Front Row

Hear the stars of the past gather to talk about ‘how it was’ as they prepare for their collective concert, titled ‘Malam Bintang Nostalgia’. In this concert they--our two singer-guests together with Datin Paduka Julie Sudiro and Datuk Andre Goh--will fund-raise for the SEED Foundation. They share their thoughts on the changes in the local music industry. 

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The founder of Pusaka returns to introduce not only a performing group--the Mak Yong Cahaya Matahari from Kuala Besut,  Kelantan--its lineage and and the weight of its inherited legacy,  but also to tell about the tales the company will be performing. In the course of the conversation, he informs about a project underwritten by Asia Foundation that seeks to empower and sustain a Mak Yong community.

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After taking ‘Baling’ to South Korea, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, the director gives a report on how to take a national event overseas, and then points to what needs to change for it to take the show to Europe and again to Kyoto.
But before the European and Japanese excursions, Baling will be played to a local audience. How differently does the director and creative producer need to think to make the work resonate universally.

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We introduce an articulate young classically trained concert pianist who not only expresses herself well with words but also at the piano as she teases music from the instrument. In explaining why she titled her recital ‘Fantasie & Transcriptions’, she provides access to the music, helping us understand what the composers--Mozart, Busoni, Ravel and Rachmaninoff--were attempting to accomplish in those she will play in the upcoming recital.

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The dancer-choreographers share on an intercultural project which saw Malaysians collaborate with European performers in an eight-day residency. They explore ideas about culture and identities and express them through the vocabulary of dance. Marc Colpaert, cultural philosopher as well as Katja Grässli, Jinn and Chai Vivan - all dancers and choreographers talk about the intercultural exchange in their project Where Two Seas Meet.

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The artistic director tells about the evolution of the Shakespeare Demystified series of the Bard’s plays since its first in 2011, when the informal group, now incorporated, staged Julius Caesar. The actors explain why Shakespeare is such a draw for them and the challenges performing his plays to contemporary audiences. The group is currently staging its abridged form of Shakespeare’s  ‘The Merchant of Venice’.

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Often we take our orientation from the West. Including our notions of history and the development of intellectual ideas. However, in this exhibition which maps our country’s modern art history, we are challenged and compelled to confront this default mode of thinking, and in that stroke, the exhibition problematizes our understanding of ‘modern’ and what constitutes modern art when executed by those from this soil.

The curator, Tan Hui Koon, provides not only names Malaysian modern artists but also points to their influences and the contributions from different collectives.

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On a quick visit to the country to perform over the weekend, the young 22-year-old concert pianist takes time to tell about the role of music in his life and what it means to be so wrapped in composers, compositions, musical notes and a sonic world. As he will be playing Szymanowski, the pianist posits some ideas in the music that we could wrap our hearts and heads around.

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The artistic director visits BFM89.9 not only to share on the upcoming contemporary dance performance but to offer insights into the dances in the program which he choreographed in 2010 and after. These dances have been inspired by events in the country; and through these dances, questions about appropriate responses to these events.

Seru means "to call, to appeal, to exclaim." Perhaps the call is to “respond, to be, to rise, to gather, to support, or just to feel.”

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Continuing with its celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, klpac offers R&J, which stands for Romeo and Juliet. But with a twist.  The Australian director, who kickstarted the creation of a local theatre company performing Shakespeare-only, at least to-date, tells how this version of Romeo & Juliet recreates the kind of excitement and tension that must have been generated for the young star-crossed lovers.  He is accompanied by two of the four performers who will likely have their take on the oft-told and regularly staged tale.

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