Front Row

The artistic director and choreographer of the Nyoba Kan Butoh Festival marries play and dance to explore the violence committed against the individual who does not conform, who cannot fit into prescribed roles and modes of being.

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Writing plays and situating them in the country in order to explore and query our history. He’d written ‘At a Plank Bridge’ which he considered a dark play. He’s now writing comedies and will at the readings at ‘The Silverfish Festival of Cabbages’ sharing his comedies.  The playwright also explores English as spoken by Malaysians and how they should sound and whether humor would translate beyond our boundaries if more Malaysian English were used.

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Art by female artists who have created a collective to support each other in their creative endeavors. But how important is it to underscore formally the gender-specificity of the collective’s exhibition (as in the catalog), especially when the art on display is not overtly about women and women’s issues only? Yet, these are not necessarily questions asked of exhibitions if the works are all by men.

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Getting Peter Ong to strip and tell us about his naked self. We see him on stage behind makeup and costume; but in the studio, in his jeans, t-shirt and baseball cap to cover his pate, he bares almost all about what he strives to do when singing, performing.

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The opening of a new art space that seeks to educate the public on art in the month we celebrate Malaya’s independence from colonial rule. The curator also points to the inaugural exhibition, ‘Picturing a Nation’ and details some Malaysian art history.

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This is indeed the year of festivals with even a bookstore running its own festival of intellectual discourses and brain food. In the coming month, Diversity 2015 will offer dances, jazz, comedy and art activities for KLites.

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It’s classical music dovetailing into classic rock. The conductor tells how he pulls the concert together--composing and arranging the score--as Freddie Mercury had it stored somewhere else. Havens hints of the ocular and the aural experience in store at the concert.

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The medical doctor and an expert in occupational healthcare is an accidental collector whose faith in the divine and love for the beautiful coincide in collecting paintings and drawings of Hindu temples.  He has even requested artists to accompany him on his ‘temple-hopping’

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Composing original music for a musical may begin with the composer all alone at his keyboard but eventually the composer involves others and then the rewrites. More rewrites. Nick and Cheryl share with us the creative process of working with untried and untested music, and what the composer and singer have to do in the collaboration to succeed.

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A retelling of Joseph’s story. Not the one who led Mary into Bethlehem but  Joseph, the dreamer,  the son of Jacob (later called Israel). What does this adaptation seek to do?

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