Mana Makan - The Feast Crusade

I'm Not Dead Yet .. Just Half Dead

2006-07-22T01:12:00.000+08:00

To all those people who have so sweet and concerned about my sudden "disappearance" ... my sincerest apologies and greatest gratitude.

No, I am not dead yet ... just half dead. Been incredibly busy. Too busy to even eat sometimes and definitely sleep deprived. I shall not go into details but am involved in a concert next weekend with a possible overseas (redeye) performance as well as a roadshow. So it's definitely masochistic of me to be kind of enjoying this.

Anyway, I will not be able to update the blog till everything dies down but for those dying to see me (rrrrright ...), catch me at the UCC Hall at the National University next weekend. I'm the one looking very hungry and half stoned.

I promise I will update later. But in the meantime, read this ...

The First CAIRO! CAIRO! CELEBRATION OF EGYPTIAN DANCE FESTIVAL will take place in Singapore from 28-31 July 2006. Following in the illustrious footsteps of and with the endorsement of the largest and most prestigious industry landmark event, Ahlan Wa Sahlan Oriental Bellydance Festival, the first CAIRO! CAIRO! CELEBRATION OF EGYPTIAN DANCE FESTIVAL is a celebration of Egyptian dance with a memorable opening concert, intensive dance classes and a halfa (dinner and dance party) as well as a bellydance competition.

This will be the first time the widely respected Ahlan Wa Sahlan Organisers and Master Teachers will be banding together to collaborate with Singapore bellydance pioneer, Claribel Ng, to organise a bellydance festival and dance camp.

Why is this significant? Why is a tiny island, more Southeast Asian than Middle Eastern, shining a beacon for a dance form seldom understood outside of Egypt? What is the connection between an ancient dance form and Singapore culture? Why are half of the Master Teachers male? Never has Singapore seen so many Master Teachers working together on our tiny shores and the opportunity to speak with and learn from them is not one to be missed.

Attached is some information including profiles of the Master Teachers and the event for your easy reference. More information on the CAIRO! CAIRO! CELEBRATION OF EGYPTIAN DANCE FESTIVAL programme is available at http://www.claribelstudio.com/event.htm.

We cordially invite you to the opening concert on 28 July 2006 and will be pleased to organise interviews with the Master Teachers, the organisers or any of the dancers at the concert.

Cairo! Cairo! Celebration of Egyptian Dance Concert
Date: Friday, 28 July 2006
Time: 8.00 - 10.00pm
Venue: UCC Hall, National University of Singapore
10 Kent Ridge Crescent
Singapore 119260

The stars of the concert are Ms Randa Khamel, one of the reigning stars of the Cairo bellydance scene today and highlight of every Ahlan Wa Sahlan, as well as Mr Momo Kadous, one of the most famous choreographers from the Nile Delta who is renowned for his Taktib (stick dance). Their solo performances will definitely offer the most defining moments in Oriental dance in 2006 in Singapore.

Humbly sharing the stage with these two stars and performing the beautiful choreography of Master Teachers Ms Raqia Hassan and Dr Mo Geddawi will be a local dance troupe from Claribel’s Rak Sharqi Studio, clad in costumes from Mdm Eman Zaki, couturiere to the dance stars in Cairo. Troupe members include some of Singapore’s more established professional dancers, such as Claribel, Ghram, Hsiao Min, Namiko, Serene and Stephanie. The ladies come from all over Asia from Hong, Kong, Japan, Taiwan to Singapore, perhaps earning the right to be called a truly Asian troupe devoted to recreating the calibre and class of the world renowned Reda Troupe - the training ground for many of the Master Teachers of today.

Tickets for this concert is available on www.gatecrash.com.sg as well as any SingPost Post Office counter or S.A.M. kiosk island-wide. For credit card bookings, dial 6222 5595 for the GATECRASH ticketing hotline.

Intensive Dance Workshops
29 July 2006 - 31 July 2006 UCC Dance Studio
National University of Singapore
10 Kent Ridge Crescent
Singapore 119260

Closing Gala Party aka The Halfa
Date: Monday, 31 July 2006
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Raffles Town Club

ABOUT AHLAN WA SAHLAN
The Ahlan Wa Sahlan Oriental Bellydance Festival is a landmark Egyptian event held over 1 week in Cairo every June. The largest and most respected Bellydance Festival in the world, this annual event attracts dancers from all over globe to immerse themselves completely in this ancient dance form that has influenced many of the modern dances of today.

Ahlan Wa Sahlan was first conceived of and organised by Madam Raqia Hassan.
Bellydancers all over the world flock to Cairo for this Festival and in 2003, documented 700 dancers from over 30 different countries such as Cuba, USA, Canada, South America, Brazil, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Hungary, Holland, Russia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. Other Bellydance Balls and events may have been organised before, but thus far, none have approaced the scale and calibre of this defining festival. Please visit www.raqiahassan.net for more information.

Intensive Dance Workshops
29 July 2006 - 31 July 2006
UCC Dance Studio, National University of Singapore
10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260

Registration of workshops can be done through the post by mailing the completed registration form (available on www.claribelstudio.com) and a cheque for the fees to Claribel Ng at 151C King’s Road, #16-12 Farrer Court, Singapore 268160. Cheques should be written out to Claribel’s Raks Sharki Studio.

Closing Gala Party aka The Halfa
Date: Monday, 31 July 2006
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Raffles Town Club
1 Plymouth Avenue
Singapore 297753

This will feature a buffet dinner, bellydance performances from the workshop participants, a bellydance competition as well as an open invitation to all participants to grace the dance floor after all the planned activities.

Tickets for the Closing Gala can be purchased at the NUS UCC Hall Foyer on 27 July 2006 from 2.00-8.00pm and on 28 July 2006 from 2.00-10.00pm.

For more information please contact Claribel at Tel: 9792261, email: claribel_ng@hotmail.com or visit www.claribelstudio.com.

Hidden Truths In the Fog

2006-06-27T06:06:00.000+08:00

It's strange how little gems of realisation and truths appear in the fogs of delirium and illness. As you gasp for breath and labour and cling to moments of clarity and pain-free validation of your existence, little nuggets of epiphany peer through the dense clouds of self-delusion.

In those moments, the words of a close confidante, trusted and respected, ring a clarion call through your consciousness. The kindly tyranny of actions, the sibilant insertions of true sentiments. Amids the words denoting friendship, care, concern and sympathy bleat the occasion slam of disdain. Words like loser or nobody emit as if from a distance, cast from the nets of third-partyism when it froths forth from a dark, hurtful place within their own consciousness.

It raises the awareness that friendship could be couched in a bitter refrain of complete disdain. The obvious desire to inflict a knife wound of hurt meted out with the regularity of imbalanced hormones or erratic emotions could be likened to the murder of innocence by insouciant drunkards who plead for clemency.

As the ruby ripened beads of life's blood bleed a sea of hurt across the bed of friendship, is it foolishness to disregard and constantly forgive as the slideshow of actions being louder than words push forward their case? Can the soul actually withstand the belittling and sloughing of hate-filled words before withering into dust, even beyond the caresses of physical sustenance? Are stick and stones truly less painful than than a blanket of thorny words carelessly thrown in fits of self-vindication or petty malice? Is it foolish to feel emotional shards of words as starkly as a gunshot through the heart?

