thursday:
triology was a great deal of fun, although i can't help thinking it's a pity to sacrifice sound for theatrics? but i did enjoy myself, particularly in the second half of the program, and their performance was sassy, engaging and comedic. (how many people can write a piece of chamber music about gazpacho or set to music a poem that begins: "i dreamt of the wrong girl last night?") and then there was the seven-layer chocolate cake at seah street deli with su-lin and tjan.



saturday:
secreto y malibu could have gone wrong in so many ways, and the miracle is that not only did it never go wrong i was so pleased when i came out i got quite high thinking it over. i am not usually fond of modern dance, and there is always the danger of finding yourself stuck through long incomprehensible pieces of "avant-garde" drivel. then a few days before zaobao ran an article about censorship and controversy in art and secreto y malibu was one of the pieces mentioned and that made me somewhat apprehensive, and, as i was waiting for the performance to start, even slightly regretful - perhaps i should have got a ticket to count basie instead? - maybe i was especially receptive to it having finished helga reubsamen's the song and the truth the day before, but i was really pleased with the piece, and all its slyness, antagonism, restless sexuality and combative existence of the dancers resonated with the malicious, manipulative hostility and uneasy interdependence of those characters of the book. and the supposed controversy over urination that made me doubtful about the production turned out proverbial billows in a ladle - it was barely obvious, and when it came, seemed natural, perhaps a little surprising but not at all offensive. if anything it seemed inspired mockery by participation, a touch playful, a touch spiteful, smug: her partner, feet buried in soil, was a tree being watered. it struck me too, that there was also something very ovidian about the motif of woman/tree/waiting.