SoftMachine: The Return captures Asia's shifting dance landscape

SoftMachine: The Return is not simply restaging a work from a decade ago. It is also a continuation of the story of the shifting contemporary dance landscape in Asia, told through the lives and creative practices of five Asian artists: Rianto (Banyumas, Indonesia), Surjit Nongmeikapam (Manipur, India), Xiao Ke and Zhou Zihan (Shanghai, China), and Yuya Tsukahara (Osaka, Japan).

- Melissa Quek

The original structure remains, presenting four performance portraits created in collaboration with director Choy Ka Fai, a Berlinbased Singaporean multidisciplinary artist, melding lecture, conversation, documentary film and demonstration.

Unlike the original, where the performances were paired and split across different times, all four this time were presented together, separated only by a short intermission.

However, the personal and distinct works within the almost three-hour performance made time pass easily.

The research into the ecologies of dance-makers independent within the choreographic landscape of Asia was initiated by Choy in 2012, and resulted in SoftMachine, an Esplanade commission as part of the da:ns festival 2015.

It subsequently toured more than 60 shows internationally until it was halted in 2020 by the pandemic.