About the Watcher

Perhaps I should call this blog KL Dance DO. It’s tough to be an observer as well as a participant, but someone has to do it!

I am the President of MyDance Alliance (http://www.mydancealliance.org/), a non-profit organisation that supports and promotes the development of dance in Malaysia. I am also the director of the dance programme at Rimbun Dahan (http://www.rimbundahan.org) which provides residencies to contemporary dance choreographers who are interested in living and working in Malaysia, in collaboration with local artists. I’ve recently taken up a position as co-chair of the Support & Development Network of World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific, for which I edit their biannual magazine Channels. I also teach the Dance Criticism elective course in the Cultural Centre at the University of Malaya.

I am interested in emerging contemporary choreographers in Malaysia and the region, as well as the intersection of dance with feminism, nationalism and transnationalism, urban identities, interculturalism, history, and a sense of place.

I like to think of myself as a professional amateur, with my fingers in many pies (including a blog about pies, actually about food and the like: mudpies.wordpress.com) and I feel privileged to have the luxury to devote myself to my hobbies, and to have a city like KL in which to do it.

— Bilqis Hijjas