Ad astra per aspera — the journey to the stage

Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

Contact
UMa Dance Company
22 March 2009
Panggung Bandaraya

The concept of beauty is much-maligned in current art criticism, especially in the Western world. Beauty as a goal of art has been relegated to the Victorian era – now we cherish grotesqueries, novelty, sometimes even outright obtuseness. I must have an old-fashioned aesthetic, because I cannot help but be deeply moved by forms arranged for their beauty alone.

The performance of Contact I saw on Sunday afternoon falls into this vein. Quite a lot of its beauty, I think, can be attributed to the light-handed direction of choreographer Leng Poh Gee, interesting costumes by Tin Tan Tai Chen and sympathetic lighting by Low Shee Hoe.

UMa Dance Company in 'Contact'. Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

The structure of Contact itself was fairly straightforward: a bildungsroman of eight dancers who are about to graduate from the dance program at University of Malay, tracing their development from before they were admitted to the program to their triumphant presentation of their senior theses. When they start out they are wearing neutral tops and black bottoms. They shake envelopes containing their application letters, and introduce themselves. Despite differences in language and accent, their stories are fairly similar; most have an STPM qualification, and few have much previous dance training. They begin to move slowly as a group, alternating between a handful of poses, before exiting with a run.

Solo by Muhaini Ahmad. Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

This introduction is followed by a series of scenes in which, alone or in small groups, the dancers illustrate their own stories and the story of their undergraduate journey. The tone varies from Lim Chee Wei and Lim Cheng Choo’s cutesy romp of a duet, to Muhaini Ahmad’s thoughtful, almost fierce, solo. On the whole, though, the entire work is somewhat elegiac, solemn and monumental. Though their undergraduate careers may have in reality been messy, rushed, exciting but confusing struggles, hindsight here lends them a quiet focus.

In the penultimate scene, the dancers reassemble, wearing an assortment of green and white items. The envelopes they carried in the first scene have transformed into their theses, and the poses they first performed so painstakingly have now been woven into a dance. The implication, underlined by their different outfits, is that through their studies the dancers have created their own individuality, but what is also evident is how their training has disciplined their bodies into the strong uniform performing unit seen on stage. Ah, they’re a credit to their teachers…

Lim Chee Wei giving verbal movement directions, resulting in the zapin. Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

The learning process is reiterated in miniature (a play within a play) in one scene in which Chee Wei directs the girls from a text of movement instructions, “Left foot step diagonal front mid-level, right foot step diagonal front mid-level,” etc. The girls perform the phrase correctly but mechanically, and the movements are unrecognizable as anything else but the fulfillment of the directions. Then Muhaini enters and distributes a pile of sarongs. As the girls don their sarongs, their bodies settle into a different stance, and when the music strikes up they launch into a spirited Malay dance (zapin?). It’s a nice illustration of the necessarily hands-on body-on nature of learning to dance – those dry words on the page, how little they can communicate this physical understanding!

Pan May Tzy and Lim Siew Ling in 'Contact'. Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

There was a lot of cheering from the audience when the zapin began, perhaps because of the moment of comprehension, perhaps because zapin always seems to require cheering, or even more probably because here, finally, was something that the majority of the audience understood. If this is so, it’s a shame, because there were so many other equally enjoyable moments in Contact. In one, Pan May Tzy and Lim Siew Ling stand facing each other on the tiny seat of a bar chair. They hold hands and lean back. The precariousness of their position and the visible workings of their trust elicit a gentle thrill, matched when Chee Wei enters to feed Siew Ling off the chair in an elegant walkover. When a clutch of girls wearing tiered printed dresses – making them look strangely as if they’re wearing crumpled dollar bills – start a line dance, it morphs into something much more interesting, with Pan May Tzy practically shining in the front row. In Tan Shioa Por’s solo, her pushes, suspensions and falls show a real mastery of phrasing – and this from a girl who wanted to be an interior designer!

And Shee Hoe pulled out all the stops for lighting this performance – he’s like a kid in a candy store. During the zapin, a row of lights descends on a bar upstage, their faces covered in gobos (the pierced plates usually used to project patterns of light onto the stage).
Here, instead of the audience seeing only their projected shadows, the delicate filigree of Malay patterns on the gobos is seen directly. Later, during the graduation scene, three or four empty lighting bars descend above the performers’ heads and then begin to cycle up and down, their movement reflecting the structured but chaotic movement of the dancers beneath.

Lighting by Low Shee Hoe. Photo by Hafzan Zannie.

Apparently there were a few stagehands backstage putting pedal to the metal to achieve this effect, and their effort was both evident and worth it, as it was throughout the entire performance, and through the undergraduate training process itself – a lot of hard work backstage and beforehand to achieve the appearance of perfect beauty.

Many thanks to Hafzan Zannie @ Antradika, for the use of his photographs.