As the lack of oxygen causes a numb euphoria, the only grasp of reality is the constant litany of those words that spark of hatred yet are cloaked in friendship.

Perhaps the saddest irony of life is a dim memory of warmth as the cold, metallic tang of strange fruit encircled by the siren song of being a nobody seeps the life out of every breath.

Dancerpades Interlude - Hacking the Hack

2006-06-25T10:30:00.000+08:00

The second and final day of the dance competition was on a Sunday. The highly intelligent organisers had decreed that tickets to that day’s events would only be available from 9.30am and seats were limited to 100.

Rat Off a Sinking Ship
Since the event started at 10.30am, 3A was convinced that there would be a huge queue of people lined up for the tickets as early as 8.30am so she dutifully made her way there to be ahead of everyone else. Typically, she was the first and only one there for a while. Which enabled her to witness a major dressing down of the organiser by the main organiser in full view and hearing of many of the event staff.

Without going into the details of the humiliating airing of dirty linen, it transpired that the main organiser was blaming the organiser for almost all the ills and disasters of the dance competition and was demanding that she account for a number of things. Some of these included the submission of the scoredcards for the competition, her explanation of how the Taiwanese were managed, her explanation of how the Turkish judge was managed and a whole host of “crimes”.

It was an embarrassing and highly inappropriate scene. While there were many things I found issue with in the organiser’s management of this entire event, it is unfair for the main organiser to abdicate all responsibility for the disaster and cast all blame on the organiser. As the main organiser and therefore leader of this fiasco, she had the responsibility to be in control of the entire event and to question and verify everything before allowing them to be implemented. What kind of leader contracts everything out, makes desultory checks and then points the finger at the first sign of trouble?

I felt that she was only too willing to send the organiser up the creek to save her own skin and that did not sit well with me. In later conversations, I listened to her blame everything on the organiser and smear her reputation, and secretly thought the saying that there is no honour among thieves as being surprisingly apt, even if not totally accurate in this case. Say what you like … that I am prejudiced against the organiser … that I am a right cow … but my sense of justice and fairness made me furious on behalf of the organiser, who I count as a member of the community no matter what she has done.

It infuriated me enough to defend her by reminding the main organiser that she should have been monitored or checked if things were mismanaged to the extent that the main organiser claimed. And that as a leader, she (the main organiser) is responsible for all the failures of her minions, and not just the victories.

Casting all blame on her in the bid to keep her own nose out of the shite is cowardly and unfair.

Of course, all this drama was unknown to me as I arrived at the National Museum to face another exciting day of dance competition. I was very eager as it would finally be my chance to see how the Singapore dancers fared against the Chinese and Taiwanese.

Although one of my close dancer friends is Taiwanese, she is not a good gauge as I think she is one of those creatures made to dance from birth and even the Mother Ship would have to bow down to her superior dance skills. I had never met another Taiwanese dancer of our dance form and the only mainland Chinese dancer I had ever met was an absolute knock-out at one of the master workshops, who was another specimen of genetically blessed dance talents.

Hacking the Hack
I made the rounds with the judges again and settled down to record the event in my handy dandy notebook. While I was sitting there, the organisers beckoned me down from my perch and began to question me on my presence at the event. I was beginning to get irate as they asked me to step outside the room to speak to the PR hack on the phone.

Let me just put this in perspective. When the festival opened, I called to ask for my media kit and pass to the event – I presumed it had been lost in the mail. It would be highly undesirable to have a press member who is actually conversant of the industry and art form covering the event! The PR hack actually told me to just “turn up” at the opening ceremony and that I would get my kit and pass then. When I asked for one-on-one interviews with the judges and some of the contestants, he simply told me to “turn up” during the competition and try to speak to them myself, although he did make some obligatory noises that he “will see what they can do”.

At the opening ceremony, he barely spared me two minutes as he told me he would inform me of the arrangements and that the International Contest result would be announced on the Sunday afternoon. He told me I should just “come and see what and who I could cover” then.

Unknown to him, I have been in the business for almost two decades and thus, such cavalier and obstructive behaviour typically does not work for me. Being a DIY type of girl, it would usually motivate me to begin an all-out assault on me own. And I can be pretty motivated.

I did not hear from this PR hack again till this moment, on a bright Sunday morning, before the contest started but obviously way too early for the PR hack to even be at the scene. His concern and wariness that I had been lurking for the past day covering the event was palpable. And I knew the reason why.

He informed me that there was a press conference at 3pm that afternoon, which he claimed he informed me of (I must find out more about this astral communication thing) and tried to convince me that I would be better off only being there at that time. I politely disabused him of that by stating I intended to be there for every moment of the competition and also at the press conference. I again requested for an interview with the judges and the contestants, especially the winning ones, and he told me I would be able to speak with them at the press conference. I asked if there would be a proper Q&A and one-on-ones but all he could tell me was that there was a press conference.

He demurred when I asked to speak with some of the foreign contestants and judges and even questioned why that would be important. Again, I rolled my eyes and gently reminded him that Singapore is not the only country in an international competition.

I will not go into undue details but I was blocked, stonewalled, given the old run around and basically shafted. The so-called press conference was a debacle which was organised as a vehicle for the local papers and television channel to shoot the more “outstanding” contestants as they performed. Some other journalists and I stood there wondering when the press conference would begin as hordes of audience members stormed the stage and began taking pictures and congratulating the winners. In fact, a couple of us left in disgust after spending 30 minutes just waiting for them to get their act together and after they shouted at us (the journalists, not the audience members) to get off the stage!.

Fortunately, I had already made plans, hunted down, interviewed and set up appointments with a number of contestants and judges on my own prior to the PR hack’s interference. The only interview he arranged for me was with Tanyeli, the judge from Turkey and even then he stood right next to us and tried to control the interview. I will tell you why this is laughable later.

He also obstructed me from interviewing the Taiwanese by promising to set up an interview and keeping me in a corner for ages while he made sure that they were finally out of the way, before informing me regrettably that they had left the building. He thought I did not notice this “media management”. In fact, the main organiser then pulled me aside and begged me to help them by not speaking to the Taiwanese whom she claimed “would not have anything good to say” as the organiser had treated them very poorly and managed everything badly. She also asked me to “help them” by saying only nice things and began a litany of complaints about the organiser. She claimed that the organiser had deceived her and kept her in the dark about everything despite many demands for updates and accountability.

So what do you think? Do you think this blatantly transparent attempt at manipulating me worked? By the way, I did write an extremely measured piece in my official capacity. But this is my blog and I can rant if I want to as I cannot in my other life. So bite it.

I will not belabour the point but I dislike being “media managed” by people who should have read the manual I wrote on the subject. Let’s just move on to the contest proper …

Up the Cactus Path

2006-06-25T02:06:00.000+08:00

Taking a short break from the reporting on the recent dance competition, I pause to consider the concept of leadership.

Honestly, I do not know much about it, having never sought or desired it. However, it has been thrust upon me many times and my innate laziness and pathological avoidance of responsibility has made the mantle of leadership an uncomfortable and suffocating yoke which I fidget and worry against.

It is amazingly easy to pinpoint the flaws in leadership, to disdain it, to question it, to mutiny against it and to ridicule it. Many times I see leaders seek the opinions and interactivity among those they lead, which sometimes leads to total anarchy as the division between consultation and unconstructive interference becomes so blurred that everyone fumbles around in a haze of confusion.

