Einträge von Bilqis Hijjas

Now that the initial Work It! performances are over, the 12 participants can settle down to the main focus of this project: the week of closed-door sessions in the studio at Rimbun Dahan. Aside from the open studio session for Malaysian artists on Wednesday afternoon, and the final panel presentation which concludes the project on Saturday, the contents of this entire week are now up to the participants. The three producers -- Anna Wagner, Fumi Yokobori and I -- have resigned from our position as organisers and now serve merely as facilitators. The participants themselves are now responsible for planning what they will do.

With great freedom comes great responsibility -- too much freedom can be a curse, and it's certainly a challenge. For twelve independent, opinionated and expressive artists, deciding on a direction for their time together calls upon all their resources for collective decision-making.



On Sunday afternoon, after a relaxed but chatty brunch in which we reflected on the weekend's performances, Anna convened the group in the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan for the first time. After a second speed-dating session in which the artists responded to each other's performances, Anna asked the artists to write whatever questions they had -- both logistical and thematic -- on cards. We posted our cards on a board, and moved them around to reflect the similarities and links that emerged. Common themes emerged around the questions of what contitutes contemporary practice, how the artists negotiate the current economic situation and how their art reflects it, and their positions in relation to their gender and geographical identity.

Anna then suggested the artists brainstorm ideas for the week, either concrete plans for specific working sessions, or broader reflections upon the aims and approaches of the entire project. This provoked a storm of responses. Should they opt for time-limited sessions or organic ongoing activities? Should they split up and work as individuals or in small groups, or stay together? But once again, certain common threads emerged. Most people wanted to start the day with some kind of physical practice -- yoga, Pilates or (Doris Uhlich's contribution) 'pleasure bouncing' to popular music. Most people also wanted to pay close attention to the requirements and styles of communication of the other participants, to ensure an empowered reflective environment -- and there was a strong consciousness that doing so is part and parcel of feminist practice. And many people also wanted to address the dual position of being in Malaysia (especially for the European participants, for whom this is the first exposure to Southeast Asia) and to being in connection with the other artists in the project.



As organisers, it was interesting to see how the entire group, at first exhausted from the previous two days of rehearsals and performances, and some of them still suffering from jetlag, became energised and engaged when faced with this challenge of planning. We also observed the different styles of communication -- the personalities that tend to speak more, while others tend to listen -- as well as approaches to tasks and meaning -- those who are more interested in questioning the metastructure of the entire project, for example, in contrast to those who would prefer to propose more concrete plans for workshops.

Sunday ended with another communal meal in the open pavilion at Rimbun Dahan, with a few invited Malaysian artists who were keen to connect with the participants. Everyone had brought sweets from their home countries to share with the group, which they introduced with a story. After the intellectual challenge of the planning session, dinner was an opportunity to connect and deepen ties on a social, emotional and gastronomic level.

Both public performances of Work It! at the Black Box at MAP Publika were extremely well received. On Saturday night we had a full house, despite the competition of five other significant theatrical productions going on in Kuala Lumpur on the same weekend. We were so full that many people had to sit on mats on the floor in front of the stage.

From the opening work by Cynthia Ling Lee (Taiwan/USA) depicting how a post-modern contemporary dancer negotiates 'learning to walk like Radha' in the classical Indian tradition, to the closing work by Mia Habib (Norway/Israel) and Rita Natalio (Portugal), in which Rita lay on a table in her underwear and was covered with banana leaves and Malaysian desserts which the audience was then invited to eat, the audience found the performances to be surprising, refreshing and thought-provoking.


On Saturday night the performance ran way over time, due to a late start to accommodate the launch of a local butoh festival in another space at MAP Publika, more artists performing on Saturday than on Friday, and one of the artists' performances running over the 15-minute limitation. But, as Anna Wagner philosophically pointed out to me, this is part of the nature of live performance! Despite the late night, an impressive number of the audience stayed for the Q&A session and to meet the artists, which I feel testifies to the novelty and value of projects like these in a Malaysian context.


