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Saturday, January 31, 2004

Amelia

~Love Mum, Dad and Sis always~

I arrived at the Jubilee Auditorium early to have a look at the place before entering the theatre. It was simple yet it looked somewhat grand too. There were lots of people still queuing up to buy tickets and many others just helping themselves to drinks outside the theatre with friends and family members. Excitement rushed through me as the lady told me that I will be watching AMELIA in the main theatre. True enough, it was big and I felt really happy to be able to watch ballet again ever since I went to my friend's ballet performance back home in M'sia. The theatre wasn't full though. I got a really good seat which was at the aisle of the walkway and so no heads were blocking my view during the whole show. Some of them who were sitting at the back of me moved to the front to get a better view after waiting to see if there were seats at the front taken.

This was a ballet performance that I've never seen before. It's a modern dance whereby the dancers project very complex and vigorous movements. It's not the kind where the dancers wear pink or yellow tutus (is that how you spell it?) and dance to nutcracker or swan lake. This dance is all about technique which involves a series of linear structures and positions. Very abstract...It took me a while to appreciate it. At the beginning of the dance, I was quite restless. But soon, it got more interesting and I was really hooked to it. I applaud their wonderful performance. Such movements that were required in this dance makes it harder for the dancers to perform.

So, why AMELIA? Here's a deep explanation from the booklet I got at the theatre. With candour, Edouard Lock talks about his work AMELIA:

"Its source is personal, anecdotal. Amelia relates to two people I knew more than twenty years ago who had an effect on me. At that time I was young and naive, not exactly in the thick of things-I was a young man on the outside looking in, and I met these two transvestites. They were in a constant state of theatricality, without being in a theatre. My memory of them has remained with me ever since- and it's one of the first that I've used in my work, although it's theatricalized. I often use the materials of everyday life in my works, and some of the movements I create are quite banal. It was this mixture of theatrical and non-theatrical that I experienced for the first time with these two transvestites. Meeting them, in fact, may have had a permanent effect on my work as whole. I always swore to myself that I would do something with those memories. Now I have."

Yes. It was a performance depicting the complexity of the world of a transvestite. It was all about her thoughts, her image and her desires that showed the inner realms of a transvestite who is always constantly acting...without being in a theatre...

It wasn't easy understanding the message that the dance was trying to convey but like the producer said, there's nothing to understand actually. Everyone attempts to understand (I did) and our initial reaction is to make sense of things. Well, it was a different experience for me. I'm glad I went to watch this performance. Somehow, it gave me a different view to some things...opened my eyes to everything that has changed...from classical ballet to modern ballet. Interesting and exciting, vigorous and powerful yet so full of mystery...

Yun @ 8:00 AM | |

about me

Home: KL, Malaysia
School: U of A

I am someone who frets a lot - I call it a psychological disorder. I am constantly trying to escape my complex mind which, very often, drives me and my close companions to the edge of insanity. Born under the sun star Libra, I am greatly affected by a disease called "indecisiveness". Nicknames were never part of my dictionary until I met some people who decided to name me "turtle". Soon, I was representing a zoo of hamsters, "sotongs", pigs, cats, etc...

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