Professor Dr. Chua Soo Pong
Hanoi Academy of Film and Theatre
Founder of The Chinese Opera Institute, Singapore
As a multicultural nation whose people originated from the Malay Peninsula, as well as Indonesia, China and India, Singapore has a dynamic tradition of mutual interpenetration of performing styles and cultural conventions. The city-state is not a melting pot of the Malay, the Chinese and the Indian, but a society where each ethnic group is encouraged to preserve their community’s unique cultural heritage and arts, and appreciate and respect that of others. The performing arts have the unique ability to bring people together and promote social cohesiveness. Long before it became independent in 1965, artists of different communities had been learning dance and music from each other and experimenting with cross cultural theatrical and dance productions.
This paper selects examples from the past to illustrate the development of multicultural performing arts. These included how Indian choreographer K.P. Bhaskar was impressed by Chinese opera movies and transformed the story of “Butterfly Lovers” as a Bharatanatyam dance drama. Liang Qiao Zhen, a Chinese choreographer, on the other hand, learned Malay dance and created a “Rice Sieving Dance” in Malay dance style. Som Said, founder of the Malay dance group, Sri Warisan, used Chinese dance elements in many dances she choreographed.
This paper highlights theatrical experiments in seeking ways to establish communication based on theatrical expression, which goes beyond language and culture. Apart from tracing the path taken by early work in staging Ramayana and Mahabharata as Chinese opera, the paper summarizes the process of setting the Panji story in the historical reality of China with Chinese ethical values. The presentation is based on the traditional Chinese opera, dance and theatre in an innovative way. However, this was not done in an old-fashioned manner, but in a creative way, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers.
(Presented in the 2019 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Panji/Inao – Preserving and Reviving the Shared Heritage of Southeast Asia, 20 June 2019, W Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies and Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)