Drawing upon the vital connection between dance and ritual, harbor is a space where I manifest a meeting with my maternal grandmother. As a young girl, she was forced to cross a sea, fleeing a Japanese invasion of her birth home in Guangzhou to Singapore. Following her passing in 2018, I began to shift my choreographic position from one of dancing to being danced. By understanding my own body as a medium within the continuum of an extended ancestral legacy, harbor articulates the memory of displacement, migration and violence passed on through generations. A dream, a coastline, a horizon, a cry, a tremor, a ripple, a cloud, a portal.
-- harbor concept / choreography / performance : jee chan by & with : 蕭曼兒 Seow Mok Jee sound design : Chong Li-Chuan, Hilà Lahav light design : Gretchen Blegen things & space : stefan pente technical direction : Martin Pilz translation support : Cary Shiu production assistance : Phoebe von Düffel, Toni Flügel, Aki Hassan a production by jee chan, in co-production with Tanzfabrik Berlin. funded through the Einzelprojektförderung of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. residency support from Tanzfabrik Berlin and Dance Nucleus, Singapore. research process supported by Goethe-Institute Singapore and the National Arts Council, Singapore premiered at Tanzfabrik Berlin 23 - 25 February 2023 trailer |
photos: Dieter Hartwig