Performance Curators Initiatives (PCI), together with UP Diliman Office of the Chancellor, and the UP College of Music, present BLEU NÉON, this 27 April 2023, 7:00 pm, at the Dance Forum Space, 36E West Avenue, Quezon City, Philippines. This event is in participation with UP Dance Company and the Contemporary Dance Network Manila.
In BLEU NÉON, Montreal-based Vietnamese-French contemporary dance artist Kim-Sanh Châu, explores her body memories of her homeland Saigon, Vietnam, imagined and reimagined, through a series of rituals based on lighting elements.
As she describes in her online teaser,
“In a distant, fictional Vietnam, the echoes of pop music on cassette tape reverberate against the sounds of modern Vietnamese rap. Châu Kim-Sanh inhabits this space, metamorphosing through bodily states generated by the presence of coloured neon lights. Of this evening blue erupts a purpleness: “bầu trời màu tím xẩm” – an uncertain translation. Eyes closed, the neon haze returns her to the sensation of her ancestral land. Saigon, like many cities in South Asia, is flushed with these vivid lights. Here, embodied memory and the imaginary take a ride on a Honda Dream II motorcycle, across a humid sky whose wetness whips the face.
This solo is performed in its entirety from the squat position – a typically Asian posture. Audio recordings bespeckle the choreography, navigating between fantasized nostalgia, loss of language and sexual objectification – all three widely experienced by Asian diasporic populations. In Southeast Asia, rap culture is increasingly popular – giving a voice to a population marked by silence. Rap here is a prayer.”
(Kim Sanh, 2022)
For this Philippine performance of BLEU NÉON, Kim-Sanh Châu will be joined by Hazy Montagne Mystique, and Louise Michel Jackson.
Everyone is welcome to attend the performance and pay whatever they can.
The Performance Curators Initiatives 