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KonTra: Asirvatham
The Actors Studio Seni Teater Rakyat
28-30 October 2022
Pentas 2, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre
Review by Bilqis Hijjas
How do you cook up a successful and sustainable performance platform? Step 1: Start with some mouth-watering theatrical resources. In the case of KonTra, a new mixed-bill dance series at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre, the carrot is Pentas 2, the most sought-after black box theatre in town. Step 2: Spice with a challenge, enough to keep artists and audience interested, but nothing too rigid or restrictive. KonTra advocates dipping into the deep well of Malaysia’s traditional dances, to inspire the creation of new works. Step 3: To leave audiences totally sated, serve up the freshest talent you can find.
For participating artists in KonTra, director Zhafir Muzani, who is also resident choreographer at klpac, has leaned heavily on his contacts from ASWARA, the National Academy of Arts Culture and Heritage. The Faculty of Dance at ASWARA trains its students in a range of dance forms both Western and Asian, including bharatanatyam, and they embody a multicultural Malaysian dance identity like dancers trained nowhere else. But after the students graduate, most of them abandon the arts, due to lack of government support and social and financial capital. A few struggle through with their artistic careers, and for young and keen choreographers like them, who lack the resources to produce their own shows, platforms like KonTra prove vital. KonTra’s format gives ASWARA graduates a chance to shine – and they do.
After the first edition of Kontra in June focused on Malay dance, the recent October edition in conjunction with Deepavali focused on Indian dance traditions, with the theme of asirvatham, or blessings. The show kicked off with a community dance work choreographed by Agnesmary Selvaraj, which adhered faithfully to the theme. As a spoken narrative recounted blessings the choreographer had received during her career in dance, a group of women and girls performed a medley of bharatanatyam, Bollywood and Indian folk dances with winsome enthusiasm. It’s recalibrating to see the spontaneity of really young dancers on stage, a reminder of how live performance itself is a blessing, and for many young dance students being picked for a show is the height of achievement. As the group prepared to launch into another dance, Agnesmary trotted around her circle of students, smiling encouragingly at each of them. One of the girls let loose an unscripted grin of such gratitude and excitement, I felt tears spring to my eyes.
Then the show really got down to business with ‘Vali’, a duet by Ealbie Brendeant, a graduate of ASWARA and Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris. His work tends towards the fantastical, with heavy touches of physical humour, but this one was dark and dramatic, using hand gestures and strong facial expressions from Indian classical dance to express greed, desperation, and fierce desire. Low Xin Ping, who crab-walked across the stage on all fours with the intensity of a stalking dragon, stole the show from partner Syafiq Yusoff, who, despite his physical facility, could not match her commanding presence.
Harshini Sukumaran of Temple of Fine Arts had previously presented her work ‘Reflection of Pathways’, about the double-edged blessing of a trip to Milan, as a solo in my platform Protégées in March this year. In KonTra it enjoyed another outing as a duet. Although the duet achieved things a solo couldn’t – for example, one girl stood on the prop, a long black beam redolent with symbolism, as the other dancer pushed it around, revolving her like a statue in a museum – I missed Harshini’s personal magnetism as a dancer in her solo. But I was glad to see her in another sortie from Temple of Fine Arts, which usually keeps its dancers fully engaged within their bustling establishment. It’s been a pleasure to see Harshini venturing out to try new things, including performing in Kampung Baru, a full-length work by Germany-based choreographer Raymond Liew at KongsiKL earlier last month.
Mamad Hj. Samsuddin’s ‘At Mapley’ gave us a bright and bouncy dose of ASWARA’s recognisable brand of antic physical comedy, with a tale of three friends gossiping, bickering, flirting and zoning out together at a mamak restaurant. It is often a feature of Mamad’s work to offer diverse representations of sexual identity on stage, and ‘At Mapley’ did not disappoint: one of its characters is unashamedly camp but also touchingly human.
Mamad’s work was light relief before the onslaught of ‘Siapa’ by Mohd Nuriqram (also an ASWARA grad), which was as baffling and relentless as it was riveting. A dancer’s injury had forced Iqram to come in as a performer at the last minute, but I really can’t imagine the work without him in it. His solo character is juxtaposed against three other dancers, who form a freaky multi-headed hydra joined at the jawline, the two dancers at the back hooking their chins over the shoulders of the one in front. Their movements are fast, precise and carefully composed, but also totally deranged: the dancers squawk, shimmy, and attack each other. Iqram’s own quicksilver facial expressions, repertoir of sound effects and occasional explosions of acrobatics are frankly alarming.
I can hardly guess what the dance was about, except it might have been a veiled dig at the famously worshipful guru-student relationship at the heart of Indian classical dance. At the beginning, Iqram seemed to be attempting simple bharatanatyam sequences, starting over when he made a mistake. The dancers shouted cryptic phrases that sounded like cues from a dissatisfied dance teacher. By the end, the idea of educating an expressive quick-change wizard like Iqram in the basics of the navarasa, the nine moods of bharatanatyam, felt like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.
It was quite a leap from Iqram’s tongue-in-cheek ingenuity to the earnest emotiveness of the final dance work by Kishore Kumar (trained at Temple of Fine Arts and Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts as well as ASWARA) – and a risk for the production to end with what might usually be considered a downer. The duet ‘Within my mind..’ seemed to refer to depression, with dancer Kim Khoo carrying her proverbial black dog upon her shoulder in the form of Joey Mak, an interesting dancer new to me. Kathak foot rhythms and spins ratchet up the tension, but it is Kim’s furrow-browed sincerity which carries this work. In the midst of demanding physical phrases and tricky partner work, she maintained her emotional focus, and was still trudging onwards cradling her burden as the lights faded at the end.
I was grateful for the way Asirvatham presented different models for how classical Indian dance can influence contemporary creation. It was not just about borrowing a mudra here and a foot stamp there (although there was also that), but about embodying how different dance forms operate: stylistically, technically, rhythmically, narratively, and culturally. The ASWARA students have the background to attempt this, with less risk of superficial appropriation. I am grateful there is a new platform to spotlight their skills, and the skills of other young Malaysian choreographers. Let’s hope that KonTra becomes a regular and anticipated feature of the local arts calendar; it made a brave second serving, and has all the ingredients to succeed.
Photos of KonTra: Asirvatham are by Chan Kien Ming & leggo shoot and Chew Seng Cheong, courtesy of The Actors Studio Seni Teater Rakyat.
Bilqis Hijjas is the founding editor of Critics Republic. A producer and organizer in contemporary dance, she believes the main purpose of criticism is to enhance the audience’s appreciation of art.