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Psychosynthesis
Asia Ballet Theatre & Kenny Shim Dance Collective
Petaling Jaya Performing Arts Centre
Coming soon: 4-5 February 2023
Review by Bilqis Hijjas
A few months ago, I gave a talk about how we don’t deserve ballet bodies, here in Malaysia. We all want our dancers young and gorgeous, long and lithe, with six-packs, and legs that go up to their ears, almost superhuman in their physical abilities – but without governments that invest in dance in the long term, without audiences who will pay high prices for tickets, and without a society that respects and admires artists other than popstars and film stars. We can’t have the Louvre or the Royal Ballet just by snapping our fingers, I argued, and we shouldn’t burden our local dancers with unfair expectations.
But having seen Psychosynthesis in preview in December last year, I take it all back. Apparently we CAN have it all!
Malaysian choreographer Kenny Shim, a graduate of Trinity Laban and London Contemporary Dance School, brings us his first full-length dance work, in collaboration with Asia Ballet Theatre, a semi-professional company emerging from Asia Ballet Academy, founded by former Hong Kong Ballet favourite Ivy Chung.
Psychosynthesis is a meditation on the pandemic – the lockdowns, the health system crises, from the biology of the virus to its effect on mental health – but there’s little need to look beyond the purely sensorial impact of this work. An army of 20 dancers (26 in the upcoming February 2023 performance!), in skin-toned asymmetrical tunics over socks and boy shorts, designed by Shim and Michell Yong, share the stage with lighting by highly-awarded designer Tan Eng Heng, and digital projections and set by Wee Jia Foong (not featured in the preview). The remarkably cohesive musical score assembled from six different composers – sometimes hardcore techno, at other times spare and ethereal – transforms the theatre at PJPAC into a cathedral in the worship of dance, in which the dancers move almost ceaselessly, spinning, sliding, endless legs unfolding, navigating complex partnerings, technically-demanding solos and meticulous group designs for over 90 minutes.
There are some impressive set pieces, including a terrifying full-group penché: all the dancers standing on one straight leg while the other goes up, up, up into the air behind as the body dives in slow motion to the front. Surprising patterns surface from the melee of movement, including a scene of almost Grecian friezes suggesting a tug-of-war. There are hints of saluting (the work is dedicated to Covid frontline workers), dancers standing to attention with their backs to the audience (allowing us to admire their beautifully pulled-up legs), and a repeated slow, almost fetishized, front developpé by a female dancer supported in a backward lean by a huddle of others, reminiscent perhaps of the mechanical aspirations of a patient hooked up to a ventilator.
With such relentless movement – few are the full-length, full-dancing works that do not at some point exhaust you! – perhaps I SHOULD find it tedious, but I never do. Kenny Shim mixes up the rhythms; sometimes he ignores a big drop in the music, and sometimes the dancers move through silences. At the start of the final song, before the inevitable full-group finale, he lets the empty stage sit a while, giving us a space to consider what is absent and lost.
But it is the dancers themselves I would go to watch, night after night. The youngest are students of Asia Ballet Academy – every one of them precociously talented – but the production has also roped in some of the most admired contemporary dancers in the local scene, including Naim Syahrazad, James Kan, Winnie Tay, Lu Wit Chin, Shafiq Yussof and Amellia Feroz, as well as ascendant stars Amirah Redza, Audrey Chua and Eleanor Inn [the February 2023 performance will feature a slightly different cast]. The more experienced dancers show the younger ones how to take their time, how to fill out the movement and enjoy the journey.
But it is the younger ones, impetuous and full of fire, who most attract the eye. Amirah Redza is queenly confident, both flirtatious and commanding, seeming to delight in showing us her abilities. Audrey Chua has the most gravitas and impact, most excitingly displayed during a long section in which all the dancers travel individually across the stage, repeating the same sequence over and over. When Winnie Tay and Audrey embark together they seem to drive each other forwards, competing with a speed and power that no one else can match.
Eleanor Inn, a fawnlike beauty aged only 15, enjoys a brief solo; when she nails a double pencil turn as if she was born to do it, Kenny beside me in the audience bursts into silent applause. There is that degree of possibility in this work – the dancers so young that when you see them achieve something on stage it might be the very first time they have ever managed to do it.
In the midst of this blizzard of toned bodies and sky-high legs, the most meaningful things are simple glances. After a beautifully well-matched duet with James Kan, Winnie Tay breaks off and walks upstage. James merely follows her with his gaze, then turns away – the humanity tugs at the heartstrings. In the smallest of things – just the tilt of a head – the dancers move from being flawless automatons to showing inner life. (The only smiles that appear are also between Winnie and James; their rareness makes them doubly sincere.)
What makes this experience all the more precious is the fact that Covid was uniquely upsetting for dancers. For the youngest ones – say, fifteen years old – the almost 3 years spent in lockdown, on-and-off online learning, in cramped quarters, and without person-to-person teaching (or legs-to-legs, as they say in the dance industry) might constitute a horrifying one-third of their lives since they discovered dance. This is the most critical time period for learning and training. That these young dancers are standing before us at all today – trim, honed, disciplined, and ready to dance – is absolutely incredible. For the older dancers, 3 years of upset was possibly even more damaging. Bodies fell into disuse, injuries piled up, and financial pressures forced many into premature retirement. The fact that THEY are standing here at all, proud survivors every one, is even more of a miracle.
Yes, this is a work about mortality, about the frailness of human bodies, but you don’t even have to think about Covid while you’re at the show. Just watch the dancers. They may never be as young and beautiful as they are now. They may never be as strong, as in control of their bodies, able to control a stage and take joy in their movement the way they do for this single weekend. You need to witness this.
Buy tickets for Psychosynthesis, 4-5 February at PJ Performing Arts Centre, here.
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.