The informal socialising after the performances was also an opportunity for the participants to connect with some local artists, some of whom now plan attend our open studio session on Wednesday. It was an exhausting few days, and difficult for some of the participants to jump into such a packed schedule, but everyone handled it with humour, accommodation, and many creative strategies. As an opportunity for the Malaysian public to gain some access to the participants, and for the participants themselves to get a concrete insight into the variety of performance practices and approaches among the group, I feel the two days of performance were an invaluable way to begin Work It!, rather than reserving the performances for the end, as is usual in a project like this.

Despite the vast range of artistic backgrounds, the similarities among the performances were striking. "Why am I so interested in repetition? Why am I so interested in repetition?" as Cuqui Jerez (Spain) asked in her work, was something that resonated throughout. By complete coincidence, both programs also featured full-body stockings, boats, long pieces of fabric, and heros!

Day III of “Work it!” is finished and it is already difficult for me to give an overview on what has happen within the last 48 hours.
Yesterday we started with a very intense “field trip” to Kuala Lumpur and visited Women’s aid organization and Sisters in Islam, two organizations that are involved in women’s issues and identity politics. Connecting with the local context of Malaysia was very helpful for us. First of all on a geographical level as most of us just flow in without time to really prepare where we are going and secondly in terms of the social context. Women’s activist might have different questions and concerns in Malaysia than in Germany, Portugal or Japan. But from closer it seems that there are nevertheless a lot of parallels and similarities that stucked us. Why do women accept domestic violence all over the world to protect the image of a well functioning family? Why are women often named to be guilty for the violence against them with the argument that they dressed up to provocative or that they went out of the house at a time where they shouldn’t?
In our closed door sessions we made a similar experience. What do you expect from somebody coming from a different country than you do? Do you expect that she is very different? Getting to know each other by comparing our lifes to those of our mothers when they had our age stocked me a lot. For sure, the social, political and financial situations in which our families have been living are different but in terms of position of women in the family, the daughter to mother relation and the question how much a child fulfills or resists to the wishes of the parents we found a lot of similarities.


Day III was completely dedicated to the preparation of our first showcase. The question what happens if you transfer from one context to the other was predominant for all of us, especially for the European artist. Will the audience understand the content of the performances? Will they get the different layers of it? The more we progressed in our planning the more I got conscious of the fact that before we think about the transfer of content from one place to another, from one audience to another, we consider the different codes and habits that are applied around a performance. How do you present a show? How do you let people in? Do you play any music during the opening of the house? How do you do the curtain call? Do you use music?

Anna Wagner for Work It!

After an intense week of preparation and more than one and a half year of globale exchanges and skype conferences between Japan, Malaysia and Germany, “Work it! A creative Think Tank on women and performing arts” has started. Within the next ten days twelve female performing artists will spend time together in Rimbun Dahan a fantastic private art center close to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. They will explore together the depiction of the female body on stage and the notion of feminism in today’s world and different cultural contexts. Work it! Co-Initiators Bilqis Hijjas from Rimbun Dahan Fumi Yokobori from Dance Box Kobe and me (Anna Wagner from Theater Freiburg) have talked a lot about this issues when we have met at different occasions all over the world within the last year from different cultural perspectives. And we thought that it would be time to approach questions and ambivalences that are connected with the gendered body in a multi-perspective way. We believe that there is not one feminism as well as there are no clear gender identities.
We look forward to report in the coming days about our discussion, adventures and questions here on tanzconnexions.

Anna for Work it!

This project is supported by the Tanzconnexions program of Goethe Institut as well as the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and Arts Network Asia (ANA) as part of the programme Creative Encounters: Cultural Partnerships between Asia and Europe’. It is also supported by Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur and Women's Aid Organisation, and co-produced by Rimbun Dahan.