Talking Dance: Contemporary Histories from the South China Sea

Ralph Buck, Nicholas Rowe, Toni Shapiro-Phim

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857729484
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Dance

The South China Sea has a rich and turbulent history. Today territorial disputes in the region including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia make it potentially one of the most dangerous points of conflict in Asia and millions of people have crossed its waters in search of safer shores. This new book reveals the ways in which the peoples of the South China Sea region have used dance as a means of contending with the immense political, economic and cultural rifts that have affected their lives. Drawing on the stories of indigenous dancers in southern China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, it offers unique insights into the ways in which people have used creative movement as a means of understanding the divisions and alienation that conflict, diaspora and globalization have brought and as a first step towards reclaiming their identities and their worlds."

1

Beginnings

High-heeled John Travolta shoes

Josef Gonzales, Kuala Lumpur

I don’t have many early memories of dance because I don’t come from that kind of background. My family was very poor. There are ten children and I am the tenth.

I remember my father was the type of person who was very lively and sociable. He was one of the elders of the community of Malayalees that came from his village in Kerala to Malaysia. There were lots of people always gathering in our house, at the weekend, from the time I was very young, so he liked to entertain. In the household he would sort of burst into a little bit of a joget, and he’s a portly old man you know; he was 60 when I was born.

In 1977 when Saturday Night Fever came out, and 1979 when Grease came out, we used to have parties where we’d play all the music. Those movies were huge! We used to do this line dancing and all these really funny things because the newspapers then used to have all these articles about how you do these dances. We had parties and cut them all out at people’s houses and did these dances. It was really quite stupid but it was fun. Everyone had to buy those high-heeled John Travolta shoes.

It was always at a house party. It began at six o’clock. Everybody on the dance floor doing the Night fever, night fever moves. Everybody said, ‘Oh Josef! You’re very good at it!’

Anything for attention, right?

She took me and my mum

Chatuporn Rattanawaraha, Bangkok

I was born in wartime, so I wasn’t able to go to school regularly. We had to run from bombs and artillery. We had to leave and stay in the countryside until the war ended. I then had a chance to finish the 4th grade at a temple school in Bangkok. [After that] I tried to continue my education. I went to so many schools to take entrance exams, but I never passed.

I asked my mother if I could become one of the kids that served the monks at Wat Bavornnivej; then I could study in the temple school. My luck was bad. I did serve the monks, but my name was not drawn for a place in the temple school. I had no school for a year.

My mother knew of a teacher, Kru Linchee Jarujron, who lived near my house. I didn’t know what she taught or where, but my mother brought me to her. It turned out she worked at the School of Dramatic Arts. She took me and my mum to her school at audition time.

I took the entrance exam for dance, and passed. I had no idea what was coming. My life had been so narrow. I had never even heard the word, khon. I didn’t really like this but I thought it was good to be in school, any school. Then I found out that peers in this school who were older performed and got paid. So I thought, ‘Oh, maybe if I get good, I’ll get paid for this, too, and can make a living. This can be a career.’

I focused on dancing and anything the teacher taught. I requested extra practise time from my teacher. I became the person my friends asked for help when they didn’t remember the movements.

‘Is that the one with water?’

Carissa Adea, Manila

The first time I actually attended the dance school, I was only three. My mum asked me if I wanted to start ballet, and I asked, ‘Is that the one with the water?’, because I really loved swimming, and she said it was. I thought that it was going to be a swimming class.

When I saw the girls in the studio in their ballet gear, that’s when I knew it was ballet. So when I first started I was like, ‘What’s this?’ But after a while it was just play with one teacher teaching us coordination and left and right.

And now I’m a principal dancer of Ballet Philippines.

Refugee camps that supplied people with food

Moeun Bun Thy, Siem Reap

When I was really young, I used to love the folk opera performances I’d see in our village. I’d go home and try to dress up and dance around, imitating them.

Once the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge, my father left our village to find work. My mother was alone with six children. The new government didn’t give us land to farm because we didn’t have a man in the household. Sometimes we ate only rice flavoured with fruit. We were all hungry.

When my father came back from the Thai-Cambodian border where he’d been trading things, he told my mother that he’d heard about refugee camps that supplied people with food. So we made our way to the border at the end of 1980 or the beginning of 1981. I don’t remember exactly.

We were moved to a few different camps. In 1982 we settled in Ampil Camp, and that’s where I started studying dance. Neak Ming Voan Savay, who had been a star classical dancer in the palace before the war, and her husband Lok Kru Meas Van Roeun, who was a folk dance teacher at the University of Fine Arts, started teaching dance in the camp.

When I saw the dance practice, I asked my mother if I could join. She said she was happy to have her children dance because it’s part of the struggle to take our country back. I didn’t understand the politics until later. I was so young. And I just loved to dance.

The teacher actually yelled at me

Anna Chan, Hong Kong

My very first experience in dance was when I was six years old, and that was really awful. I remember it was my second ballet class – I was wearing all of this pink – and I was doing a polka step across the floor. I fell down and the teacher actually yelled at me.

