend, local and foreign audiences enjoyed two special treats from Japan and South Africa that truly reflected this year’s theme “Legacy and the Expanded Classic”.

At the newly renovated Victoria Theatre on Friday, Odawara Art Foundation’s “Sambaso” showed the strong relationship between the past and the present while reflecting the historic venue itself, 19th century glamour restored outside and 21st century functional stage and cosy auditorium inside. 

After the “Nohgaku Hayashi” (“Noh Music Medley”), which aurally and spiritually transported the audience to another land and time, Kyogen master and living national treasure Mansaku Nomura portrayed Tarokajya in a Kyogen play “Boshibari” (“Tied to a Pole”). Tied up because of his servant character’s mischief, Mansaku showed why he is a living legend – his stage presence and comic timing were all intact. 

After the intermission, his son Mansai Nomura II, another Kyogen master who also performs in modern plays and films as well as runs Setagaya Public Theatre, took centre stage in “Sambaso”, an ancient divine dance, and his immaculate movements showed how tradition has been passed on from generation to generation.

Another highlight was internationally renowned photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’s set and costume design, which added to the performance but not at the cost of the performers. It’s an example of how contemporary arts interact with traditions, with neither distortion nor adaptation. 

The following evening at 72-13, TheatreWorks’ home studio, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s statement, quoted in the programme, “I could not have fought against the discrimination of apartheid and not also fight against the discrimination of homophobia” rang loud and clear throughout the double bill, made up of dancer and choreographer Mamela Nyamza and playwright and actress Mojisola Adebayo’s collaboration “I Stand Corrected” and the former’s solo “Hatched”.

The former was a happy marriage between dance and theatre as the two performers retold, and commented, with spoken words, physical movements and visual images on the event in which a lesbian bride was raped and killed on the way to her wedding. The story was specific yet the subject matter universally relevant especially in Singapore where homophobia has always been high. 

The latter was Nyamza’s autobiographical work and, with an onstage presence by her son, reflected her life as an artist, a divorced mother and a lesbian with contemporary dance and music. The two works combined, notwithstanding a one-hour intermission, reaffirmed why we love international festivals of arts that offer more than we’ve ever heard, seen, and most importantly, felt.

 

Special thanks to Tay Tong for all assistance.

 

MORE TO COME 

Tonight until Saturday, Jerome Bel works with Theatre Hora and professional actors with learning disabilities in “Disabled Theatre”.

The Southbank Centre London Sinfonietta collaborates with the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra in “Listen to the 20th Century”, with different programmes every night. 

Tickets for Robert Wilson’s “Peter Pan”, performed by the Berliner Ensemble and Cocorosie, from next Thursday until September 13 are now the hottest in the region. 

For more, visit www.SIFA.sg.