I like following orders. I know most find this unbelievable but I do. I like to have very concise, detailed and logically structured instructions given to me so that I can abdicate all responsibility, blindly execute these to perfection (or as close to perfection as I can), and then totally point the finger in case someone finds the results wanting.

That is not to say I will not question if I do not understand them or find them puzzling. Perhaps then you can say I am a half blind orders follower. I will follow orders blindly as long as I find them logical. Illogical orders which defy rational thinking and waste time inevitably get a litany of questions from me.

Why? How come? What? When? Where? Who? What if? Why me?

And even after I receive the instructions, I like to know the exact specifications of the order.

To what degree? Level of expectations and degrees of importance or priority? Purpose? End result? Cause and effect? Alternatives? Contingency? Worst case scenario? Why me?

Often it drives some people less inquisitive than I to distraction and they mistake it for rebellion or naysaying. On the contrary, I am simply paving the way to how much and if I will disappoint them.

I also like to take a backseat and let others dictate while I watch and … well, watch. Only when I think it is beyond ridiculous and wasting too much of my time, better spent eating, sleeping, washing my hair, filing my nails etc, would I then make a suggestion or observation. Perhaps it is the way I make them, which is usually either coached in humour or as laconically as possible (because despite what people think I do worry about upsetting people), as I get ignored quite a lot.

Not to blow my own trumpet but I usually make pretty damn crash-shot suggestions or observations. Because I would have ruminated on them a fair bit before I offer them up on the table as I dread having to poke fun and laugh at my own idiocy … and I am a right sarky bitch who will drive myself to humiliated tears with my biting humour.

It amuses and annoys me when I am ignored and I watch these individuals talk themselves into a circle. Or try to impose their will on everyone and under the guise of concern and constructivism take unsubtle potshots at those they are supposedly helping or working with. Watching them try to make someone else feel small or guilty is not something I enjoy. Just like I do not like watching public stonings. I guess I am just funny that way.

The worse thing is that these people are usually so transparent yet believe that they are so intellectually superior that no one can see through their paper-thin motives and motivations. They would “discuss” at length and finally come to the same conclusion as I put up 45 minutes ago. See? I told you I am not a good leader! No one listens to me. But those who do and realise that 45 minutes later their leader finally cottoned on to what I had verbalised eons ago, usually look at me with a rather startled expression in their eyes. Which is usually followed by a narrow-eyed and assessing look as they actually look past the long hair, tits, goofy expression and total arse-luckness (is that even a word because it should as it best describes me!).

And these are women I am talking about.

Perhaps it is because I do not raise my voice or push myself forward aggressively. Half the time I can’t be arsed and I just think the people going around in circles like headless chicken are daft who just make me wonder at the deep unfathomability of God's plan. The other half of the time I am doing my space cadet act where my brain has taken a vacation somewhere else as I wait for them to come to the same conclusion I did ... 45 minutes later.

However, occasionally when I have had enough of my time wasted or think we have reached a crunch point where further empty vesseling is inexcusable, I will make my point. That’s when the words go like this …

No. No. No. No. No. And no again.

Usually the empty vessels who shout and pontificate the loudest will be the most incensed by my sudden observations and immediately go on the attack. Terribly startled, they will immediately sputter and some may even begin to insult me in an attempt to belittle me. Which is really easy since I am usually taller than most of them. So once they think they have cut me down to size, I am usually the same height as them. Which means I can now start speaking to them as equals. See? It all works out.

This treatment is a true lack of respect for me on their part which I can understand since they obviously think they are superior and that I am a right loser. Using words like “patience”, “consideration”, “intelligence” and what not, they exhibit little of these and show such total disdain for my opinions that I am tempted to shut my mind and “intelligence” off permanently to them, take a mental holiday and alphabetise (again) my spice bottles in my head.

Ego is a terrible thing. I am not exempt from it but I definitely try to see beyond it. I am not opposed to apologising even when I do not have to, to preserve the peace. I just wish others would treat me with the same courtesy.

One last time, why me?

Dancerpades VIII - Local Gone Loco

2006-06-24T07:42:00.000+08:00

Finally the day’s segments were all over and it was just a matter of waiting for the results. It had been a long day and while we were waiting, the other dancers were already making calls to find out the results and to hear our reports.

I did not bother to consult my scorecards as it was obvious to me that Bellydance Discovery had won the title with the Sundance Troupe a close second. Third place was rather moot but I thought Nerferteri were the most likely.

It was obvious that there was a great divide between the top two troupes and the rest. To those not familiar with the community, they might have assumed that the standard in Singapore is very low with a small handful of competent dancers.

The thought was too painful to contemplate so I reviewed the total scores perfunctorily.

Again, the results were a surprise. This time around, apparently the organiser was not allowed into the small room to tabulate the scorecards so her expression when the winner was announced was telling. The discovery that the top prize had been denied them was a palpable shock apparent in every bemused pore of her face.

The winners were –

1st – Sundance Troupe
2nd – Bellydance Discovery
3rd – Les Belles du Mirage

Again, I was baffled by the decision. Sure, there was a hard fight between Bellydance Discovery and Sundance but I thought the former’s superior middle eastern dance skills would have trumped the superior lyrical jazz dance foundation of the latter. Obviously the judges thought otherwise.

But the biggest shock was the inclusion of Les Belles du Mirage in third place. Not a single person I spoke to even thought they should have placed anywhere near the top three. I was puzzled as to why Nerferteri had not placed and 3A had a theory that it may have been because they were not “Chinese” enough since the judges were all Chinese. I really do not know but again, I thought that the decision was questionable.

Speaking to one of the judges, Mey Jen, later, I asked about the decision between Bellydance Discovery and Sundance Troupe. She very diplomatically replied that some judges might have found the American Tribal Fusion vibe of the African-inspired number too discordant with their vision of middle eastern dance. Before watching the International segment the next day, I would have been puzzled by her comment. However, the personality and dance style preference of the judges, i.e. the Chinese and the Taiwanese judges, became apparent and helped a little to explain how this could have happened.

By now it was late, we were just disillusioned and tired and we still had to go meet some of the other dancers to fill them in on the day’s events and results. I was hoping that the next day would be more exciting and uplifting.

Dancerpades Part VII - Groundhog Day?

2006-06-22T14:31:00.000+08:00

I was going to post this later because it is that kind of week which is so chaotic on so many fronts I was going to take my time doing this. But the comments and actions of some really mature individuals prompted me to lay fingers to keyboard so here you have it …

By the time the Fusion section of the Troupe competition rolled up, everyone was a little jaded and a lot disappointed. Frankly, to have only two truly worthy groups was below expectations.

Since Fusion is always a controversial bug bear and most of the contestants in the Solo category had massacred it, I was truly fearful. Yet something told me that a gem or two would be found in this segment. For once, I am so glad my intuition did not play me false.

I Hear The Sounds of Afrika
The first troupe back for the Fusion segment was the misnamed Troupe Malik. Dancing to the really hackneyed Simarik or Kiss Kiss by Tarkan, this threesome interpreted the song as mostly chest shimmies. In fact, it was all shimmies throughout the song. Worse, these shimmies had limited or no accents, pauses or variations, making for a dull choreography with little imagination. There was a strange pelvic movement in this piece, which made 3A and I furrow our brows and look at each other in askance, and of course, the ϋber tacky kissing motions that usually accompany this song … sigh.