It wasn’t a very pleasant experience and I just stopped dancing. Maybe that’s why I wanted to become a teacher – you shouldn’t shout at your students like that!

When I was about 12, I was involved in the school’s gymnastic team. I asked my coach, ‘Why can my friend extend her legs much more beautifully, much more elegantly?’

The coach said, ‘Because she does ballet.’

So that’s how I went back to taking ballet.

In the jungle

Suhaimi Magi, Kota Kinabalu

I come from a poor family and was born in a small village called Tenom. It is very famous for coffee. We had no electricity; we had to carry water from the river.

My late father was from Java. My extended family is actually Indonesian, so I learnt silat when I was ten. I learnt it in the jungle. We opened a new space, with the trees, and made a celebration. There I started learning the silat movements.

Then in 1970 I moved from my small village to here in Kota Kinabalu. I was brought by my cousin who used to dance here. I started learning more traditional dances. I rehearsed with my friends, practising in Tanuwara Beach on an open-air stage. I learnt from anybody who wanted to teach me. I caught anybody who knew a dance.

Knowing silat helped me to learn the traditional dances. A lot of the style of silat is very dance-like.

‘Where’s your daughter?’

Boonnak Tantranon, Bangkok

When I was little, whenever I heard music, I would dance.

I lived close to a temple where they held an annual festival with lots of entertainment, including folk opera performances and open social dances. I was there every year without fail. My father would take me and I’d escape from his grasp and run off. People would see my father and ask, ‘Where’s your daughter?’

He would answer that I was ‘over at the ram wong section’, and that they shouldn’t worry.

‘She’ll be there all night.’

I was with my dad

Layna Chan, Kuching

When I was five I saw this dance performance by the Kuching Ballet. It was at a very small theatre. We don’t have a proper theatre here. I was with my dad.

That was my first impression of dance and I have kept the programme ever since. They were doing The Skater’s Waltz and The Doll Dance. The doll was in a tutu and one of the girls was dressed as a clown. Since then, I just knew that I wanted to dance.

The Doll Dance was very mechanical, and I remember The Skater’s Waltz because, when I joined that school a few years later, I performed that dance.

Boonnak Tantranon, Bangkok I try to give [my students] as much as possible, just as I received so much from my teachers. I want to copy what my teachers did for me.

They sent me to learn ping-pong

Cai Ying, Shamen

When I was nine years old my parents thought I was too skinny. They hated me skinny, so they sent me to learn ping-pong.

I took just two classes and then the teacher said, ‘Oh, maybe you should try dance? You have long legs and you’re quite coordinated, so go. I’ll take you to the dance teacher. Maybe they will like you.’

That’s how I started to dance. I was quite naturally flexible and coordinated, but at that time I didn’t think I would like to perform. I just thought, ‘Okay I can do this stretch. I can do that. It’s easy.’

We would have a big discussion in the car

Anis Nor, Kuala Lumpur

My mother realised that I did have a knack for dance, so she and my father would bring me along to their lessons. Either the lessons would be taught in school or they would go to lessons taught by their colleagues. I remember times when I would go with them to the classes with their colleagues. I would be prancing behind, far away from the adults, following their footsteps, and the instructor would turn around and say, ‘Whose child is that?’

My mum would beam with pride and say, ‘Oh, that’s my son.’

‘Oh my God, he can move.’ I remember those words, ‘He can move. He should be here with all of us.’

And my mum would say, ‘No, no, he’s such a child. He can always do it by himself down there.’

So I was never in the circle, always outside the circle, but I knew that every time I went the instructor would look at me, because the instructor knew that there was such potential in me, and I would be much better than the adults.

I remember my parents would go to school sports days because they wanted to see what the kids at the other schools were doing in their renditions of social folk dancing. We would have a big discussion in the car. I was probably nine or ten. We would speak openly, and my parents would ask my opinion and we would laugh at the jokes we made.

‘Oh, mum! Oh my God, they never moved from that particular motif! How can they dance in that motif for the entire dance?!’

‘Goodness, they had two motifs only in a circle. So, out circle, in circle only! It’s a campfire! It’s not a dance!’

Out for about 30 seconds

Chin Vui Soon, Kuching

I was very unfamiliar with hip-hop. At first we thought it was a very bad thing. They were smoking and walking around.

After that I tried to get caught up in it; I wanted to challenge myself to do something new. I was in school then. I was trying to do stuff like back flips and I started to feel that it was quite fun.

The first time I tried to do a back flip it went wrong and my forehead hit the ground. I was out for about 30 seconds! You don’t want to know about the pain!

Windows open between the two kitchens

Christina Jensen, Hong...

Table of contents

• Frontcover
• Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Colour Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction: Toni Shapiro-Phim, Nicholas Rowe and Ralph Buck
• 1 Beginnings
• 2 Auditions
• 3 Learning
• 4 Creating
• 5 Performing
• 6 Travelling north, south, east and west
• 7 Teaching
• 8 Watching
• 9 Organising
• 10 Relationships
• List of Interviewees
• List of References
• Glossary
• Color Plate