Front Row

In the middle of the 19th century, under the first President of the French Republic, Napoleon III, major public works were undertaken in Paris. The city transformed under urbanist, Baron Haussmann, who destroyed much of the medieval city. From the baron’s name, the term Haussmannization, which is defined as “the creative destruction of something for the betterment of society.” Artists responded to the time and a new visual language emerged.

Manet le dejeuner sur l'herbe, exhibited in the 1863 (rejected by the Paris Salon)

Camile Pisarro, Boulevard Monmatre, 1897

Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, 1873

Degas’s Ballet dancers

Henri Toulouse Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

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Our guest, from Singapore’s Sam Kiang Huay Kwan Chinese Opera Group, an arts society, dispels some misconceptions of Chinese operas and shares what will be presented in a performance lecture to unfold the magic of Yue and Huangmei operas practiced by that arts society. Hemakes a case for these operas as vehicles to help inculcate good morals in society.

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As a first outing, staging a play, the production house undertakes a devised work centred in a published collection of 111 letters by a Taiwan author to his deceased partner. Our guests tell about the process of devising and the challenges of taking declarations of love and loss and creating out of them a performance with the clarity of a beginning, middle and an end. They also share insights into this production which attempts to break conventions.

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Ensemble Virama is a chamber ensemble which appeared on the scene a couple of years ago, and has indeed been performing very very lovely music. In a short time it has staged several performances, always augmented with talks about the music being performed. This time around, quintets.

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From poetry to song, from jock to musician. From winning a singer-songwriter competition to singing in World Expo (Shanghai 2010) to travelling on the road all by himself and trying to break into the music scene. Then the break comes when at the nadir he takes one more shot at his dream. Hear Ariff, who opened for Yuna, share his story and hear his singing.

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In discussing what a performer does on the stage, our guest leaps into the various schools of  theatre-training and approaches to the craft of acting, from Stanislavski's system to Meyerhold biomechanics to clowning; from the classical to the contemporary.

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A colourful and celebratory exhibition of 16 works completed over five years of  the performers of Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, the young actors, who were once disenfranchised children. The Kattaikkkuttu is a traditional folks theatre of Tamilnadu but the performing arts school is unique in its mission and purpose. The artist-photographer talks about the process and his reasons for capturing these images.

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The guest discusses how he marries art--watercolours--with conservation. He tells about the works, paintings of pre-independence buildings found along four early streets of Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaka and Singapore. His uses these images to draw attention to the urgent need for a more humane urban planning policy and the need for heritage conservation. The absence of which only darkens our heritage.

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Writhing, a solo show by Bree Jonson, examines the inner fragility yet exterior harshness of creatures found on the seabed. Bree joins us to tell us more about her paintings and sculptures inspired by the underwater world. 

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Our guests tell about the very first Malaysia Percussion Festival Competition (MPFC), and its aim to provide a creative environment for people from all walks of life and ages, with various skill levels and cultural background to explore, innovate, educate and build communities. The festival also seeks to create a culture that promotes overall wellness in terms of thinking skills, communication skills, organizing skills, and rhythmic skills. They describe what constitutes a percussive instrument.

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