PROGRAMME NOTE
A Brooding Beast In The Corner
17 - 18 January 2024 | 8:00pm - 9:00pm |
The Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre @ Wild Rice, Funan, Level 4

A BROODING BEAST IN THE CORNER 角落里的异兽
P R O G R A M M E
Choreographic Direction, Dramaturgy and Conceived by Angela Liong
Lighting Design – Tommy Wong
Sound Design – Varian Tan
Set Design – Grace Lin Huili
1. Ravage
Performers: Andine Elaina and Marveen Lozano
Choreography: Angela Liong
Music: Psalm 22 by Jonny Greenwood
2. Mend
Performer & Choreography: Andine Elaina
Music: 가을편지 (Autumn Letter) by Kim Min Gi
3. Limbo
Performer: & Choreography: Gu Anran
Music: The Locked Room by Jun Miyake
4. Baggage
Performer & Choreography: Aisha Polestico
Music: Glass by Hania Rani
5. Hearth
Performer & Choreography: Marveen Lozano
Music: Take it with Me by Tom Waits
6. Revive
Performers: Aisha Polestico and Gu Anran
Choreography: Angela Liong
Music: Summa by Arvo Pärt
P R O G R A M M E N O T E
BACKGROUND
A Brooding Beast in the Corner (Brooding Beast in short) is an intimate dance-theatre performance featuring four solos bookended by two duets.
Reflecting on the distress caused by environmental crisis and political turmoil in the world, the performance searches for the meaning of individual’s place in this apocalyptic time.
The despair of global events is now encapsulated into a claustrophobic space latent with a deep sense of elegy through the outburst of the four characters.
FEEL, HEAR, SEE THE BEAST
Upon entering the theatre, the audience walk right into the aftermath of a disaster. A solitary broken chandelier hung precariously high above a wreck interior. The thrust stage of Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre @ Wild Rice is turned into some sort of war zone or disaster area. Strewn objects everywhere map out what was once a chamber with clues from bits of fixtures and things left behind.
An AI chatbot stands at the corner of the stage with its back to the audience. It only turns its gaze square front to the audience at the end of the show. Fragments of stories from Franz Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks are told through the steady and unemotional AI voices. These bits of stories provide a parallel world and foil the internal struggle and suffering of the four solo performers.
The performance’s use of lights and sound aims to bring in another narrative of nature’s elements through the luminous and sonic dimensions. Melange of music pieces and a cacophony of daily noises are embedded in a rumbling and foreboding shifting sonic realm, while lighting emulates the extreme environments of fire and ice for the solo dancers.
This layer of sonic and luminous narrative reinforces the dystopian world on stage, emulating the intrusion of the hostile exterior into the dim and broken chamber.
The performance ends with Arvo Part’s Summa and a pair of figures in billowing white shirts symbolic of the regenerative power of nature.
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角落里的异兽
A BROODING BEAST IN THE CORNER
当代舞团化生艺术团逞献的 角落里的异兽(A Brooding Beast in the Corner简称《异兽》)是一部由四段私密独舞和两对双人舞构成的舞蹈剧场原作。该剧反思探讨一个普通人在这非常时期,身不由己地争扎生活在这近年加剧烈变的气候环境破坏,和世界地缘政治突发事件动荡的大时代中带来的困扰和灾难。
触、听,看的异兽原形
舞台设计打出一幕被战争或自然灾害破坏的场景。室内的结构差不多被完全毁灭,天花板唯一幸存半倒半吊着的水晶灯,岌岌可危地悬挂在黑色木板墙前面。 NAK Theatre 剧场的伸展式舞台,为观众带来近距离沉浸式的剧场体验。
神秘的AI机器人背对观众,在整场演出中始终隐秘地在舞台后部不动。平铺直叙地读着来自弗朗茨- 卡夫卡Franz Kafka【蓝色八音盒笔记】里的句子片段。 人工智能的平稳声音,对比着舞者发自内心不惟人知的肢体挣扎和痛苦。
演出的音乐由不同的歌曲和乐曲组成。特别创作的音响声景,把音乐夹在隆隆作响和不祥预兆的音效中,加强了舞台上世界末日灭毁的氛围,为观众提供了不同层次的一道音响叙事, 丰富他们观赏演出的深度。
这场舞蹈剧场创作由首席编舞兼剧场指导,化生艺术团艺术总监梁佩贤构思。化生艺术团舞者玛维恩-洛萨诺(Marveen Lozano)、安迪娜-艾莱娜(Andine Elaina)、艾莎-波利斯托(Aisha Polestico)以及来自中国上海的专业舞者与编导,谷安然参与演出。 其他合作者包括灯光设计师王志强(Tommy Wong)、布景设计师林慧俐(Grace Lin Huili )与声景设计及音响工程设计师 陈维仁(Varian Tan)。
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PRODUCTION PERSONNEL
Choreographic Direction,
Dramaturgy and Conceived by Angela Liong
Lighting Design Tommy Wong
Assistant to Lighting Design Daryl Norman Soh
Sound Design & Sound Engineering Varian Tan
Set Design Grace Lin Huili
Rehearsal Assistant Aisha Polestico
ARTS FISSION Dancers and
Movement Collaborators Aisha Polestico, Andine Elaina, Marveen Lozano
Guest Artist from Wuhan, China Gu Anran
Production and Stage Manager Lee Xinzhi
Assistant Stage Manager Sammi Chia
Project Manager Fatin Rumaisha
AI Robot Design and
Construction, Visual Design
and Costume Atelier Fission
Company General Manager Aqidah Othman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Supported by
The Arts Fission Company Ltd is supported by the National Arts Council under the Major
Company Scheme for the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2026.

