top of page

WORKS

Anchor 1
Fire Monkey
509A2746.jpg
FIRE MONKEY

9 & 10 December 2016

Arts Centre Melbourne Lawn

100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

Presented by Multicultural Arts Victoria

In association with Victoria Chiu and The Arts Fission Company (Singapore)

Organiser

Multicultural Arts Victoria

 

Presenter

The Arts Fission Company 

 

Venue Supporter

Arts Centre Melbourne

 

With the Support of

The National Arts Council 

FIRE MONKEY -- Stolen Fire and Fractured Myths

01 - 06 October 2018

Northcote Town Hall

Melbourne Australia

Presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy, The Arts Fission Company and Victoria Chiu

The 2018 Sing-Aus co-production is the restaging of the original 2016 site-specific performance led by Arts Fission’s choreographer Angela Liong and independent Melbourne choreographer Victoria Chiu supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV).   Dancers and musicians from Singapore and Melbourne worked together in the cross-cultural collaboration and presented a poignant reflection of tumultuous international events like the refugee diasporas that affected the world.  

 

 The 2018 restaging of the performance kept to the title influenced by the Chinese lunar calendar that marks 2016 as the Year of the Monkey under the element of Fire.  The universal myth of Fire not only ignites common stories among different cultures, it also enables movement creation through mapping of ancient memories with contemporary reflections.

The Year of the Fire Monkey has unleashed increasing uncertainty and disruption in the world. The collaborative dance creation between Melbourne and Singapore, made across two countries separated by oceans, reflects on the anxiety of our time and invokes collective memories across cultures in the hope to mending broken myths and finding human connection.

Staged at the iconic Art Centre lawn, this site specific piece embraces the energy of Melbourne’s arts epicenter and ties it to the Chinese animal zodiac with 2016 being the Year of the Monkey under the element of Fire.  Fire Monkey also involves different communities in Singapore and Melbourne by asking participants to use 3000-year old Chinese oracle bone script to create hand-dyed fabric strips as modern text messages across oceans. The colorful strips made by community members are incorporated in a spectacular installation at the performance site.  

SHARE A STORY - MAKE A MYTH

3 December 2016

A community artmaking workshop organised by Multicultural Arts Victoria 

TELL YOUR STORY using 3000-year old Chinese oracle bone script and see how your bone script turns out as creative expression in hand-dyed fabric strips! Join the convivial gathering of diverse cultures in an artmaking workshop for all ages. 

 

SHARE A STORY – MAKE A MYTH is a community engagement event in conjunction with the cross-culture performance FIRE MONKEY by The Arts Fission Company (Singapore) and Choreographer Victoria Chiu and Dancers (Melbourne Australia). The artworks from the Melbourne community artmaking workshop, together with their counterparts from community participation in Singapore will be part of the site installations for the performance.

ABOUT MAPPING MELBOURNE 2016

The Mapping Melbourne Festival is a celebration of the unique Asian Australian identity that the citizens of Melbourne share and is a platform for contemporary asian artists to network. The festival will unfold across the city and will be filled with mutliple events daily, two of the muliplte events would be Share A Story and Fire Monkey. These two events are a collaboration with Multicultural Arts Victoria and will be presented in the festival by Arts Fission. 

flowers of lamentation 2:
PETALS IN THE CROWD

17 & 18 February 2012

Salihara Teater, Jakarta, Indonesia

 

 

 

The apparitions of faces in the crowd;
Petals in a wet, black bough.

 

- Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro (1913)

 

Inspired by Ezra Pound's cryptic text as well as the late T’ang poem Faces & Peach Blossoms, the performance connects the poetic image and contrasts it to the digital sensibility of the 21st century.

 

No stage, no seats:

An empty theatre will greet the audience upon entrance.  The creative team intends to break down the mono-focus of the conventional performance and curate a highly spontaneous and immediate theatre experience that literally wraps the dances around the audience.

 

The performance aims to excite with intriguing spaces carved out by special lighting that evolve and dissolve the idea of “stage” between audience and performers.

INDEX OF PAST PERFORMANCES

2018
Fire Monkey Tour

23 September to 7 October 

Northcote Town Hall

189 High St, Northcote VIC 3070, Australia

Collaboration with Choreographer Victoria Chiu

2016
Fire Monkey

9 & 10 December

Arts Centre Melbourne Lawn, Australia

Site-specific performance

Collaboration with Choreographer Victoria Chiu

2012
Flowers of Lamentation 2: Petals In The Crowd 

17 & 18 February

Salihara Teater, Kakarta, Indonesia

 

 

2007
Ghost Exchange Series II Jakarta Premiere 

9,10 November 2007

Art Summit Indonesia 2007

Teater Studia, Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta, Indonesia

 

Ghost Exchange Series I Budapest Premiere 
30-31 March 2007

Budapest Tour, Hungary

Co-production with Hungarian TranzDanz

 

2006 
Scarlet’s Room Toronoto Canada Premiere

6,7,8 July 2006

Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto, Canada

 

 

2004
Mountain and a Flower

18, 19 December 2004

6TH Bangkok Fringe Festival

Patravadi Theatre, Thailand

 

 

12 SMS Across The Mountains  World Premiere

10 October 2004

Seoul International Dance Festival, SIDNACE

Towol Theatre, Seoul Art Centre, South Korea

Collaboration with Korean Choreographer Park Ho-bin

 

 

2003  
Shadowhouses (second restaged) Laokoon

28, 29, 30 August 2003
Kampnagel Hamburg, Germany

Collaboration with two classical Javanese Dancers

 

 

2002
Borrowed Scenery II

19, 20, 21 September 2002
Asian Comments Festival

Jorcks Passage, Copenhagen, Denmark

Site Specific performance

Collaboration with Musicians Samuel Wong (Pipa) and Adrian Wee (Erhu)

 

 

Borrowed Scenery I

21 June 2002

Asian Comments Festival

Banjarmili Studio, Indonesia

Site-specific performance

Collaboration with Sculptor Han Sai Por

 

 

1999
Lost Light II:  “The Temple of Dawn”

17,18,19 December 1999

Patravadi Theatre, Bangkok, Thailand

Collaboration with French Artist Philippe Laleu

 

1996
Flower Eaters III: “ The Double Chamber”

25 July 1996

Indonesian International Dannce Festival

Graha Bhakti Budaya, Jakarta, Indoesia

Collaboration with Indonesian Choreographer/Dancer Sukariji Sriman,

Percussionist Ivy Tan and Pianist Shane Thio

bottom of page