S-U-P-E-R SATURDAY !!!

Who would have thought the normal dull Saturdays that are always between tiring Fridays and treasured Sundays could turn out to be super Saturday. An experimental dance performance by a group of non-chereographer hopefuls, a showcase of the plantation industrial worker`s plight for justice and to sum up the day, a treat at Atrium by our young human rights lawyer, Edmond Bon who is going to Oxford soon (that lucky bastard!). Five Art Centre `s dance proteges - Hari Azizan, Gabrielle Low, Adrian Kisai, Mark Teh and Vernon Muang (to name a few) braved the drizzling afternoon to perform mind boggling dance steps that are sure to put your conscience, thinking and definitely patience to test. For more details of the dance performance and workshops, visit this blog.

My fave dance pieces will be Gabrielle`s depiction of the culture of greed and consumption inherent in the capitalist society. A dancer was seen feeding the other dancers continuously with increasing pace in order to fulfill the demands of the "consumers". The dancer himself (Mark actually) feed himself with imaginary scraps from the sidewalk, depicting inequality and injustice that the labor force has to endure. Another favourite would be this piece called "The More We Get Together", exploring the current controversy of showing your affection in public. Further examining the blurry boundary of morality and state interference in our personal matters.



The last piece, of which the title could be mistaken as some contemporary tongue twister, saw Mark Teh exploring notions of freedom of expression, censorship, media propaganda, obsession with celebrities (perhaps? What with the cry of Erra Fazira repeatatively by one of the dancer) with a dramatic finish where all the dancers gathered together at one corner and chanting something like "If they hate it, they can still live" . The dancers chanted this while waving the national flag before each one of them put the flag in their mouth. I intepret the end as symbolizing blind patriotism, where we sucumb ourself to the grand plan designed by the powers that be of herding us together under the single control of the State. Thats how I see it lah! They could be swallowing the flags out of sheer frustration as the viewers could' nt get the whole dance piece at all!

Deconstructing the accepted idea of "dance" indeed they had but the on-lookers and bystanders are still confused with the whole performance. Its kind of obvious from the laughing track they produced at the wrong time. I guess, democratisation of artistic process still requires more time and interest from the society.

BTW, the Parti Sosialis Malaysia `s showcase on industrial plantation workers was a great hit among the CM innoncent by-standers and shop owners too. Although the exhibition which was decorated with radical icons with "red" as the theme color, alot of people decided to walk a bit closer and actually read what`s posted on the display board. Wow! Not to mention, SBs dressed casually like any other CM frequents took turns checking out the exhibition. The organizer, when casually interviewed by me, claimed that perhaps this will be the first and the last time such event is allowed in CM. Well, what can I say except - Viva le revolution, CM!

Event at Atrium was even cool as I get to reunite with some familiar faces in the activism circle. As cool as it went, I rushed home to witness Ghana buried Republic of Czech with a 2-0 result. Ghana played like ballerina in boots and Czech has alot of head hitting on the wall to do, as they failed to repeat their great performance.

What an interesting dayit was after all!