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ABOUT ARTS FISSION
The Arts Fission Company is a non-profit performing arts company with IPC charity status. It is also the earliest incorporated contemporary dance company (1994) in Singapore. The company has presented dance work regionally and internationally.
Under the artistic direction of Cultural Medallion Recipient Angela Liong, ARTS FISSION has evolved into a dynamic dance hybrid with a diverse and groundbreaking dance track record to enrich the everyday life. The hallmark of ARTS FISSION’s work is complex in concept with multi-disciplinary collaborations that often references the Asian cultures in contemporary context.
ARTS FISSION not only delves into inquisitive dance work with creative fervour, but it also applies equal innovation to turn community outreach projects into richly human experiences.
The company forayed into dance film-making during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2023). One of the dance films, Imagine Ocean, conceived by artistic director Angela Liong and directed by filmmaker Liao Jiekai with soundscape by composer Joyce Beetuan Koh, was shot on the Ise-Shima coast, Japan. The film was selected for screening at the prestigious 42nd Festival International du Film sur I'Art in Montreal, Canada in March, 2024.

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BRIEF BIO OF COLLABORATORS
Angela is a prolific dance-maker with a large body of works that reflect on the sensibilities of contemporary Asia.
Spanning a dance career of more than 35 years, Angela set up the first dance diploma program at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and later became the Dean of Performing Arts at LaSalle College of the Arts, both during the 1990s.

Angela Liong, Artistic Director, Co-Founder, and Chief Choreographer 梁佩贤
She left dance education in early 2000 and focused her professional dance practice with ARTS FISSION on creating hybrid movement work that went beyond traditional dance presentation. She pioneered site-specific dance in Singapore in the late 90s and continues to create site-specific works in public places. Her site works has covered iconic urban locations from commercial high-rise like the Centennial Tower rooftop, to the former Supreme Court grand staircase in the National Gallery, and all the ways to the historic Cavanagh Bridge.
Angela’s dance works have been presented regionally and internationally. Just to name a few: her work Shadowhouses was opened at the 2003 Kampnagel festival in Hamburg, Germany. One of her site-specific works Borrowed Scenery was presented at Jorcks Passage in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2002. Two large-scale multidisciplinary works Fire Monkey (part I & II), done in collaboration with Australian choreographer Victoria Chiu and longtime music collaborator Joyce Beetuan Koh was featured under the 2016 Mapping Melbourne Festival of Multicultural Arts Victoria and restaged in 2018 at the historic Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre in Melbourne, Australia.
Angela also applies dance art by designing movement-based projects to enrich the everyday. Her foray into research and development by using dance as an intervention has resulted in an original wellness program, Everyday Waltzes for Active Ageing®. The program aims to reinforce kinetic memory for frail seniors and people living with dementia. It also included a facilitation module commissioned by the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) for the training of eldercare professionals
Angela is the recipient of the 2009 Cultural Medallion -- Singapore’s highest arts and cultural accolade. She continues to create new works with ARTS FISSION on diverse issues that impact life in modern Asia.
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Sound Designer VARIAN TAN 王维仁
Varian has been active in the local theatre scene since 2004. He has technical managed, sound designed, and sound engineered productions in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Mexico and South Africa. He currently manages 2 companies which are Media Variants and lvl23 Mastering.
Set Designer GRACE LIN HUILI 林慧俐
Grace Lin is a designer of sets/environments for plays, musicals and film. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the National University of Singapore and a Masters in Design Communication from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Grace was the set designer for BURP (PLAYtime!), National Day Charade, One Meter Square (W!ld Rice), Por Por’s Big Fat Surprise Wedding (Singapore Repertory Theatre), Little Mournings (The Finger Players), After Life, A Monster Calls (The Young Company), Nightwatchers (Juo Studios), The Odyssey, Two Weeks with the Queen (UWCSEA), Mixed (Theatreworks).

