ANGGOTA 2: Re-Member, a new work by award-winning dance artist Lee Ren Xin

ANGGOTA 2: Re-Member is the latest performance by Lee Ren Xin, one of Malaysia most exciting and thought-provoking dance artists. This new work arises from last year's award-winning ANGGOTA and delves deeper into the questions and themes Ren Xin and collaborators were exploring – this time with a focus on embodiment on a day-to-day level.

In ANGGOTA 2, Ren Xin works with 'voice' as a significant element – the voice from the voice box, as well as the voice of the body (e.g. what this body feels, needs, desires – its agencies, and capacities to decide). This stems from Ren Xin’s personal question why, "as a body-oriented practitioner, my voice is the one part of my body that I could not use. That I felt furthest away from. That I could not feel. That felt so foreign to me." This inquiry zooms out to consider larger cultural values that are inherited and embodied via the functions of family, education, and dance education – all of which may have a role in shaping the body and silencing the voice.

Recognizing the tension of embodying this disconnectedness, dismemberments, and the dismissed voices of the body, ANGGOTA 2 embarks on a journey to re member – to put together once again – this body in present time and space.

DIRECTOR, CHOREOGRAPHER & PERFORMER

Lee Ren Xin is a dance artist interested in how the body carries, reflects, embodies, and co-creates with place and time. An overarching theme in Ren Xin’s work is how to share a space, or how (we want) to live together. Her works explore ways of inhabiting, as well as the spaces inhabited – how one shapes the other, momentarily or slowly over a long time. At other times, she works with ritual and repetition in public spaces.

Past works include ANGGOTA, #WhoseNeighborhoodProject, the Where’s The Speficifisfety series (in collaboration with Lee Mun Wai), and the B.E.D. (Because Everybody Dreams) series. Ren Xin has been awarded ‘Best Choreographer in a Feature Length Work’ and ‘Best Group Performance’ (alongside Tan Bee Hung) for ANGGOTA at the 2023 BOH Cameronian Arts Awards, and she was ‘Best Featured Performer’ at the 2019 BOH Cameronian Arts Awards for her performance in Soubi Sha’s Dead Bird. She has also received support from the Saison Foundation for her research project ‘Body and Borders’ (2020), in exchange with director and playwright Kaori Nishio. Ren Xin graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore and Purchase College, State University of New York, USA. She trained with The Human Expression Dance Company and LeeSaar The Company, and performed with the DPAC Dance Company. She is a member of Five Arts Centre.

PERFORMER

Kuala Lumpur-born Tan Bee Hung graduated with a Master of Dance at the University of Malaya. Active in the Malaysian and international dance scenes, she has performed locally in Tari, MyDance Festival, Le French Arts Festival, RAW Arts Space’s SounDance, and in performances by Kwang Tung Dance Company. Internationally, Bee Hung has performed in Dancing in Asia (Indonesia), Festival Tokyo 2016 (Japan), Goyang International Dance Festival (Korea), the 5th no ballet International Choreography Competition (Germany), Guangdong Modern Dance Festival (Guangzhou, China), and CONTACT: A Week of Dance (Singapore).

She was selected to participate in the International Young Choreographers Program in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 2013 and SEA Choreolab 2015 in Rimbun Dahan. Bee Hung’s work Silent Raid received ‘Best Costume Design, Styling & Make Up’ at the 2015 BOH Cameronian Arts Awards, and at the recent 2023 BOH Cameronian Arts Awards, she received ‘Best Choreographer in a Feature Length Work’ and ‘Best Group Performance’ (alongside Lee Ren Xin) for ANGGOTA. Bee Hung is a firm believer that humans are natural movers. Aside from dancing and choreographing, she is also a Pilates practitioner and instructor.

VIDEO ARTIST

Chloe Yap Mun Ee (b. 1995) is an experimental filmmaker and video artist who is curious about the expressions of form, medium, identity, love, and intimacy – as well as their hypocrisies and contradictions. She has made short films including STRNGE PLCE (2016), (?)’s GAZE (2016), and DANCE LIKE A SNAIL (2021). Meanwhile, she continues confronting and challenging her own shifting points of view by deploying the distorted wisdom of the audience in one way or another. Her latest work is a video installation, I DON’T REALLY WANT YOU TO SEE ME, BUT I STILL WANT TO SHOW YOU (2022), where she confronts her fear and guilt towards the cinema image and the power dynamics within its space.

Recently she has been collaborating with dance artist Lee Ren Xin.

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Syamsul Azhar works across theatre, film, and contemporary art as a multimedia and lighting designer, often employing technology as a performative element in his work. He has designed across diverse places and spaces, and collaborated on many projects.

Syamsul is a member of sans, a loose interdisciplinary collective of artists creating works for performance and exhibition. He is a graduate in Film and Digital Media from Deakin University, Australia, and he is also a member of Five Arts Centre.

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