Front Row

Our guests tell about keeping traditional dances relevant to the audience when the latter may not be aware or even care about ‘the old’. But changing and evolving traditions poses a different set of questions about change and continuity. Using their past and present dances as examples, Ajith Dass and Ramli Ibrahim discuss the nature of choreographing dances with roots in old cultures a...

The young artists point out that the essence of their theatre company is to examine the space between living and breaking away from tradition. This examination compels them to question what’s ‘good’ and what’s bad’, who is the saint and who the sinner.  But is there a way of knowing if it is as they claim, “Life is nothing but a view through a kaleidoscope,...

Exploring the past and questioning if it is fixed or something malleable, constantly reshaped by the backward-casting eye. Our guests, the Wei Ling Gallery owner and curator, point to our penchant for glamourizing the past, harkening back to “the  good old” days. They underscore that glorifying the past perhaps reveals more about how we feel about the present and the future. ...

A rare treat to have throat-singers on-air, an ancient art-form that is almost lost to the world. More special when these are from the Inuits of Kangiqsualujjuaq, Nunavik, Canada. The sisters, who make up Nukariik, demonstrate and explain what ‘throat singing’ is and if theirs differs from that practiced by Tibetan singers and the Ainus of Japan. They will also share their perspectives...

The playwright tells about the staging of his work in translation. What is gained? What might be lost going from English to Mandarin? He details working with a director and explains the relationship between a playwright and the one who controls what happens on the stage. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Continuing the tradition of providing sacred music to Malaysians, Elaine Pao will be conducting ‘Elijah’ an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn. She explains the challenges, especially after undertaking ‘The Messiah’ last year up north in Sitiawan; and she details the joys of this celebration. The conductor points to the history of the composition and underscores its place in the...

In this special year, the fourth production of a Shakespeare play but in our vernacular, and so it become ‘Tragedi Hamlet’. This staging is Faridah Merican’s fourth outing because she’s interested in the mother-and-son relationship. Find out what she thinks of this relationship which in Olivier’s version has the son kissing the mother Oedipus-like. See omnystudio.com/...

Adam Hall sings and plays Trumpet, Trombone, Alto Sax, Piano, Euphonium, Mellophonium and a little bit of bass and drums for good measure. And he will show-and-tell what it means to be proficient in so many different kinds of instruments. He will be with some of his band-members, the Velvet Playboys which was formed in 2005.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Damansara Performing Arts Centre is holding a festival this month and several of the performances centre in celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The first of these is ‘Shakespeare in Songs’ to be performed not by pop-groups but classically trained singers who have come together as ‘The Song Weavers’. We find out about their programme and what...

For the most part, Hands Percussion is often seen performing with the traditional theatre space. It is undertaking its first site-specific performance and adding to that, a collaboration with French artists: a singer, a musician and a visual artist. Bernard and Mathilde tell about "Opium", and the artistic expressions of perspective and choices which “are presented through visual and install...

‘Titus Andronicus’ is a rarely performed play, and one hardly assigned to students. It is a play for die-hard Shakespeare lovers and perhaps young men who have grown up with Hollywood gore. A director who has undertaken this play, Jim Helsinger, calls it  “the 'Friday the 13th' of 1598." Today’s Front Row offers an opportunity to hear from both the dramaturg, from KL S...

More than a decade and a half ago (in 2001), a local production company staged ‘Nunsense’ an American musical-comedy about nuns. But the production was tweaked to fit local circumstances. The musical is back perhaps with more topical references beyond the tropical setting in Balakong for the habit-wearing celebrants to sing, dance and make merry. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

 Very rarely is a Greek tragedy performed on Malaysian stages that we invited Kelvin Wong, a director with a newly minted MA in directing to talk about the production. In this play, ‘Antigone’, we see a young princess challenging her King-and-uncle when she wants to bury her brother against the wishes of the King. This play explores the theme of individual action and fate, about p...

The photographer-and-artist, takes us on a journey looking at what performers wear on their heads. And he talks about an exhibition of his works in  ‘The Crowning Glory’, where he pictures himself  decorated with the theatrical headgears of therukothu, Chinese Operas, makyong, menora and Javanese dancers and the glorious crowns of different nations and nationalities. See omny...

A week into the holy days after Ramadan, we invite singer Lah Ahmad to share with us his journey from being a crooner with R&B roots to his recently launched second solo album of Islamic music, titled “Sempurna dan Terbaik.”  It was less than twelve months ago when he launched his first non-secular album “Jalan Untok Kembali.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privac...

Last year, as part of the celebrations to commemorate Laura Fygi’s solo career as a jazz singer, Universal Music,  launched a double album with the the singer’s most popular fan-chosen tracks on one CD; and on the second CD, 12 others, described as ‘bonus tracks’. The singer is on her Asian tour and dropped by the studio for us to get acquainted with the person with th...

Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ is presented through the grotesque of Butoh in the shapes of two productions,  ‘Laments of the Dead” and ‘’Car Park and Six Incidents of Murder.”  Swee Keong says that Richard III presents himself first as a man of conscience, however, this voice of morality does not stop him from the mayhem he commits and the bl...

Rarely do we get to see a full dance performance with hip-hop and breakdancing at its core. But we had three dancers from the Par Terre Company who told us how hip hop is different from ballet and contemporary as well as the influence of the internet on the style of hip hop dance around the world.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guests point out the differences between classical Indian dances and “tribal and folk” dances and why the need to showcase the latter. Today we get a little performance history and a peek into an upcoming celebration called ‘Dhanyosmi’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A dozen tux-clad, undergraduates from Harvard University came to town to sing a capella, with proceeds going to Dialogue in the Dark Malaysia, a social enterprise whose aim is to build empathy with those who are visually impaired. For the first time in their 70 year history, the Harvard Krokodiloes performed in the dark, and they shared their experience rehearsing sans visual cues, and their favou...

Odyssey’ is a term now in our general parlance evoking notions of a long journey. Some may remember Homer and his stories about the returning Greek. The Singapore Art Museum has commissioned (mostly Southeast Asian) artists to use that term in ways that would challenge our notions of seas, bodies of water and the boundaries they create and blur. Assistant Curator, Andrea Fam, talks about the...

We get up-close and personal with a young jazz saxophonist who many describe as the best pair of lips on the saxophone in the country. Most recently he was on stage with Branford Marsalis, jamming at a well-known jazz watering hole. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After more than a year of meeting and talking, the Selangor Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kuala Lumpur City Opera have realized a production, Opera Extravaganza 2016. Like all partnerships, there are compromises. We find out how these musicians negotiate to bring on stage a performance that satisfies both entities.  We also find out about the promised ‘extravaganza’. Se...

Local arts group TerryAndTheCuz are are taking on the grave issue of human trafficking, through a new contemporary dance and theatre project titled SK!N . W e discuss the in-depth research and background work that went into translating this complex and disturbing issue into an arts production, and the role that the arts play in making these issues more relatable to the masses, with writer and prod...

The filmmaker and an activist has organized a three-day Refugee Festival which will include an exhibition, film-screening, performances and food. She wants us Malaysians to become aware of these communities of refugees in our country, right in our midst, not recognized by our government and often employed illegally. But in such positions these refugees are vulnerable.   See omnystudio.com/lis...