She was also the associate set designer for Tick Tick Boom (Sight Lines), Dear Evan Hansen, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf, Falling, Into the Woods, Doubt: A Parable, End of the Rainbow, Muswell Hill (Pangdemonium),
psychobitch (W!ld Rice), Cinderella (Singapore Ballet), 2:22 A Ghost Story, The Almighty Sometimes (Singapore Repertory Theatre), 7 Sages of the Bamboo Grove (Toy Factory).
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Lighting Designer TOMMY WONG 杨志强
Tommy obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree in Lighting Design from Purchase College, State University of New York. He is the lighting mentor/designer in the Technical & Production Management, School of Dance & Theatre, LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore.
Tommy was the technical director/production manager and the lighting designer for numerous dance/theatre/musical productions for local and overseas companies. Some major lighting design works included the Singapore Dance Theatre’s "Reminiscing the Moon" at Esplanade’s Opening Festival 2002, Jackie Cheung’s Musical "Snow, Wolf, Lake", Tan Dun’s Opera "Tea" in the China National Theatre and CCTV4 Musical, Beijing's "Song of the Light & Shadow", the Guangzhou Ballet company's "Mei Lan Fang”, Contemporary Legend Theatre's "King Lear" in Taipei, the Hong Kong Ballet "The Last Emperor"
gala opening performance in Hong Kong Cultural Centre & the New York Radio City, Singapore Chinese Orchestra's “Instant is a Millennium – a musical conversation with Tan Swie Hian” held at Esplanade Concert hall, MediaCorp's "Miss Universe Singapore 2001”, and Singapore's Chingay Parade 1998, 1989 & 2001. Recently, he designed lighting for the Toy Factory Ensemble, Singapore's re-run of the drama production "Titoudao".
Tommy received the Wenhua Prize from the Ministry of Culture, China for the set design of the dance-drama "Shenzhen Story" by the Shenzhen Song & Dance Troupe in 2000, and the best lighting design in "Hong Kong Dance Award 2001& 2008" for the Hong Kong Dance Company productions "Yellow Earth, Yellow Earth" & "Desperately Seeking Miss Blossom".
His first collaboration with The Arts Fission Company was Imagine Forest -- one of the major productions of the Singapore Arts Festival staged on site at the MICA Building in 2000.
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INTRODUCING THE SOLO PERFORMERS:
AISHA JOSEPHINE POLESTICO
Trained in the University of the Philippines with BA in Dance, Aisha joined Arts Fission in 2019 and is now the Rehearsal Assistant of the company. She has solid classical ballet grounding but since joining the company, Aisha has evolved into an outstanding and dynamic contemporary dancer. She also excels in social media work and is the official IG Coordinator of Arts Fission.
MARVEEN ELY LOZANO
Trained in the University of the Philippines with a Diploma in Creative & Performing Musical Arts. Marveen joined Arts Fission in 2022 and is now the assistant choreographer of the company. Marveen has taken on quite a few dance creations under Arts Fission’s major productions since 2023. He is a natural mover and mesmerizing dance artist. An avid photographer, he took on various jobs post-graduation including working as a street parade performer in Iloilo, his hometown. His diverse working experience enriched his performance craft and made him a versatile and creative movement artist.
ANDINE ELAINA
Trained in contemporary dance at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts with a Diploma in Dance, she joined Arts Fission in 2022. Andine is from Surabaya, Indonesia, and has received ballet training since young. Although still a new entrant, her good dance physique and artistic receptiveness attribute to the rapid maturing of her craft. Andine is one exciting emerging dance artist to watch.
Guest Dance Artist – GU ANRAN 谷安然
Originally trained in classical Chinese Dance, he obtained his MA in choreography in August 2004 from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Anran has been working as a professional choreographer in Shanghai, China for quite some time. He also engages in designing and directing mass dance ensembles for popular events like the Chunwan 春晚– Spring Festival Gala produced by China Central Television (CCTV). This is his first collaboration with Arts Fission and one of the rare occasions where he is not directing but performing as a solo dancer on stage.