Giving them 5/10 for presentation & framing; 3.5 for fluidity of techniques; 4/10 for expression (they looked happier here than in their Traditional piece); 2.5/10 for originality & creativity (you will know why shortly); and 2.75/10 for rhythm and musicality were the best I could give them. Overall, Troupe Malik received a score of 2.85/10.

Shocker! The next troupe was Just 3 who performed a highly original piece – the same Kiss Kiss by Tarkan piece as the group which just vacated the stage!

What on earth possessed them or their teacher??? Surely common sense would tell you this was a disaster? How can you put two teams into the competition dancing to the same song and same choreo? Obviously when she devised the judging criteria to include originality & creativity, it was a display of a sense of humour.

So it was not just one time the pain but two times the suffering as we had to endure a bad déjà vu of a poor choreo and even worse performance. Just 3 made their schoolmates look good with an even poorer execution and technical ability. Now we know why snakes have no arms … they bit them off in mortification after witnessing Just 3’s.

I was glad when it was over and tempted to give them a point for releasing me from the torment. Instead, I gave them 4.5/10 for presentation & framing; 2/10 for fluidity of technique; 2.75/10 for expression (one of them really looked like she would rather be home washing her hair); 0/10 for originality & creativity; and 1.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, they scored 2.2/10.

This was beginning to be painful for us and I groaned when I heard the next song - Alabina’s Salma y Salamah, a song I am very familiar with since the first song I performed to in Singapore was Dalida’s version. I braced myself but fortunately, Nerferteri’s stronger technical ability made this performance a welcome change from the previous two troupe’s disappointing turns.

These five ladies performed better in this segment than their Traditional performance and the choreography featured a little more attention to formation. Their timing was much better but their fusing of samba movements was a little weak, making this choreography rather wishy washy. All 5 seemed to have problems with their stomach pops and the timing was suspect.

I gave them 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 4.75/10 fluidity of techniques; 5/10 for expression; 4.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 5/10 for rhythm & musicality, giving them a well-deserved total average of 5/10.

The next group, Fusion de Estellos, came waltzing in in modern looking costumes that looked more disco than middle eastern. Silver chain mesh halter tops combined with vividly coloured skirts and long tassels gave the impression they would break out into a MTV number so it was a relief to hear the dulcet tones of Pascale Maashalani belt out Nouri Sham.

There were a few cute moments in this troupe’s performance as they obviously made more attention to formation than in their Traditional number. However, they unwisely incorporated some movements which are more suited for partner dancing than troupe numbers. I know, I know … it’s called creativity but it just looked inappropriate for a middle eastern dance number, even if it is Fusion.

These four ladies displayed a rather unfortunate propensity towards the infamous “chicken neck pecks” and they kept performing the Barry Manilow forearms rolls which cracked 3A and I up something severe. Timing again was an issue which manifested when they performed a back heel kick at different counts.

For their attempt, I gave them 4/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of techniques; 4.75/10 for expression; 4. 5/10 for originality & creativity (at least they tried even if it was a little inappropriate in parts); and 4.25 for rhythm & musicality. Their performance garnered them 4.3/10.

I hate to be negative but the next troupe should have paid better attention to their costuming. Rhythm of Life was made up of three rather heavy set ladies who unwisely chose bra-tops and harem pants which made them look manly and a little rough. More flattering costume choices might have improved their chances.

Dancing to a remixed version of one of Khaled’s song, which I believe could have been Wahrane Wahrane, these three ladies chose a vaguely hip hop fusion interpretation. I think it was an unfortunate choice as they just did not have the flair or training for hip hop and combined with their weak middle eastern dance techniques, made this a very poor performance indeed. Their hands were literally all over the place and they displayed weak shimmies. The dancer in red had problems with her undulations, the shortest dancer in the middle could not get the timing right and the tallest dancer was very rough and had almost no control over her movements.

They were obviously very raw beginners and again I questioned the wisdom of sending out beginners into an international competition. I felt sorry for Rhythm of Life but could not give them more marks than 2/10 for presentation & framing; 2/10 for fluidity of techniques; 3.5/10 for expression; 2.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 2/10 for rhythm & musicality. They scored an overall of 2.4/10.

And now to the contest proper. The first gander of the Bellydance Discovery troupe promised exciting things. Clad in tiger prints and black lycra, with matching hair bands, they heralded a professional and polished performance. And boy, did these five ladies deliver!

Bravo, ladies! Dancing to what I suspect is Afrika from Sayed Balaha’s Around the World CD, the group fused African dance into a well-thought out choreography. I thoroughly enjoyed the spirited performance which was aggressive, high energy, dynamic and featured a well-rehearsed team that produced a well-timed, well-executed and well-choreographed piece.

There were formations, there was expression, there was sound rhythm interpretation and while some suspected that the choreography was not an original piece from the organiser as they doubted her ability to produce a piece of this calibre and based on her history, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Ayana displayed some acrobatic and gymnastic talents while everyone of them showed they could be lyrical as well as energetic. The group cohesiveness was palpable and I commend them on a spectacular performance. Without even consulting my scorecards, I gave them the winning prize for best troupe.

Still, if you must be pedantic, here were their scores – 7/10 for presentation & framing; 7/10 for fluidity of techniques; 7.5/10 for expression; 7/10 for originality & creativity; and 7/10 for rhythm & musicality. A very impressive performance which deserved an impressive 7.1/10.

It was apparent that is was now a battle between the Bellydance Discovery group and the Sundance Troupe. Like their namesake, this troupe came to the stage guns blazing. While I was not as impressed by Sundance Troupe’s colourful, beaded butterfly camisoles, black jazz pants and hips scarves combination, their modern pop fusion piece made this costume selection a passable choice.

Relying on their lyrical jazz background, this group demonstrated their superior dance foundation with a strong performance that highlighted their excellent stage presence, good body control and fluid style. However, again, their middle eastern dance inexperience showed and they were a little noticeably raw in their basic movements.

I found their performance very Salimpour-ish with some lovely floorwork, which made sense since their coach, Belinda, is a die hard fan of this renowned dancer and teacher. Still, the Sundance Troupe did have some timing issues and nerves must have gotten to the dancers as they made some mistakes which marred the performance. The dancer in blue forgot her choreography and showed hesitation. The dancer in orange lost her concentration and almost keeled over while doing a standing leg lift.

Still, it was a very strong performance and we agreed that it would be a hard fight between the two groups. 3A, understandably, was more inclined towards the Sundance kids but I stood by my selection of the Bellydance Discovery Troupe as I thought their performance and choreography were tighter.

The Sundance Troupe scored 5.75/10 for presentation & framing; 6.25/10 for fluidity of techniques; 6.5/10 for expression; 7/10 for originality & creativity; and 7/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, they received 6.5/10.

Coming after two such stellar performances is hard, but worse when you are so out of their league. The next group Les Belle du Mirage lived up to their name with a wishy washy performance. Slithering onto the stage like characters from a Harry Potter movie, these clueless ladies were entirely shrouded in their colourful veils. Did they not know that this is actually rather insulting? I was once at a performance when some dancers shrouded themselves thus and when they entered and started writhing around, the entire middle eastern contingent I was seated with got up and left in a huff. Sigh. I stayed ... I’d paid for it after all ….

