Description

When: June 10 - 12, 2022
Where: Five Arts Centre, 9th floor, GMBB, Kuala Lumpur

Two dancers attempt to excavate what might be carried, what is inherited, and what could be owned in their Malaysian Chinese female bodies.

Catalysed by both defiance yet also respect, this new dance work is as much a departure as it is a tribute, a fake ritual – to reclaim, to recreate, or maybe to put to rest certain belief systems. There is resistance and there is yielding, in this ‘fitting room’ of the body. Beginning with the above statement, as well as reconstructed memories and dreams, and by emulating, abandoning and regrounding inherited actions and values – the performers reconsider their body as an interdependent survival machine.

Artist statement by Lee Ren Xin:

“I dance for all the women in my family who could not.

Whether because they were busy surviving, they were busy serving, they were busy caring for other than themselves. Because they have no time for themselves. Because they learnt they should not enjoy themselves. Because they thought pleasure is only for men, not for women. Because they were told that pleasure for women is wrong.

Because they were busy serving and surviving; they did not have time to think about their own desires; because putting themselves last is a good quality; because they never imagined they could make space for themselves; they never had a chance to think about what they want or their pleasures.

Because they did not think they could dance; they thought they should not dance; because they learnt that enjoying oneself is a waste of time, is irresponsible, is outrageous, is selfish. Because they didn’t have the time for it. Their time was taken up by societal expectations and prescription around the purpose of the woman’s body.

I dance, for all the women in my lineage who could not dance.”