Dance critiques

Siompo was the first choreographer featured in the final program of the 10th Indonesian Dance Festival. The bill also included works by Eko Supriyanto and Vincent Sekwati Koko Mantsoe. The trio was a particularly interesting closing line-up.More ...

The driving force of Siompo's movement dynamics and his use of universally recognizable sounds are part of his appeal to a global audience.More ...

To the sound of traditional music and in gloomy light, the five young dancers - three women and two men - of JeckoS Dance troupe line up looking towards their leader, choreographer Jecko Kurniawan Siompo Pui.More ...

Breakdance ??? the current rage in young Vietnam. Members of the group "Big Toe" from Hanoi show how modern hip hop dance can be a medium for storytelling. In Berlin the young B-Boys performed a new version of their breakdance theatre piece Nhi???u M???t (Faces).More ...

Thanks to an invitation from Frank Werner, regional head of the cultural programme department at the Goethe Institut in Jakarta, I was delighted to attend the 10th Indonesian Dance Festival (titled ???Powering the Future???) in Jakarta to run a review-writing workshop for the Institut in response to four days of exhilarating dance from Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Europe in June 2010.More ...

This exploration of the journey between this world and the next is Taiwanese choreographer Ho Hsiao-Mei's short work Middle, performed by Cross Over Dance Company on the last day of the 10th Indonesian Dance Festival.More ...

Two male dancers ignite Kim Jae Duk???s ???Darkness Poomba??? with a duet performed beneath severe top-lightning. It???s a fast and furious exchange of angularly choreographed movement, hands mechanically grasping for each other???s faces, their bodies regimented in a forward facing stance.More ...

Darkness Poomba is an example of how a unique intra-cultural experiment has led to engaging contemporary performance. This is thanks, in major part, to the fact that the choreographer and composer Kim Jae Duk has found, and emphasized, links between contemporary dance and an ancient singing tradition ??? ???Poomba??? ??? in which rhythm plays a stronger role than the lyrics.More ...

Wearing florescent hoodies and baggy sweatpants, the Cambodian dancers in German choreographer Arco Renz's Crack! looked like something straight from the punk street cultures of London and Berlin.More ...

An artist-initiated collaboration and performance touring three cities and featuring artists from five different countries? It certainly doesn???t happen every day.More ...

Contact Gonzo is a Japanese performance group that has been slowly gaining international attention. Before forming the group in 2006 and inventing the performing method of the same name, their members had been doing inspiring things like rolling down hills, catching falling leaves or jumping from the tops of telephone booths.More ...

Seruan elaborates the concern of choreographer Gusmiati Suid, who died in 2001, with regard to the dissolution of tradition and the declining influence of religion. Seruan is literally a calling to people to return to their roots in order not to lose themselves to modernization.More ...

In June 2010 the performance "Maybe Forever" by Philipp Gehmacher and Meg Stuart is on tour in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Jakarta und Melbourne. Belgium dance writer Lieve Dierckx saw the piece in 2007 at Kaaitheater Brussels.More ...