Anyway, this group chose the overplayed and hackneyed Desert Rose by Sting. I did like the synchronicity of their costumes and wished that they had not ruined it with their shrouded horror introduction as that impacted their presentation & framing scores. The performance was a little vapid with uneven and poor undulations, mediocre technical ability, and an awkward exit, resulting in a desultory and lukewarm response from the audience.

Overall, their performance was unremarkable other than the J K Rowling homage so I gave them 4.75/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of techniques; 4.5/10 for expression; 4.25/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, they garnered 4.3/10.

The Troupe Fusion segment was very uneven. You had the really good and the really bad. It was as if there were two categories within this segment – the professional and the dismal. Again, it brought into question why there was no proper segregation of standards, which might have given the weaker dancers a better fighting chance.

Looking at the scorecards, we made a prediction of the winners and there was much discussion over the authenticity and originality of the Bellydance Discovery’s group’s choreography. There was the camp that thought the choreography was a little boring with too many repetitions of combinations. There was the camp that declared that the organiser/teacher was not capable of producing something of that lyricism and caliber. Whatever it was, I thought they were excellent and the scorecards supported this.

Dancerpades Part VI - Herd Up

2006-06-17T09:03:00.000+08:00

After the shock of the Solo results, everyone was understandably unsettled as we returned to the National Museum auditorium for the Traditional segment of the Troupe competition.

Judge Cred
The judges were announced for the Troupe segment - the same Taiwanese and Chinese judges from the previous Solo segment, Sheng Yu Lan and Wen Kexin respectively … but it was odd that the MC indicated another judge as a returning judge.

Apparently Tama Goh, the only male judge and the official representative from the festival who is reputed to be a fairly well-known local percussionist, was one of the judges for the Solo segment. This is very strange as no one noticed his presence during any of the Solo segments. In fact, not once during my many trips up and down the aisles and to the judges’ area did I see Tama Goh, despite his insistence otherwise. Even 3A, with her beady eyes, somehow managed to miss this tall gentleman’s presence! How he managed to adjudicate astrally is a trick I would like to learn.

The final judge was a familiar name - Mey Jen Tillyer from Hong Kong. A former teacher of a friend, her reputation preceded her as one of the veterans in the industry in Asia. I felt her presence was a mitigating factor to defuse the imbalance and conflict of interest inherent in the panel.

My Troupe is Bigger than Yours
As with the Solo segment, all the troupes came from the organiser’s school, with the exception of one. At first, we were unaware of this fact as the announcements of each troupe cannily avoided mention of provenance, much like the Solo segments. However, by the end of the day, we were cognizant of the fact that only 1 out of 8 troupes was not from the organiser’s school.

First up was Troupe Malik. I wondered if we would see an all-male troupe based on the name, which would be a first in Asia, and was highly surprised to see an all-female troupe of three. 3A and I had a slight chuckle at yet another display of inappropriate self-naming. Performing a drum routine to a Hossam Ramzy piece, this all-Chinese troupe displayed poor timing and synchronisation. Their shimmies were inconsistent or executed in the wrong places. I found their hands, wrists and fingers distracting with excessive flappings, twirlings, jerks and splayed out fingers that looked beyond awkward.

One of the dancers in a peach bedleh had remarkably bad hip control and displayed more “chicken arms” than her schoolmate Nyssa did in the entire competition. The uneven technical ability of all the girls made their “duck” walk discordant and messy. All three dancers could not isolate their shoulder shimmies and emulated their teacher’s tendency to stomp during the saiidi steps much like “rhinos on the run” as one master teacher once remonstrated. With such basic technical foundation, it was a mistake to incorporate the signature Dina butt thrust into the choreography.

There was minimal formation and creativity in the choreography, reducing it to almost line dancing status. I was not impressed and gave this group 5/10 for presentation & framing; 3.5/10 for fluidity of technique; 3.5/10 for expression; 3/10 for originality & creativity; and 3/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, they scored 3.6/10.

The second troupe, imaginatively named Just 3, was another entry from the organiser’s school. Again, a 3-member group, they were clad in “butterfly” coin-studded tops and sequined harem pants. At least they attempted to synchronise their look even if it was not entirely to my taste. Performing to a modern Egyptian pop song (tres traditional, no?), the choreography made me sit up and gasp, as did a couple of other dancers. Another lifted number from a master teacher – Magdy El Leisy but of course with no attribution as usual.

I shook my head sadly as I made a note to mark them down considerably in the originality & creativity section. Again, this group displayed the school’s proclivity towards overly-active wrists. Worse, they could not remember the choreography and there were wrong turns, major hesitation, nervous exchanges of glances and missed movements in this less than stellar performance.

They further massacred the choreography with their minstrel hands waving and Chinese vampire walk which were both cringe-worthy and hilarious. I was not the only one sporting shaking shoulders as the audience was driven to discreet guffaws.

I gave them 4.5/10 for presentation & framing; 2/10 for fluidity of technique; 3/10 for expression; 0/10 for originality & creativity; and 2/10 for rhythm & musicality. They walked away with an overall score of 2.3/10.

By now I was wondering why troupes of such poor standards were being trotted out. Fortunately, the next troupe restored a little of my faith.

Again, the name was another indication of the lack of study or knowledge. This 5-member troupe was called Nerferteri and featured the only non-Chinese dancers from the organiser’s school. This much more polished group was clearly from a higher level within the organiser’s school than the previous two groups.

They chose their song poorly though, dancing to a Hossam Ramzy piece from his Flamenco Arabe CD. Highly inappropriate for a Traditional number and again, showing lack of comprehension. Technically, they all suffered from very poor arm work and weak one-legged shimmies. I particularly abhorred a particular move I shall only call the “Charlie’s Angels” pose. It drove 3A to such hilarity that she inflicted yet another bruise on my arm in her hysteria.

This troupe tried to lend some traditional credibility to their performance with a khaleegi movement which was wildly inappropriate for that piece of music. They, too, performed a hopping movement that was just embarrassing and again, some just could not remember their choreography with the dancer in the blue bedleh consistently messing up.

Despite all these detractions, Nerferteri (sic) was still the strongest thus far and I liked seeing the diversity in the group in terms of races and colour – much closer to what I envision a Singaporean contingent to be. Ironically, I later learnt two of them were not Singaporeans … sigh. I accorded this group 5.25/10 for presentation & framing; 4.5/10 for fluidity of techniques; 4.75/10 for expression; 4.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. They received an overall result of 4.75/10.

With a name like Fusion de Estellos, the organiser’s school’s confusion is evident. This 4-member troupe performed a rather insipid veil number to Aziza. I particularly disliked how they disposed of their veils and one of the dancers in blue was obviously the weak link, constantly behind or ahead of the rest and forgetting the choreography. All of them struggled with the group timing on the hip circles, which was particularly obvious in their linear formation.

Almost all of them would have sent snake charmers packing their bags with their abysmal snake arms. It was a disappointing performance to a rather boring choreography from a troupe that was perhaps too ambitious to take on the classic, Aziza.

For that poor performance, I gave them 5/10 for presentation & framing; 3.75 /10 for fluidity of techniques; 4/10 for expression; 3.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality, giving them a total average of 4.1/10.

