FUSE#4

FUSE #4
ence of children and having children physically interacting with the work.
This would prove hugely important as, at the performances which I attended,
I noticed that there was an organic horizontalisation occuring in the room of
both space and action--as Faye and Bernice were performing at the front of
the room, the spirit of the performance and its humor created an energy that
seemed infectious to the children, who would then proceed to join in from
where they were in the audience, and at times on the performance floor when
their presence was called upon. The children thus became performers for their
family members who were in the space with them, who then balanced their
attention between enjoying the performance, by which both adults and children
seemed delighted and amused by, and watching how the children were
responding with their bodies. I was struck by how rare it was to be a part of a
non-immersive performance at which children were allowed to do something
more than sit and watch.
A further reverberation I hope my collaboration with Faye makes is to
begin to address the dearth of both arts criticism and academic scholarship
on creative dance-making of children beyond pedagogical studies and developmental
psychology. Some questions I want to throw out there for others
that I myself am still pondering are: How do we truly make, appraise, and
watch work made by and with children? With this work paid credence beyond
“this is dance for/by/with children”? How do we make working with child practitioners
a fulcrum for a new aesthetics of dance that counters notions of
rudimentary making? Some of these lines of inquiry are ones which I hope
to pursue in further collaboration with Faye given the focus of her proposed
2020 associateship that will focus on choreographing with children, on which
she would work with Seet Dance from Sydney.
Further, just as Faye faces the anxiety of motherhood’s subsumption
head on by intentionally and continually harnessing it to evolve spaces which
have the potential to benefit from interaction with children and vice versa,
one thing I had hoped to premise in my engagement with Faye and Rolypoly
Family was to recursively move back to engagement with the child when considering
conceptual and critical space-making practices that default to their
exclusion. This aspect of the project will require the opportunity for further
engagement with children involved in the Rolypoly Family community, and I
am excited to see, hear, and feel all that they respond with.
Finally, another thing that I hope Faye and I can begin putting together
after this research is complete is articulating a statement of intent towards
developing a collective practice amongst adult artists who work with children
that spurs reflection on their pedagogy. Should this be of interest towards
anyone at Dance Nucleus, we would be most glad to hear your thoughts. I can
be reached at jilljtan@gmail.com and would love to hear from you.
1. Burridge, S. (Ed.), Nielsen, C. (Ed.). (2018). Dance, Access and Inclusion. London: Routledge,
9.
2. Middleton, Deborah. (2017). Dancing with Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in
Western Buddhism edited by Harrison Blum. Buddhist Studies Review, 34.
3. Letters Come Alive (2019) was produced by Rolypoly Family, directed by Bernice Lee,
created by Bernice, Faye and team. Team contribution from Neo Yanzong, Sarah Oh, Felicia
Lim, and Keryn Ng
4. Say That Again (2012) was directed by Faye Lim, with Bernice Lee collaborator and
co-performer, with adaptations in 2013, 2015, and 2019.
5. Herng Yi Cheng, Paper Playground (2018), http://www.herngyi.com/performance.html
6. “Agency can be strange, twisted, caught up in things, passive, or exhausted. Not the way
we like to think about it. Not usually a simple projection toward a future. It’s what we
mean by “having a life”...But it’s caught up in things. Circuits, bodies, moves, connections.
It takes unpredictable and counterintuitive forms. It’s lived through a series of dilemmas:
that action is always a reaction; that the potential to act always includes the potential to
be acted on, or to submit; that the move to gather a self to act is also a move to lose the
self; that one choice precludes others…” in Stewart, Kathleen, Ordinary affects. (Durham,
N.C: Duke University Press, 2007), 86.
7. Contact Improvisation “is based on the communication between two moving bodies that
are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern
their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.” in “About Contact Improvisation,” Contact
Quarterly, https://contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/about/index.php
8. Hammond, L., & Moore, W. M. (2018). Teachers Taking up Explicit Instruction: The Impact
of a Professional Development and Directive Instructional Coaching Model. Australian
Journal of Teacher Education, 43(7).
9. In Faye’s essay in this same volume, she also reflects on how her subjectivities and commitment
are shaped by factors such as socioeconomic status and access to resources.
10. Baby Bear Mama Bear (2017) was directed by Bernice Lee, first presented at Maya Dance
Theatre's "In Bloom" festival, and subsequently brought to Vientiane with support from
Singapore International Foundation.
Jill J. Tan is a Singaporean writer, artist, and
researcher. Her work has appeared in publications
such as Guernica, Palimpsest, and
Mynah Magazine, and is forthcoming in Resistant
Hybridities: Tibetan Narratives in Exile
(Lexington, 2020). Her current ethnographic
project as a PhD student of anthropology at
SCOPE
Yale University explores the public consciousness
of death in Singapore as shaped by the
funeral profession. As an anthropologist and
artist, she is committed to collaborative practice,
co-theorisation, and multimodal exploration
through games, interactive performance,
and poetics, amongst other media.
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