I am in awe.
Part of my research in conceptualising my work "Pok-ing Gender" requires me to engage intimately with the archives and the chosen medium that I am working with is the Malay language films of the 1950s-60s. These films were created in Singapore and disseminated regionally especially since it appealed to Malay-language speaking audiences in maritime Southeast Asia and also since it was financed heavily by Chinese tycoons who had international cinema networks.
[For more information about the Shaw Organisation and the Cathay Organisation, two of the key film producing organisations during that time, please read]
These films as archives of culture and the performing arts became visual repository and inspiration for practitioners who are today practising what is understood as "Malay dance".
[For Malay dance history in Singapore, read this]
Growing up as someone within this practising community, I have been in awe of these films since I was a young practitioner: sourcing out the tapes/VCDs of these films, rewinding/replaying noticing minute details of the dances, playing close attention to the costumes and ever so mesmerised by the female primadonnas who were skilful artisans showing off their skills as multi-talented artists! They were wonderful dancers, trained in the act of seduction, voices like a nightingale!
Here is an example of an imagined court dance taken from a well known film, Nujum Pak Belalang (1959). This dance is choreographed by prolific actress/choreographer, Normadiah, and they are dancing to a song entitled, Ketipang Payung. What should you look out for in the video? (Querying as someone who is Cis-Male, observing the dance)
The entrance of the primadonna, usually distinguished by her solo dancing/singing parts, wearing more elaborate costume etc.
The "micro" gestural movements involving the specific parts of the body, such as shoulder, fingers, wrists and her gait such the movement of her hips
The facial characterisation of the primadonna as well as the chorus ensemble as they perform to a royal audience.
I am curious.
As an artist who is interested to ask questions about the gender, tradition and the space for unruly practices, I am motivated to revisit these films especially since now I have developed an eager sense of critique for a form that I have embodied within my body for more than 2 decades. I wanted to revisit this archives with an intention to read and embody it differently.
In doing so, I am also challenging a few norms. Firstly I am asking how and what does my Cis-Male body identify as quintessentially and iconically female? Secondly, in this post-colonial endeavour which I juxtapose with my own contemporary practice of Malay dance, I ask what are the movements that is no longer practised? How different are they? Lastly, I am curious then to explore the intricacies of embodiment (regarded by some as transgressive), to allow for what I like to call as an "agitation to transmogrify into the formless"
I am amused.
It is interesting that whenever I try to explain something for an international audience, I fall back into this encyclopaedic writing to provide some kind of thorough explanation so that people may have an idea of what I am actually talking about! But I want to resist this. The onus should not only be on me, to press "new tab" on Google chrome to type in "Malay dance in Singapore" or "Patriarchal practices in Asia".
After all this context, I haven't really explained why the title "Pok-ing Gender". I guess for this beginning post, treat my title as that friend who irritates the hell out of you by poking you incessantly to seek your attention until you are ready to blow and say, "What the hell do you want! Can you stop poking me!!!!". Yes so I am poking gender to agitate it to transmogrify into the formless. I am not sure what may come up of it but if I do hope its a moment of sheer unadulterated expression, an ecstacy of release, distinct but blurred, sure but doubtful. The interstices of some "thing" is far more appealing in this current times.
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