Little Lee II: “Is Today Really Yesterday?”
13-14 Feb 2004
Jubilee Hall - Raffles Hotel
Singapore
Little Lee II: Is Today Really Yesterday? is my second collaboration with The Arts Fission…
Synopsis (by Arts Fission)
LITTLE LEE II: Is Today Really Yesterday? by The Arts Fission Company features an interesting group of mature casts, centenarian social worker Teresa Hsu (Founder of Heart to Heart Service and Active Senior Citizen Award 2003 recipient), celebrated Cantonese opera actress Joanna Wong (Cultural Medallion recipient and former Registrar of National University of Singapore), Tai Chi & Feng Shui Master and grassroots leader Chong Swan Lek, Osteopath and social worker Sharana Rao (Heart to Heart Service), and Entrepreneur Yusoff Bin Hussain (Owner of a Delivery Company) together with the company dancers and two teenaged performers on 13 & 14 February 2004 at Jubilee Hall, The Raffles Hotel. Artistic Director Angela Liong conceptualised and choreographed the Asian Dance Theatre in the company’s continuous effort to educate the public’s perennial anxiety towards aging through the persuasive medium of dance theatre performance.
The LITTLE LEE II sequel is encouraged by the warm response of LITTLE LEE I: The Forgotten Journey Home, which attracted an enthusiastic intergenerational audience to an intergenerational cast of Samsui ladies and young dancers. LITTLE LEE I has taken the company to a new level of understanding towards the complex and bittersweet experience of aging. The new production reveals the stories of ordinary individuals who become extraordinary because of their unwavering courage and determination to preserve their own identity and independence. They make themselves relevant to the community and refuse to be of social liability.
A pioneer in Singapore’s contemporary dance, Angela Liong says: “The success of LITTLE LEE I showed us how the poetics of dance could reinforce a serious social issue by the simple sharing of a touching theatre experience.” She stresses that: “The challenge of changing the public mindset on aging is not only the responsibility of the government but also very much a social obligation for all of us.” The company pledges its social commitment as active practising artists through the continuous staging of the LITTLE LEE series. Besides continuing the artistic collaboration with Multimedia Artist Chiang Jing Ying, each LITTLE LEE production features different mature performers with professional dancers from the company.
LITTLE LEE II Is Today Really Yesterday? focuses on a frozen moment where past and present converges. The journey back through time brings on familiar yet strange remembrances. It marks the cyclical passing of time on people and objects in a moving performance of dance and video narrative with juxtaposed images of personal mementos, objects, and lost landscapes.
Artistically, LITTLE LEE II also marks the company’s ongoing research for a new genre of contemporary Asian Dance Theatre that involves addressing elements of traditional dance-drama with contemporary treatment as well as finding modern parallels in traditional arts and classical forms.