home > art > resident artists

Joey Chua & mcebisi BhaYi

Click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

TRACING: DANCE DIALOGUES IN SINGAPORE AND SOUTH AFRICA

1 & 2 August, 8pm
Fonteyn Studio Theatre, Federal Academy of Ballet, Level 5 Wisma FAB, 1-3 Jalan 14/22, 46200 Petaling Jaya.

Free entrance, but seats limited. The performance is approximately 25 minutes long, and will be followed by a discussion and q&a session with the dancers.

Mcebisi, a South African Xhosa man who swears by his customs, and Joey, a Singaporean woman who can barely speak her Chinese dialect Hakka, decided to start a dialogue. After months of letter writing and intimate sharing of childhood memories, their exchange shifts to the present as they come face-to-face, finding both common ground and contrasts in each other's dance background, personality and physicality. In tracing the minds and bodies of one another, they hope a new dance vocabulary emerges on their creative journey together.

The dance collaboration between Joey Chua and Mcebisi Bhayi continues to evolve as a work-in-progress showing in KL followed with appearances in Hong Kong and at Singapore Esplanade's dan:s festival. The finished work will premiere at the FNB Dance Umbrella 2009, a major dance festival in South Africa. Chua, one of Singapore's rising young dancer-choreographers, has been involved in many collaborative projects that have taken her to festivals around the world. Bhayi is a dancer, choreographer and educator who has been nominated as Most Promising Male Dancer in Contemporary Style at the FNB Dance Umbrella 2001.

Both Chua and Bhayi are currently resident choreographers at Rimbun Dahan, a centre for developing traditional and contemporary art forms in an indigenous environment, just outside Kuala Lumpur.

For more information about the showing, contact Bilqis Hijjas 017 310 3769 .

Singaporean choreographer Joey Chua has been in residence at Rimbun Dahan since the end of April. She was joined in July by Mcebisi Bhayi. Mcebisi and Joey's collaboration is the first instance ever of a female Asian choreographer working with a male African choreographer to produce a single work.

The images below and the video above show Mcebisi and Joey improvising in the studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Last updated 16 July 2008

home · about · art · architecture · environment