关于checkmate的点滴
以下的链接是我在网页上搜索到一些关于我们checkmate的点滴还有观后感
欢迎大家上去阅读 
Dance-Reviews: Checkmate Review
还有以下是Daniel.K就Tara Tan的评论做出的回应。
RESPONSE
The Straits Time,13th Oct 08 (mon),
LIFE! Section, ‘Blank Check’ by Tara Tan
Tara Tan of the Straits Times gave ‘Checkmate’ a scathing review (titled ‘Blank Check’) today. It’s an understatement to say that Albert’s piece was not to her taste:
>The dancers glared and glowered at the audiences to tiresome effect. Yes we get it, you hate the world and the world hates you. Can we move on now? If the point of this show was to frustrate its viewers, it succeeded with this one.
To be fair, Tara’s response comes as no surprise. To anyone with a trained eye and a preference for postmodern postures, ‘Checkmate’ will not only come across as dated, its hyperbolic expressionism which is not quite agreeable with the 21st century zeitgeist, will likely make a critic wince.
But I feel that that perspective quite missed the point. My immediate response is that this is yet another case of ‘comparing apples with oranges’. Why accuse an apple of not being an orange? Why is an apple bad because it doesn’t taste like an orange?
Albert’s work never promised any overt social commentary. In fact, it was clear to me that he steered clear of making any explicit engagement with content to the extent that I am inclined to applaud it as disciplined self-awareness. If cultural critique is not his strong suit, he has downplayed it well enough. It was clear within a few minutes of the performance’s start that the work was strategic in inviting us to focus on its formalism. The artist has placed all his attention on composition, musicality and form and I’d have thought myself disobliging if I insist on faulting the work with a rubric that may not apply.
For me, all the [what Tara called] ’sullen faces and angry gestures’ lied within the threshold of tolerability. There was restrain. Any more of it might have sent me marching out of the theatre too. Contrary to what Tara had said, Albert’s was not a ‘highly gestural choreography’. There WAS the use of gestures but only some. The dance work was full of dance, dance of the exuberant sort, dance that makes you tap your feet, dance that makes you want to stand up and dance along… but only if you allow it to. The work was clearly a lot more than those clichés. It won me over with its sincerity which, trite as it sounds, is often a missing ingredient in many performance works today.
Tellingly, Tara herself spotted a few things about the dance but overlooked them as possible redeeming qualities in the work. She said that the dancers moved with ‘lightning-quick ferocity’ and ‘contorted their bodies into highly unusual and mesmerizing positions’. Quoted out of context, one might think she actually liked the work. And she might have had had she considered the dance more. The fact is, dance, like music, is very hard to talk about because it is fundamentally abstract. Or like a colour, it is very hard to describe. One can only talk about what happened on stage (as in who did what to whom) but cannot essentially talk about the movement and do it justice. But I digress. My point is that the ‘lightning-quick ferocity’ and the ‘unusual and mesmerizing positions’ of the dancers’ bodies were precisely the strengths of ‘checkmate’ and the area in which Albert Tiong had clearly invested most of his choreographic energies in.
Don’t get me wrong. A dance need not be beautiful. For me, technique can even be forsaken if it serves no purpose other than clutter a work. But if the work is about beauty, let it BE beautiful. And ‘Checkmate’ certainly was, it certainly sought that beauty. Beauty, if I may take this argument further, was probably a form of catharsis for Albert. Whatever that emotional ‘checkmate’ was for him, the resolution seems to be in the dance itself.
A reporter for a populist publication, I would have thought, should be able to put on different lenses for different types of work and assess them with their respective yardsticks. The public relies a lot on the journalist’s views. For any one work, more people are going to hear about it from the reporter than the people who’ve actually seen it. Tara’s damning report is then somewhat irresponsible since it failed to measure an artist’s work according to the artist’s intentions or factor in what different viewers might have seen, might want to talk about after the show.
In responding to a work, what is said often reveals more about the viewer than the work itself. We’re only helping ourselves if, as viewers of a work of art, we allow ourselves to adapt to different stances whenever necessary. In a landscape of disparate voices, fruitful conversations take place only when both speaker and listener make it a point to try and see things from each other’s viewpoints.
All in all, it is refreshing that a local reporter does not mince words. It certainly is much more satisfying reading a review that actually criticises a work rather than provide a mere descriptive recount for the public. Yet, to move on, I really hope that reportage in Singapore can rise to a more sophisticated level; that opinions themselves, like works of art, no longer be simplistically postulated as for or against, black or white, but be nuanced and deep.
Daniel Kok http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=545482834> (Singapore) wrote
at 11:49pm on October 13th, 2008
If you are interested but don’t know what I’m talking about, please read:
1) The Straits Time, Monday, 13th Oct 08, LIFE! Section, ‘Blank Check’
2) My previous note on Face Book about Albert Tiong’s ‘Checkmate’, The Esplanade’s Comission for da:ns fest 08.
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Kenneth Kwok http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=635352141> (Singapore) wrote at 12:39am on October 14th, 2008 Okay, Daniel, you asked for my thoughts (which I’ve plagarised from my own Note) … :) As someone completely unschooled in modern dance, I speak only as a random audience member not a connoiseur but yes, I really enjoyed what I felt was a truly exhilarating performance. Okay, the metaphor of relationships as a game of chess is not exactly ground-breaking but it is not really overt in the work anyway. What is most striking is the verve with which the eight dancers performed and the complexity of movement and staging that Albert Tiong demanded of them: I was really impressed by how the dancers’ little individual movements would complement each other’s so well as to create truly arresting theatrical images when taken as a whole. I also loved how dramatic the lights and music were and how they were employed to enhance the vitality of the performance, as well as the way the dancers (so skilled - and so committed to the work as to appear utterly consumed by it) would glide in smooth, sweeping movements almost as if without friction over one another and the performance blocks - and then shift into hard, angular swipes of pure anger and frustration the next. Totally invigorating! |
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Tara Tan http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=193106576> (University of Bristol) wrote at 9:44am on October 14th, 2008 Hi Daniel, what you quoted me as saying, that the dancers moved with “‘lightning-quick ferocity’ and ‘contorted their bodies into highly unusual and mesmerizing positions’”- these were compliments. i didn’t like the work as a whole but i found some of the dancers’ moves enjoyable. i try to highlight what i liked or what i didn’t like about a performance in my reviews. |
Tara Tan http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=193106576> (University of Bristol) wrote
at 10:05am on October 14th, 2008
it’s good to hear some disagreements over the review. i look forward to reading your reviews on inkpot or other mediums.
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Daniel Kok http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=545482834> (Singapore) wrote at 11:29am on October 14th, 2008 sure. hey, the saturday thing at the Substation is on. Hope to see you there! |
Rob Fowler http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=683084621> wrote
at 8:49pm on October 14th, 2008
I’m 6,000 miles too far away to have seen it but I’ve seen Albert dance in Daniel’s Vermillion White and I know how good he is. I really wish I could have witnessed this piece and have my own experience of it to add to the pot.
In lieu of that Its great to hear disagreement/debate on the work, particularly coming from such considered viewpoints.
