Singapore Dance Theatre and Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Esplanade Theatre | 2 Jun 2006, 8pm

The Singapore Dance Theatre (SDT) and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra took part in last year’s Singapore Season in London, but have never worked together until Quest, which commenced this year’s Singapore Arts Festival with a trio of world premieres by three dance artists from China, Korea and Singapore.

Quest confirmed what regular dance-goers know about the SDT - the company fares better in the contemporary canon than in the classics; its production values have grown over the last five years, while its dancers could benefit from more live music. Yet, I found the triple bill somewhat distant. I felt as if I were gawking at exotic foreigners.

It is hard to pinpoint why Quest left me cold. Was it the dancing? The contemporary Chinese scores? Perhaps it was the contrived curtain call at the end of each piece, which made the dancers look like synchronised swimmers after a high-kicking romp in the pool. Or maybe it was just startling to see the same fevered trembling in all the dances, as though the choreographers had jointly devised this physical shorthand for inner turmoil or struggle and tossed it into their own works.
The triptych opened with Beijing-based Gaoyan Jinzi’s “INTO”, set to Hong Kong composer Chan Hing-yan’s 2001 ominous “Illusions”. It began with a big-haired dame in heavy robes, seen from the back, brooding on her reflection in a row of ornate oval mirrors, which showed pale-faced women and men advancing downstage. The palatial glitter yielded to strange and hushed dreamscapes of tulle-swathed figures inching across the stage like sea anemones; upturned legs splitting apart or bending into diamonds; couples twining slowly on the floor.

Then the chalk-faced dancers faced off in furious lines. They paired up as bride and groom in fleeting unions, a long red sleeve veiling each woman. When they stepped through a continuous tunnel of mirror frames, their unbroken passage recalled life’s endless cycles. Confronting the mirrors again, the lushly dressed lady shed the finery and wig to reveal the wiry build of long-time dancer Mohd Noor Sarman. I should have seen this coming.

I also missed the point of “The Path, the Illusion”, which Korean choreographer Kim Eun-hee had made to composer-conductor Tan Dun’s shrill-edged “Fire Ritual” from 1996. Little seemed to unite the cast of headscarfed peasants as a community or, at least, an engaging bunch of characters. They ran and stomped their feet a lot. The movement, though, often had an angular thrust that was not all bland; in one weirdly droll pose, the pelvis jutted far forward until the back was curved.

While Jeffrey Tan, the SDT’s resident choreographer, fared slightly better with his “F.U.S.E.”, it contained too many ideas. Set to the remodelled folk wailings of Beijing composer Tang Jianping’s 1997 “Hou Tu”, earth mother Xia Haiying sailed past a constant stream of sand from above. A tribal clan gathered against palette-shaped platforms and two smoking cauldrons; slashing-brushwork projections echo the dark gashes marking their costumes. The muscular dancing cleaved through space in small blocks and large groups, but the dance’s “man and nature are one” business ultimately escaped me.