The esoterically named Rhythm of Life was next, proving that life can be confined to 3 persons. To my horrified amusement, this group performed the same number as Just 3! Which means this choreography was not lifted once but twice! And from the same school! In one event! What are the odds??!!

I was just full of exclamation marks of astonishment as I watched this group compete with their schoolmates on who could brutalise the choreography the most. These three heavy-set ladies clad in blue bedlehs did not display a grace belying their build. One sported an ill-fitting hair-piece I overhead an audience member unkindly state was giving her nightmares.

This group had very bad arms, hands and lines which went sideways and forgot to converge. I emitted a pained groan when they executed a vulgar butt shimmy with their legs akimbo with one thrusting her butt full frontal to the audience.

It was truly one of the most horrific displays of crudity I had seen since Shayna’s full frontal crotch flash. For that I gave them 2/10 for presentation & framing; 2/10 for fluidity of techniques; 3.5/10 for expression (one of them looked so happy to be there I gave them higher marks than they deserved); 0/10 for originality & creativity; and 2/10 for rhythm & musicality. This garnered them a dismal 1.9/10.

The only group which proudly carried the banner of the organiser’s school came next. And with good reason. Bellydance Discovery was made up of the 5 top principle dancers from the school, made up of Maia, Layla, Ayana, Joey and Shayna. Performing to a saidi cane dance in a raks sharqi style, which I did not think entirely appropriate for the Traditional segment, they were clearly the strongest troupe.

The cane number looked vaguely reminiscent to another Magdy number but since I was not sure and they performed this so well, I conceded the penalty in originality & creativity, hoping that my trust in them was justified.

The choreography was pleasant, more fluid than any I have seen from the organiser’s school and the level of technical ability above average. I was pleasantly surprised and truly enjoyed this number for the grace, excellent timing and well-melded stage craft exhibited by these five ladies.

The only misstep surprisingly came from Joey, which reinforced my impression that she was having a bad day. She forgot her choreography at a critical moment of the performance, magnifying the mistake and marring what might have been a flawlessly executed choreography. Again, I felt sorry for her being the weak link in a troupe where she was the teacher.

Still, it was a highly polished and well delivered performance by all and they fully deserved the marks I meted to them. 6.5/10 for presentation & framing; 6/10 for fluidity of techniques; 5.75/10 for expression (again, demerit points for some of the members’ extreme facial contortions and individual poses during a particular segment); 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 5.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. A well-earned 5.8/10 for this strong troupe performance.

The next group was the only group outside of the organiser’s realm. Belinda Tan’s Sundance Troupe was made up of the Jitterbug dancers and their superior modern ballet and jazz dance training and foundation showed. However, as these three dancers were not middle eastern dancers by training, their weak foundation was evident.

Dancing to what 3A thinks was a Hossam piece, the troupe exuded a strong stage presence rivaled only by the previous group. However, nothing disguised the lack of synchronisation during the erratic hip drops, raw movements, lack of lyricism for such a orchestral piece of music, and lack of feel for the music. Typical of Belinda’s choreography, there were many spins, which proved to be slightly challenging for one of the dancers in green. Still, this group showed raw promise and provided a more pleasing performance than some of the other groups.

I gave them a 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 4.25/10 for fluidity of techniques; 5.25/10 for expression; 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. Their overall score was 4.95/10.

The last group was ironically called Les Belle du Mirage, sadly another name demonstrating lack of understanding and sophistication. Comprised of 4 girls dressed in tacky hip scarf tops and harem pants, this group was very rough with chicken shimmy arms all over the place and a poor sense of drum accents. Worse, I recognised the choreography as a piece choreographed by the organiser’s former teacher who had her works ripped off in the Solo segments too.

The group was not technically proficient enough to carry off the demandingly hectic pace of this choreography and thus some portions had obviously been adapted to make it easier for them. Still, it was a challenge for them and this showed in their performance.

Their disappointing performance garnered them a 4/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of techniques; 4/10 for expression; 2/10 for originality & creativity; and 3.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. The overall score of 3.55/10 was the best I could give them.

As with the Solo segments, with the exception of Rani, I felt the Traditional segment of the Troupe competition was supremely disappointing. There were troupes in the line-up who should not even have been allowed to compete as they were such obvious beginners. It was almost as if the organiser churned them out as decoys to set her main, principle troupe as winners – which is unfair and unkind. To expose them to that kind of unfair comparison and ridicule is not something I would advocate. Still, perhaps she had her reasons. Moving along, the run-down of the scores were –

I was keen to see what the Fusion segment would bring as I sensed that it would be the most exciting portion of the entire competition. Sometimes I think I am psychic …

Dancerpades Part Illusion - Curry Confidential

2006-06-16T04:16:00.000+08:00

The reverberations of the Solo segment results continue to sluice through the industry like virulent, inky, toxic waste, emitting negative side effects that may take a while to realise but when they do, might damage its ecosystem permanently,

Something shocking apparently happened at the end of the results announcement, of which I was completely unaware of till a week after the event – which is why this update took so long.

Please note that all the statements posted here are, as yet, unproven and the person who divulged the information may go back on her statement when the proverbial shit hits the fan. But it is truly so reprehensible, if it is indeed true, that I could not sit on it anymore. It is too incendiary for me to cast any judgements but I sure have a lot of questions …

A week or so after the entire competition, I finally called Nur Shiblie to offer my condolences and to respond to her invitation to visit her home. The instant she heard my confession that I had pegged Rani as the winner, it released a diatribe from the irate dance teacher.

Apparently, immediately after the results were announced, Nur Shiblie approached the judges to question them on the decision. She rightfully insisted on knowing how they could have overlooked Rani. And here is where it gets controversial.

When Nur Shiblie demanded an answer from the organiser, the latter tried to appease her by saying that “the judges don’t know”. What this could mean leads to speculation. Does this mean that the organiser is inferring that the judges are wrong and ignorant? If so, why were they appointed in the first place? Does it mean that the judges do not know what the results are? Is this the desperate answer to ward off an irate teacher? What does this all mean??? Speculations are riff but answers are scarce.

Nur Shiblie swore (no, I did not take down a written affidavit because I have not had time to meet with her yet. I only managed to obtain her vehement affirmation that this was the truth via the telephone so she may come back and recant, in which case I will remove this entire post and have to make a statement of apology – but till then just read) that she approached the Chinese judge, which would make that Wen Kexin, who revealed that the judges gave the “blue girl”, referring to Rani, the highest marks but “what can they do?”

No one saw my face when I heard this revelation over the phone. Good thing too because I must have looked moronic with my jaw on the ground and my eyebrows up to the ceiling. I was shocked and appalled. If this is the truth, it goes way beyond the “kelong” that we suspected.

Admittedly, at first we harboured unkind and unjust speculations that the Chinese and Taiwanese judges may have chosen “winners” of a weaker calibre in order to give their own students a better fighting chance at the International contest the next day. Yes, yes, that was very small and devious of us to even think that but we were desperate for answers as to how the judges could have been so blind! Look, when unwarranted decisions are meted with no apparently fathomable explanations, it in turns invites unwarranted and unfathomable speculations!

Nur Shiblie also informed me of the two-person tabulation system – only two persons were allowed into a small room without the witness of the judges or any other officials to tabulate the scores. And that one of them had been the organiser and teacher of 11 of the contestants.

