Underthe Stars

Phew...been on a positive orgy of work, preparing for hist and maths and lit. Finally I have the time to pop by here and leave a few traces. Reading about historical sources and causality, and thinking about all these entries. In this day and age, people have more ability than ever to leave records about themselves for posterity. But then because there just is such a sheer amount of stuff, although your records have a higher chance of suriving intact to the next epoch, the chances are even slimmer that anyone will ever come across them, let alone bother to anaylse them. So we live in a world where we can write down more and more, but everyone else can read less and less. How paradoxical.

Anyway, Grace is restarting her DS. Actually as things stand right now the entire DS has been changed to a stage design thing, so no more acting or costumes and et cetera, just a model and lots of sketches. Which is a bit of a pity, considering that she's invested so much money into her costumes and the raw materials for props. And despite her determination to think otherwise, I think it's a pity that she's not acting anymore. It's the loss of sincerity, I think, because when she acts, you can tell she really appreciates the art form and the medium. Acting with conviction is much easier than showing your dedication through building a set.

So far common test results have been not bad. Ihist was positively surprising...I got my highest marks ever! But when it all balances out, I still got an overall B...but anyway, Lim Cheng Tju's marking style seems to be more forgiving than Kwoks. When we got the papers back, there were a few seconds of fearful silence, and then exultant cheers because practically everyone got higher than they expected =) Lit isn't bad yet. Frost came back as an A-, which I am eminently happy with. It's sufficient.

Anyway, yesterday we went to watch Ballet Under the Stars...Kats, Soph, Claud, Ian, Yvonne, Thong and me. I must say that it's a great concept, a kind of modern wayang on the lawn of Fort Canning Park. The park itself is really quite scenic, I was rather surprised by it. And when the sun goes down and the stars come out, the field is carressed with cool breezes, and there is the excellent dancing on the stage. I was expecting a stage that was totally open to the sky, but I guess for technical reasons some kind of canopy was needed.

The dance was spectacular! I loved the modern dances, especially the first one, Birds of Paradise choreographed by Goh Something-or-Other. Imagine flaming red and yellow skintight costumes, and contortions and acrobatics to an excellent harp and piano soundtrack. The movements were so fluid, that it was easy to see the males and females as part of the same unit. The way the women flowed into the men's bodies, and how they all stood on tiptoes so they looked feetless, and how they could move with so much precision that certain parts of their bodies can be kept absolutely still while other parts did their stuff. After a while, the fantastic lights and the evocative music combine with the flaming costumes to reduce the dancers to just bodies. You can't really conceptualise them as humans. The while dance struck me as a series of brilliant still images in quick succession, because the positions and stances were all so beautiful. And it was really moving...when the dancers were flowing all over the stage, I suddenly thought of Vye and Wildeve, and how they were playing with each other and teasing each other just like the Birds of Paradise seemed to be doing onstage. It was really powerful, that analogy. For the first time I found that I could identify with the artistic purpose of dance. It's not all nice fairy tale stories danced by ballerinas. Some really serious messages can be transmitted by the interplay of movement, costumes, stageplay, sound and light. That's why the SDT is a Dance Theatre.

There were some other interesting interpretive pieces done by Jeffrey Tan...one about the facades that we carry around everyday. Interesting use of light to form boundaries between the two dancers, and the image of nakedness with skin-coloured leotards, and now the man and woman strip away their outer layers and merge into one unit. But I think Birds of Paradise kind of spoiled the market for last night =P It was just fantastic. I was struck dumb by its power, a power that I thought I could only connect with in drama.

Anyway, found YS at the Ballet too. Which was to be expected...I would think that this kind of event would be unmissable for her =P Apparently she got abandoned by a friend, so I kind of abandoned the Humans pple to watch it with her instead. Ah well, they had one another, while she clearly needed company more. Heh, so I was sitting behind Kats watching him drink some cocktail juice straight out of the bottle, and doing a decent impression of a drunken Chinese poet =P Positively decadent! Drinks, poetry, dance, and all on a lawn. How much more bohemian can you get? Anyway, watching dance with a dancer does give interesting perspectives. It's cool to be able to discuss the medium in its own terms...which basically involved me offering streams of adjectives and YS formalising them into dance prac crit terms. And then what should appear on stage than one of the dances that RJ Dance put up last year at their concert! Jeffrey Tan recycles his dances shamelessly =P

All in all quite a cool night. It was nice (though not really a surprise) to find YS sitting right behind the spot that Claud and Co had choped for us, and the dance was just spectacular. And there really were stars. Not a lot of them, but enough to remind me. Orion, the immediately recognisable constellation from anywhere in the northern hemisphere, was there to watch over us. The stars...they're the common thread that binds all these disparate experiences together. Permit me a moment of nostalgia, but if only it were colder and windier, then it would be just like Taiwan. Yesterday morning they were asking for applications to this year's Texprog, and I was egging Thong and Shimin to reapply for it, and I didn't know how far I was actually joking =P

* * * * *

It's never happened before, that kind of coincidence, and I don't know how I really feel about it. It's a bit odd, to be the object of so much attention. Definitely not something that should happen often...having so many minds focused on you is quite pressurising. I didn't expect things to turn out like this at all, although in hindsight perhaps I should have seen it coming. After all, there were enough indicators. They just didn't fit until we were actually there, on the spot. I wonder how come I have to end up in positions like that. Having to choose someone over another. I'd really rather not...I don't think I'm qualified to make that kind of judgment.

But somehow things worked out that way. And perhaps I'm worrying too much about nothing again. It is quite egoistic, to assume that my decision had such big impacts on these people. Who's to say taht I'm held in such high regard, really? And yet, if I don't pay attention, wouldn't it be insensitive and inconsiderate. And I've see what that can do too...

pondered by phoenican @ 9.4.05