harbor: work-in-process sharing 7 May 2022

ABOUT

With harbor, dance returns to one of its earliest contexts and pays homage to the vital connection between dance and ritual through a watery, autobiographical lens. The work is underscored by the lived experience of the artist’s maternal grandmother (婆婆), who was forced to cross a sea, fleeing from the Japanese invasion of her birth home in Guangzhou to Singapore.

In collaboration with the composer and sonic artist, Chong Li-Chuan, this current phase of research focuses upon the development of sound elements for the stage performance of harbor, which will premiere at Tanzfabrik Berlin in February 2023.

At this sharing, Jee Chan reflects on orality, disembodiment and the potential of being danced (by something or someone else). The session is framed as a “listening-in” where the audience is invited to witness the movements and murmurations of their work-in-process.

This presentation is organized within the frame of the ARTEFACT creative residency programme, hosted by Dance Nucleus. It is supported by Goethe-Institut Singapore (as part of RECONNECT) and the National Arts Council, Singapore.

PUBLIC EVENTS

The artists will hold a work-in-process sharing:
Saturday, 7 May, 7 - 9pm

Email Valerie-Ann.Tan@goethe.de to register

THE ARTISTS

Jee Chan is an artist, dancer and choreographer whose practices make visible that which is always already there (big and true, just beneath the surface). Paying attention to how histories settle and sediment in the body, they navigate questions surrounding the displaced body and what it can perform. In regarding choreography as an expanded formal proposition, their work has manifested across a diverse range of media including performance, video, installation, text and photography.

Chong Li-Chuan is a Singapore-born composer who is passionate about philosophy, culture and the arts. As a practitioner, Li-Chuan's activities run the gamut of acoustic composition, electroacoustic sound, sonic art, installation, free improvisation, ‘live’ electronics, and collaborative work with artists from different disciplines such as theatre, dance, spoken word, architecture, design and visual art.
 

The Space

136 GOETHE LAB 136 GOETHE LAB is a new project space at the Goethe-Institut Singapore. Housed in the former library and reading room, the space is intended as a response to the need for physical spaces for the arts, and an ongoing conversation with the public and arts community in Singapore.

harbor is supported as part of the open call RECONNECT for 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space.