Senses of Ten - Work 5
Dance Portraits:
Film (2019 - 2022)
Stay If You Can, Go If You Must
Single-channel video, [12’11]
2019
A portrait film of two female contemporary Hong Kong artists shot over ice and smoke, in which these two substances reflect the real-life, turbulent events happening around them.
Stay If You Can, Go If You Must is a portrait of two dance artists I have known for a long time. Shot over ice and smoke, the elements and visual treatment of this work serve as spatial and material metaphors for their practices, their predicaments in life, and their internal landscape.
Forgive or Not to Forgive
Single-channel video, [05’46]
2019
Shared dialogues between Chang Yan and Chen Jun about their childhood trauma, contemplating the hatred they feel towards their fathers. The film juxtaposes the body movements and memories in the intimacy of an unknown space.
Forgive or Not to Forgive marks the starting point for my exploration of how portraiture and biography can be incorporated into my own dance-filmmaking methodology. In this work, intimate dialogues between two young dancers on familial trauma, social violence, and the muscle memories of their dance training serve to articulate what language fails to communicate: that feeling and knowing are both bodily actions. As a retired dancer working in film, my approach could have been to simply document their dancing, but I couldn’t—that year had been difficult for me as I had lost my sense of dance and its meaning in my life. All movements felt meaningless when performed without context, reduced to pure physical virtuosity in different landscapes.
The original commissioning timeline was one week, and I simply could not make the film. In the process, however, I became friends with the two girls. We went drinking, sang karaoke, and spent time together. On my last day, I decided to make a film from the stories they had shared with me—their childhood traumas and memories. We spent two hours in a small changing room with a single light bulb. I set up my DSLR for an intimate one-on-one scene with their naked backs facing the camera, dissecting the Mongolian dance they knew well through their stories. The film became a source of catharsis in my filmmaking career, and I understood why I make films and how I should continue.
Someday I Will Become a Rock
Single-channel video, [18’51]
2019
The result of a collaboration with Hong Kong filmmaker Cheuk Cheung, Someday I Will Become a Rock explores the evolving character of one’s roots, nature, and memories following migration through the lens of dance. Like a rock, the performer imagines the possibilities of becoming timeless.
We see a rock
It transcends languages and cultures
It traverses time and space
Perhaps it has its own nature and memories
Rooms
Single-channel video, [16”44]
2021
Co-directed with Singaporean filmmaker Liao Jiekai, Rooms is a portrait of Singaporean dancer, choreographer, and educator Albert Tiong. Uncovering the rooms, both physical and metaphorical, that Tiong inhabited throughout the period of artistic development that brought him to Singapore as a young dancer in his 20s, the work seeks to open a window into his interior worlds.
A Long Walk
Single-channel video, [15”44]
2022
The personal journey of a dancer serves as a mirror to the filmmaker’s own self-realisation in this work, co-directed with Hong Kong filmmaker Lee Wai Shing. A minimalist and contemplative metaphor for the vicissitudes of life, A Long Walk probes deep into the inner motivations and conflicts that mark Malaysian dancer Ong Yong Lock’s decades-long career from his native land to Hong Kong that seemed to refract my own journey in life.
“Boundless and perpetual,
without living nor death.
He runs, he trips, he falls, he crawls.
It’s a chase, it's an escape,
and it could have been fate.”
Senses of Ten - Work 5
Dance Portraits:
Film (2019 - 2022)
Stay If You Can, Go If You Must
Single-channel video, [12’11]
2019
A portrait film of two female contemporary Hong Kong artists shot over ice and smoke, in which these two substances reflect the real-life, turbulent events happening around them.
Stay If You Can, Go If You Must is a portrait of two dance artists I have known for a long time. Shot over ice and smoke, the elements and visual treatment of this work serve as spatial and material metaphors for their practices, their predicaments in life, and their internal landscape.
Forgive or Not to Forgive
Single-channel video, [05’46]
2019
Shared dialogues between Chang Yan and Chen Jun about their childhood trauma, contemplating the hatred they feel towards their fathers. The film juxtaposes the body movements and memories in the intimacy of an unknown space.
Forgive or Not to Forgive marks the starting point for my exploration of how portraiture and biography can be incorporated into my own dance-filmmaking methodology. In this work, intimate dialogues between two young dancers on familial trauma, social violence, and the muscle memories of their dance training serve to articulate what language fails to communicate: that feeling and knowing are both bodily actions. As a retired dancer working in film, my approach could have been to simply document their dancing, but I couldn’t—that year had been difficult for me as I had lost my sense of dance and its meaning in my life. All movements felt meaningless when performed without context, reduced to pure physical virtuosity in different landscapes.
The original commissioning timeline was one week, and I simply could not make the film. In the process, however, I became friends with the two girls. We went drinking, sang karaoke, and spent time together. On my last day, I decided to make a film from the stories they had shared with me—their childhood traumas and memories. We spent two hours in a small changing room with a single light bulb. I set up my DSLR for an intimate one-on-one scene with their naked backs facing the camera, dissecting the Mongolian dance they knew well through their stories. The film became a source of catharsis in my filmmaking career, and I understood why I make films and how I should continue.
Someday I Will Become a Rock
Single-channel video, [18’51]
2019
The result of a collaboration with Hong Kong filmmaker Cheuk Cheung, Someday I Will Become a Rock explores the evolving character of one’s roots, nature, and memories following migration through the lens of dance. Like a rock, the performer imagines the possibilities of becoming timeless.
We see a rock
It transcends languages and cultures
It traverses time and space
Perhaps it has its own nature and memories
Rooms
Single-channel video, [16”44]
2021
Co-directed with Singaporean filmmaker Liao Jiekai, Rooms is a portrait of Singaporean dancer, choreographer, and educator Albert Tiong. Uncovering the rooms, both physical and metaphorical, that Tiong inhabited throughout the period of artistic development that brought him to Singapore as a young dancer in his 20s, the work seeks to open a window into his interior worlds.
A Long Walk
Single-channel video, [15”44]
2022
The personal journey of a dancer serves as a mirror to the filmmaker’s own self-realisation in this work, co-directed with Hong Kong filmmaker Lee Wai Shing. A minimalist and contemplative metaphor for the vicissitudes of life, A Long Walk probes deep into the inner motivations and conflicts that mark Malaysian dancer Ong Yong Lock’s decades-long career from his native land to Hong Kong that seemed to refract my own journey in life.
“Boundless and perpetual,
without living nor death.
He runs, he trips, he falls, he crawls.
It’s a chase, it's an escape,
and it could have been fate.”