All these do not add up to a pretty picture. While we all harboured ambiguous feelings towards the organiser for her affronts and double-talk, we would never have ever suspected her of such blatant fraud. I was truly flabbergasted.

When Nur Shiblie heard the Chinese judge’s comment, she lost it. She began to harangue the organiser and anyone who looked twice at her to protest the decision and alleged fraud. When I expressed bewilderment as to how I could have missed this, she told me that this happened during the break between the Solo and Troupe segments when everyone had been herded out of the room. I was amazed and disappointed that I had missed the big hooha.

Shiblie apparently searched the room for me or 3A or anyone who could have supported her or, at least, be a witness. But according to her, she did not see any of the established dancers among the stragglers. She demanded to speak with A, the main organiser, who apparently was not present that day. In embarrassment, the organiser/teacher began to leave the room to avoid Nur Shiblie, who was now entreating innocent audience members still remaining in the room, to witness this alleged injustice.

No one came to her aid, so Nur Shiblie began to trail the organiser out to the lobby where she began to call out to the latter that she “was cheating”, that “this is unfair”, "this is cheating" and “how can you cheat like this”. Shiblie told me that passerbys were giving her amused and pitying looks in turns while the organiser climbed the escalator with a beetroot red face but did not turn to acknowledge Nur Shiblie’s shouts.

This complete shut-out spurred Nur Shiblie to threaten to go to the police, a threat she was going to follow through until her friends advised her against it. Apparently, the reason is that it will not benefit her and would create a scene. Frankly, we think she should have if a fraud had indeed been committed.

Since she was not privy to most of the dancers’ contacts, Nur Shiblie had no one in the industry to air her grievances to, so she had to fume and sit on her rage a full week or so before I made my innocent call to her.

During our conversation, she made a few observations, some which I thought valid, others humorous but most of which I found controversial. I warned Nur Shiblie I would quote her in a public domain and that the possible repercussions may be more trouble than she anticipated. But she was adamant that someone should speak out about this, and stood by her statements even after my obligated advisements. So here goes …

Mustafa Chin
When she was informed that the judges were the Chinese and Taiwanese teachers for the overseas dancers competing the next day, she asked why a middle eastern judge had not been appointed. In Nur Shiblie’s words, it is almost like this …

“How can a Chinese medicine man sell Indian curry?”

Honestly, that cracked me up so hard I had tears in my eyes. It also made me suddenly crave prata.

January’s Child
Remember how many of us were miffed we only received an email blast about the competition application in May? And how we found out, from the organiser’s mouth, that she had informed some selected teachers and dancers of this earlier in March/April but not all? Apparently, according to Nur Shiblie, another dancer/teacher who participated in the troupe segment inadvertently revealed that the organiser had informed her of the competition in January. Sigh.

Shiblie Get Your Gun
And the classic quote is the next, which threw me into such hysterical convulsions I almost twisted my back. I liked it so much I made Nur Shiblie repeat the statement three times. Three times the convulsions! Fun …

“If there was a gun that can shoot people and they don’t die, she [the organiser] will be the first one I shoot!”

Classic! Pure gold! What a soundbyte!

While everything that is written in this post is a minefield that can, and probably will, blow up in my face, just the two quotes from Nur Shiblie demanded an airing.

All these are, of course, hearsay and pending a written affidavit, cannot be proven or even verified. But something interesting happened the next day. I mean the day after the Solo segment, not day after the the phone conversation.

3A had gone to the National Museum very early in the morning to obtain the International segment tickets for us. No one other than the organisers were there but 3A saw an altercation between A, main organiser, and the alleged cheater, the organiser/teacher in full view of all the festival employees. Perhaps Nur Shiblie’s scene had reached the attention of A as A was incredibly incensed with the organiser/teacher and was giving her a real bollocking.

In the midst of this, A was apparently demanding that the organiser/teacher account for a number of things, one of which was to produce the scorecards. Since 3A was too well-mannered to lurk to witness the organiser’s humiliation, she did not stick around to find out the outcome of this heated dressing down.

So we may never know if the horror story of scores manipulation, alleged fraud, bias and other nefarious activities are true, will we? It was clear that Nur Shiblie was beside herself. Did this rage colour her judgement? Could her ire misrepresent a set of perhaps totally innocent circumstances? Are there some logical and totally plausible explanations behind all this supposed infringements?

I wouldn’t know as every time I requested the organisers’ time to speak with them about the competition, they pleaded lack of time, exhaustion, made some perfunctory lip service or simply avoided me. When I asked to interview the judges, they actually asked me not to as the Taiwanese judges may not be supportive (the reasons why would become clear later) and were generally rather unhelpful. I basically had to hunt down the judges individually to seek an interview. Unfortunately, because of my uncertain Chinese, I did not get the opportunity to interview the Chinese and Taiwanese judges or contestants. A drawback the organisers realised and were slightly amused by but never offered a solution even when I offered to find an interpreter pronto. In fact, at one point, one of them even asked me why I would want to! I don't know ... maybe because this is supposedly an International contest???

So, although I would like to present their side of the story, the complete lack of disclosure and assistance has made this challenging.

Read quick as this may be shut down when the legal beagles and irate and supposed maligned individuals call a jihad on me.

Good night from your proverbially long-necked and feckless dancer/reporter, Machiam Malu for if the stories are indeed true, it is indeed our collective shame.

Dancerpades Part V - Where Have All The Winners Gone?

2006-06-14T08:54:00.000+08:00

It was a curiously sanguine crowd that returned to the auditorium. Perhaps it was the weather, which was hotter than a witch’s t… er, headlights, but everyone was strangely subdued and the was a lack of the excited buzz and whispers one might expect at the results announcement of a national competition.

The unfashionably hot weather had given me a bit of a headache. Perhaps it was in sympathy to 3A Gurl’s migraine which started up at the end of the last set. I decided to take my hair down to relieve the tension and as I was chatting quietly with 3A and some other dancers, I caught a glimpse of a black-clad figure striding purposefully in my direction. Please note I was in the same seat the entire day.

Power Deranger!
It was the PowderPuff Girl. And bless her delusional little heart, she was sporting a smugly sanctimonious and militant expression again as she neared me. Seriously, the lights were not that dim and I had not gone for a costume change or applied more make-up … all I did was release my mane from its chignon.

In the clichéd words of a credit card ad … cost of hair clip – SGD6 … cost of PowderPuff’s expression as she realised it was me – priceless. Fortunately, she did an abrupt about-turn and disappeared back into the dark shadows again before I had time to develop a dangerous gleam in my eyes.

Drama over, it was a protracted virgil as we awaited the return of the judges. I can only assume they had gone for a leisurely lunch because it could not have been to deliberate over the results. According to Nur Shiblie and Tama Goh, the only local judge in the panel, the judges handed their scores in fairly quickly after the end of the performances and all collation were done without their aid.

Young Girls, Get Out of My Stage …
During the wait, the MC tortured us with the same jokes and lame puns as the first and second sets. Actually he used these throughout the two days. However, the one bright thing he did was to invite three dolled-up kids, who were evidently one of the winners from the Children’s Troupe competition held earlier that day, to dance with him on the stage.

This was evidently not a planned event as the little girls were delighted and proceeded to upstage, outclass and outdance the rotund clown. I’m not a rugrats fan but even I had to admit these girls were darn cute.

