BUSINESS TIMES REVIEW:

Arts

Published June 4, 2007

S'PORE ARTS FESTIVAL

Multimedia journey marks a welcome return By CHRISTOPHER LIM IT would be hard to imagine a more auspicious return to the Singapore Arts Festival by musician Mark Chan than his multimedia performance over the weekend. Dreaming of Kuanyin, Meeting Madonna, which wrapped up its two-night run on Saturday, ended Chan's four-year Artsfest hiatus. It was excellent despite his humble description of the project as rough round the edges.     Working well: The dance choreography was fairly literal in its symbolism The minimalistic stage setup belied the rich layers of music, dance and video in store on opening night. Chan and erhu player Sunny Wong, seated at the front of the stage, formed a triangle with percussionist Javaveeran Bomeenathan Krishnan, mirrored by a triptych of projection screens above them. The autobiographical project traces Chan's encounter with an apparition a decade ago, and journeys to the present day. Despite the specificity of the project's roots, the universality of its exploration of insomnia, peace and conflict, stood out in performance. The most junior member of the creative team, video artist Brian Gothong Tan, held his own against Angela Liong's choreography and Chan's music. One particularly effective visual device was the transformation of human figures into figures of pure light, which made them seem like disembodied spirits, floating on the screens. The dance choreography was fairly literal in its symbolism. Harmony and homogeneity were represented by the dancers swaying in tandem, whereas conflict and emerging individuality were played out in a brawl. This straightforwardness worked surprisingly well as a foil to Tan's often surreal imagery. A nice touch was the use of a single male dancer, Ming Poon, in counterpoint to four women dancers. Liong explained in the post-premiere dialogue session that Poon played multiple roles throughout the performance, ranging from Chan himself, to a messianic figure, to everyman. But it was the music that really stood out. Chan's four-octave range was on good display, constantly engaging in all its incarnations, from unearthly falsetto to witty dialogue. Wong's erhu performance was beautiful, and sent chills running up my spine, especially during duets with Chan on Chinese flute, and with pre-recorded electric guitar played by Wil Kolen. If this is the kind of quality that we can expect from Chan, then his new album should be well worth waiting for.