The Theatrex Blog

要将已故新加坡剧作家郭宝昆《郑和的后代》里的文本诠释得好是困难的。要将文本全新演绎更是个挑战。马来西亚私立大学新纪元戏剧与影像系主任贺世平为学生们导演，灵感来自郭宝昆的《郑和的后代》的《郑和的后现代》是一个概念鲜明，极富对马来西亚文化与人民拥有大爱的作品。在长达两个多小时的戏里，贺导演并没有直接呈现郭氏的剧本来呈现出马来西亚人的处境，而是选择运用牢狱为背景，八名嫌犯要排演演出《郑和下西洋》,选择性地将《郑和的后代》里的文本置放在不同的场景中，让郭氏的文本在他的戏里产生互动之功能。

I am going to slightly depart from the usual format of a review to pose some questions. As a theatre writer, I look forward to good performances in terms of technical dexterity and strong concepts; however, most of the time, artists are recycling old concepts with new vocabularies. Conventional wisdom tells us that nothing is new and creative anymore. Lecturers of ideation have told us all – We are merely recreating from existing ingredients to create the new. The spirit of innovation and invention is waning. The same argument could be used in the performing arts. A case in point – The three performances in Programme B, the D’Motion International Dance Festival, co-presented by T.H.E. Dance Company (Singapore) and the Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPAC) held on Friday (18 December 2015).

Singapore dance company T.H.E. Dance Company premiered three of their pieces in Malaysia over the weekend. They are a part of the international dance festival presented by them and the Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPAC). Three pieces of work are Pellucid (Choreographer: Kuik Swee Boon), Dos Cuerpos (Choreographer: Iratxe Ansa) and The Highest Animal (Choreographer: Jacko Siompo). Having watched many performances, there are some that baffle me, not because they were difficult to watch, but they don’t seem to engage the audience, not to me at least. Engagement comes in different forms. Some dance performances prefer to showcase their technical prowess, while some prefer to articulate their philosophies. There are others who simply want to dance. Dance in itself cannot be separated from culture. Every choreographer and dancer has his/her personal culture. The body is a container of culture, and within it culture is being reinforced by cultural habits.

Dance performances communicate to us in a slightly different way, as compared to text-based performances, where the meaning contained within them would guide us to what to think and something to work on. Dance allows us to construct our own images through choreographer’s images on stage. At another level, bodies also tell us how they function and live. Most of us don’t even know how our body functions, physically and spiritually. Damansara Performing Arts Centre’s (DPAC) annual dance festival offering D’Motion aims to present dances that have new vocabularies that will allow us to know the world better. To dancers and budding choreographers, it is also a platform to discover new possibilities for their bodies and choreographies. DPAC 2016’s offering is impressive featuring works of Kim Dong-Kyu (Korea), Iratxe Ansa (Spain), Naoto Katori and Ikumi Kurosu (Japan) and Liu Yen-Cheng (Taiwan).