慢慢走 - Walk Slowly Digital Programme Booklet | Page 7

With our nation changing at a dizzying pace, has life become too
congested for the little red dot? From work to home, every aspect
of our lives seems to carry the clutter of that busyness. During
RawGround: Clutter 2017, collaborators Ebelle Chong, Neo Hong
Chin and Pat Toh presented a Phase I work-in-progress presentation
of 慢慢走 - Walk Slowly.
Experimenting with a viable method for creating a work together,
they analysed their seemingly mundane daily activities. Through
home-hopping they acutely observed each other’s unique movement
qualities, patterns and pathways in their respective homes. As a
choreographic tool, they drew on aspects from their everyday lives
and each wrote five tasks, such as “sing passionately” and “do a
workout”. This was then reinterpreted by the other two. In Phase
1, audience witnessed a piece that highlighted each performer’s
daily movement quality as well as the interactions that they could
potentially have with each other.
Today’s full-length Walk Slowly, aims to offer the audience a glimpse
of everydayness, normalcy and what it means to be at home.
With the inclusion of two younger dancers Matthew Goh and Jeryl
Lee, who perform alongside Ebelle, Hong Chin and Pat, it is important
to acknowledge that each performer has a different set of lived
experiences. As such, similar to Phase 1, we return to the question
that forms the bedrock of the performance: What does home mean
to you? Each performer has different affiliations to and affection for
this idea of “home”. This became evident in their verbal and non-
verbal sharing with the team during rehearsals. Perhaps home, as an
idealized concept, requires a duality of the real and the fantastical.
Tapping on this, the dancers were encouraged the dancers to draw
on their individual visceral experiences of being at “home” as material
for movement creation. Each performer’s movement are either highly
stylized or overtly mundane; and the interactions across their individual
actions hint at what “home” could stand for – it is fragmented, it is
busy, it is constantly evolving; nonetheless it is a comforting space.
What does home mean to you?