Looking back to move on

A Five Arts veteran teams up with a young director to present a new show.

FROM a humble start 25 years ago, the Five Arts Centre (FAC) has become a beacon of the local arts scene.

To celebrate this significant milestone, it will stage a show that brings the whole Five Arts experience full circle, featuring an iconic veteran and a young director.

Gostan Forward presents dancer-choreographer Marion D’Cruz, 54, in a performance lecture that will see her performing excerpts of her most acclaimed works over her 35-year career. It will be directed by the irrepressible Mark Teh, 28, at the Central Market Annexe in Kuala Lumpur next week.

At a recent interview, Teh says: “Marion is well known as a lecturer and choreographer, but there’s a whole generation of young people in the arts who have yet to watch her dance. Gostan Forward presents a mixture of lecture and dance, which results in quite interesting tension. Marion is older than the nation, and this is a rare chance to see her perform.”

A generation has never seen me dance, says Marion D’Cruz, seen here with Mark Teh. – ART CHEN / The Star

Having co-founded FAC when Teh was barely out of diapers, D’Cruz has seen it all. Not one to sit back and wax lyrical about her achievements, she’s determined that the centre continues to evolve.

“Gostan Forward and our other projects came about after a year of rigorous discussions on what Five Arts means. Where do we stand in the industry? What are the trajectories we are headed towards? What are the gaps in our development?”

“There are 14 of us in Five Arts, from those in their 50s to 20s. At the risk of sounding pompous or academic, I want more rigorous intellectual discourse on our arts scene, which contains everything from the sublime to the ridiculous!”

D’Cruz feels that despite the development of facilities and educational and financial support, dance activity appears to be in a lull.

“I feel that right now, not enough is happening. Aside from A. Aris Kadir, Pat Ibrahim and one or two others, the scene is not as vibrant as it should be. One problem is that nowadays you can get away with doing many little pieces instead of a big one-hour or 90-minute production. If you compare the situation now to the 70s, 80s and 90s, when Mew Chang Tsing, Lee Swee Keong and Aida Redza were breaking through, I feel things are quiet.”

Which is a shame, as she believes dance is arguably the most open of all the arts in Malaysia.

“There really aren’t any restrictions. Short of full frontal nudity, you can get away with anything in dance. Last year at the Emergency Festival, for example, we did Communist dances. You can do a highly political work and call it a dance about freedom or war. It’s true that to a certain extent we all self-censor, but I really try not to.”

Looking back on FAC and delving into her own career for Gostan Forward has been an emotional process for Marion. Her late husband, Krishen Jit, was one of the founders of the centre.

“It has been tough mentally, more than physically. It’s a case of the more you remember, the more you remember. You find yourself recalling all sorts of things. Over the last two months, we’ve had 20 rehearsals and so much came out. Much of it is wonderful, but some of it is sad and horrible, too.

“A generation has never seen me dance, even though I have done what feels like 100 years of work. This has been good in that it’s kicked me out of my comfort zone.

“In the 70s, Kee Thuan Chye directed me at USM (Universiti Sains Malaysia). In 1985 I did two projects with Ramli Ibrahim. While it was great, I decided I didn’t want to take direction any more. Working with Mark on Gostan Forward isn’t quite like being directed. Still, I’m on the opposite side. During rehearsals, it almost felt like I was having an out-of-body experience!”

D’Cruz has a reputation for being eccentric; the term “dance terrorist” was even used on her. However, she is famed for her handphone dancers (Let Me Speak?, 1994) and the quirky “kitchen sink” social critique, Bunga Manggar Bunga Raya (2007).

“I know I’ve done a lot of stuff, some of it very good, some of it crap. A lot of it has been extremely unusual, and pushed boundaries. Yet I don’t see them as deliberate. I may have used handphones in the dance, but it might have been a commentary on the explosion of handphones in the mid-90s and how they affected our communication,” she says.

D’Cruz has been able to balance her passion as an artiste with her role as an educator. “I’m lucky. At first I just taught English. But now I teach courses like culture & society, improvisation, dance history and dance aesthetics and appreciation at various different institutions.

“My style as a teacher is to be provocative. I can jump on the table or sit on a student’s lap. But I think I’ve developed such a reputation that if I were to slip and fall during a performance, everybody would think it was deliberate.”

For someone who first burst onto the dance scene in the early 80s, she has seen a lot. One positive aspect is that the documentation of dance has improved.

“At Five Arts, we have videos and tapes of all the old performances. But these are all performances for an audience.

“If you’re talking about a specific dance performance for the camera, with direction and lighting, and us being involved in editing and so on, then that’s very rare. There’s simply no money and time for such a thing. When I was watching Bunga Manggar Bunga Raya, I wished they could have changed certain camera angles. But we just don’t have the budget to do such things at the moment.

“Still there are a lots of interesting dance films out there. There is a fantastic film by director Ein Lall on Chandralekha, a great dancer who is very philosophical about dance. Slyvie Guillem has done some very good dance films. Even Fred Astaire is an example of someone who’s dance skills have been very well captured.”

Gostan Forward is one of a string of projects that FAC has lined up for this year.

Soundtrack composer/new media technopreneur Hardesh Singh is in the process of organising new media literacy workshops. Next month, Singaporean Natalie Hennedige will direct her play, Cuckoo Birds, starring Anne James and Jo Kukathas.

The electronic opera, Conference of the Birds, directed by Chee Sek Thim and scored by Johan Othman, is scheduled for July.

August will see Fahmi Fadzil and the Projek Wayang showcasing Wayang Cahaya, an experimental attempt to place wayang kulit in an urban context. The same month, independent filmmaker Fahmi Reza will give a lecture performance on the radical student movements of the late 60s and early 70s.

In October, filmmaker Liew Seng Tat will present an innovative project involving the relocation of a Malay kampung house, while Conference of the Birds will make a return in November.

‘Gostan Forward’ will be shown on May 8 and 9 at 8.30pm, and on May 9 and 10, 2.15pm, at the Annexe Gallery, Central Market, KL. Entry is by a minimum donation of RM10. For details visit www.fiveartscentre.org/, call/fax Five Arts Centre at 03-7725 4858, or e-mail [e-mail].