Dancer, choreographer and artist Chan Kar Kah can thank the movie The Memoirs Of A Geisha for opening her thoughts.
She recollects she was 10 when she watched the romantic drama movie, which made her conscious that Chinese and Japanese tradition share a lot of similarities. This realisation – and fascination – has stayed with the KL-based Chan for the longest time.
This week, she’s going to share her ardour for each cultures in an experimental dance show Serenity: A Glimpse Through The Traditional Lenses, which is a part of the George Town Festival 2022 programming.
This free admission occasion will happen at Penang’s Hin Bus Depot arts centre on July 19 and 20.
Serenity: A Glimpse Through The Traditional Lenses is impressed by two classical tragic feminine characters in Kabuki (Japanese dance-drama) – Sagi Musume (Heron Maiden) and Yokihi (Lady Yang Gui Fei).
The show additionally pushes the dancer/choreographer’s inventive boundaries, with Teochew opera and Nanquan (Chinese martial arts) thrown into the equation.
Chan Kar Kah is exploring the inventive potentialities by merging components of Japanese kabuki and Chinese opera. Photo: Joie Koo
“I want to update these two classic characters for the contemporary audience. The show will be presented by contemporary dancers who also have classical ballet and traditional dance backgrounds,” says Chan, 25, who has stored busy with pageant dance work, together with the Scarlet Mela Festival of Arts (2022) and Bandung Arts Festival (2021).
Serenity: A Glimpse Through The Traditional Lenses, choreographed by Chan, options dancers Ker Yee Teng and Winnie Tay Yi Xuan in collaboration with cinematographer Joie Koo, Malaysian composer Yii Kah Hoe, and visible artist Sim Hoi Ling.
Chan, who runs the performing arts group Marrow Collective, provides her new manufacturing is just not purely to fulfill a performative purpose. Marrow Collective, based in KL in 2018, works in interdisciplinary, experimental and neighborhood circles.
Dancer Ker Yee Teng at Rimbun Dahan’s Rumah Uda Manap conventional home. Photo: Joie Koo
“This show is to discover the similarities between these two completely different disciplines and search a steadiness between them,” she says.
It was throughout Chan’s dance residency at Rimbun Dahan this yr (January to April) that Chan conceptualised Serenity: A Glimpse Through The Traditional Lenses. She says that she observed the conventional kampung homes at the artwork centre, situated in Kuang, Selangor, had components of different cultures.
The upcoming dance manufacturing additionally consists of a quick movie, which Chan directed. It was shot at Rimbun Dahan’s Rumah Uda Manap conventional home, an on-site efficiency and a workshop.
“These kampung houses had the exterior of a traditional Malay house, standing on stilts with vernacular roofs. However, on the inside, I noticed that Chinese cultural elements were present in the interior of the house, most notably on the carvings and etchings on the panels of the house.
“This newfound discovery prompted me to reconcile these experiences I’m having as a Malaysian Chinese, through cross-culture and cross-discipline experimentation,” she shares.
Next month, Chan reveals she might be presenting a dance manufacturing based mostly on the legend of Mahsuri, which might be proven at the Melaka Art & Performance Festival on Aug 26-28.