Bet That’s How They Felt When Reagan Won …
At long last the judges returned and after some miscues, the results were announced. These were –

1st – Jamila
2nd – Sha Sha
3rd – Joey

There was a short pause before the applause and the sibilant whisperings started. Everyone was shocked. Jamila???!! Are you kidding me???

No offense to this statuesque beauty but she was nowhere in the top three in anyone’s estimation. Frantically rifling through my notes, I scanned them to check if I might have missed something. Nope. By no stretch of the imagination could Jamila have been the winner.

What happened to Rani? Everyone was stunned and I turned to where Nur Shiblie had been seated to check her reaction. I did not see her but we were all agog with curiosity, shock and sympathy. Frankly, we felt that Rani had been robbed. There was no way she did not win the solo competition and I am not speaking out of friendship or bias – since I have only ever spent minimal time with Rani (I think I wandered into their dressing room by mistake while trying to remember mine) at the Hossam Ramzy concert and even then I was always in solitude backstage trying not to get lost, and at a master teacher workshop years ago.

While I could accept the fact that Sha Sha and Joey were the top 3 contenders, the appointment of Jamila as the winner was beyond belief.

It also begged the question of what happened to Maia. Even if you accused the organiser of rigging the results such that all three positions were accorded to her students, it was bizarre how Maia was overlooked. She definitely outshone her schoolmates and I was immensely puzzled at this turn of events.

My heart went out to Rani and Maia.

As I left the museum during the intermission, I encountered a former student of 3A’s school who is currently a student of the organiser’s. Curious as to the insight of an insider, I asked her views on the results. At first reluctant to voice her opinion, she finally, grudgingly, divulged that the results were “surprising”. Further probing encouraged her to opine that she would not have picked Jamila as the winner. I did not want to put her in a more difficult position but it just proved that even within the organiser’s camp, bewilderment ruled the day.

I would have really liked to see Rani, Maia or Nur Shiblie to offer my sympathy and assurance that they were winners in my books. However, I did not catch sight of the Alhambra gang and Maia was preparing for the Troupe contest.

During the break, I spoke to a few more people who all expressed their amazement and in some cases, derision. At this point I still did not know about the organiser’s involvement in the scores tabulation process nor of another incident that occurred after the announcement of the results.

While I was happy for Jamila and her euphoria was evident (3A told me she posted her delight on her blog that very weekend), I secretly thought I would have questioned the decision if I were her. Guilt would have niggled at the back of my mind that more worthy peers had been shafted. Yes, blame the Catholic upbringing but obviously Jamila does not labour under such an over-endowment of guilt complex. And of course I am not Jamila – or even an iota close to her mind-numbing gloriousness.

Carding Jamila
Let’s review my scorecard again just for kicks.

Hmmm, Jamila ranked 5th in the overall category at a more than 2 full points behind Rani. Surely I could not have been that wrong? While I have never adjudicated a belly dance contest, I have been a judge at a dance contest before (and strangely enough, a bikini and talent contest) so I do not think I could be so blazingly wrong as to miss a complete winner!

Even when I sneered at Clay Aiken, I still unwillingly spotted him as a winner from the beginning!

Reviewing my notes, based on just the Traditional segment, the comparison between the winners and my picks were –

Let’s see, in every category, Rani was the clear leader with a head start between 0.25 to 3 points. Even if you argued that Jamila might have won if I had not penalised her on originality & creativity, she would still have had to score 8.2 or more in that category in order to beat Rani. That would have been impossible as, even if her choreography was her own creation, the maximum marks she could have garnered would have been 5/10.

In presentation & framing, she was second to Rani but that was only because I managed not to be besotted with her beauty and realised that Rani’s costuming and overall presentation were more appropriate for her particular choice of music, props and style.

In fluidity of technique, Jamila was the weakest link. In expression, she tied with Sha Sha for third placing and in originality & creativity and rhythm & musicality, she was clearly way out of her league.

Only in the categories of presentation & framing and expression did Jamila even manage to secure a place for herself. In all the other categories, she was consistently the weakest.

Why was Maia who consistently ranked either second or third in all categories not place? And even if by some fluke Rani & Maia did not compete, Sha Sha and Joey both out-performed Jamila.

Before you ask if the judges were males - that is unkind. There was only one male among them. I was truly baffled. Still flogging a dead horse, I pored over the Fusion analysis.

Alright, so Jamila tied with Rani in the presentation & framing category but with the exception of expression, she was again the least impressive. Apparently Jamila once complained on her blog that she faces a lot of discrimination and jealousy because of her beauty and in fact, she has been anointed the “China Barbie Doll”.

I feel for her but as someone pointed out, she probably would not welcome or even understand why I would harbour such feelings of sympathy. Which emanate from greater pride on her behalf than she possesses to want her to win by pure merit and without derogatory naysaying. In fact, it would be my wish for anyone who won this competition.

However, this is not the case as the industry is now riddled with questions, scorn, doubt, ridicule, speculations, bewilderment, surprise, pity, glee and a whole myriad of emotions and opinions.

The unfortunate result of this is that many people are now patting themselves on the back in affirmation of their wisdom in not participating in this mockery. Jamila’s win may seem to come on the back of validation of everyone’s fears and derision.

For that I pitied Jamila for a rather hollow victory in the local solo competition segment of the Asia Global Competition. Jamila allegedly once declared on her blog that she wanted to be a Belly Queen. I congratulate her on achieving her aim. Wishing her all the best, I hoped she would adequately represent Singapore in the international segment the next day against China and Taiwan.

Dancerpades Part IV - Score!

2006-06-13T03:55:00.000+08:00

The results of the Solo section of the Asia Global competition were not announced till just before the Troupe segment. As I had vacated the area to get a bite to eat with 3A, I was not aware of a serious infringement in the judging process.

Someone Say Florida
Apparently, according to Nur Shiblie, the judges’ scorecards were collated fairly swiftly after the show was over. These were brought to a private room within the auditorium and the judges dismissed. What no one noticed, except for the extremely beady-eyed, was that only two persons were allowed into the room to collate and finalise the scores. Nur Shiblie was lurking within the auditorium to personally verify the judging process and speak with the judges and organisers.

When she saw who the two persons were, she raised a fuss but apparently, was ignored. One of the two persons working the scores was the organiser … also the teacher of 11 out of 14 of the contestants.

How this could have happened is a question we would all like to know. As yet, we have had no answers from the organisers. Nur Shiblie was outraged and insisted on an answer as to why there was no non-Chinese or middle eastern judge on the panel. She also questioned how the organiser/teacher could be allowed to handle the scores when that is a blatant conflict of interest and a sure case of what we call “kelong” … a Malay slang which means to cheat.

Despite her protests, Nur Shiblie was ignored and she finally gave up, hoping that justice will prevail.

Blissfully ignorant of all this, 3A and I sat down with some others to discuss our predictions over a quick bite and coffee. These were the results of our spirited discussion.

White Shade of Pale
Out of 14 contestants, only 1 was non-Chinese although 3A and I disagree on Maia. 3A thinks Maia may not be fully Chinese but whatever her racial make-up, it still signals a great imbalance. Why this would be an issue is because all the judges are Chinese and say what you will, cultural preference does play a part.

Take for instance, the organiser’s school’s students’ tendency to hold their fingers in what I call the Chinese cultural dance way, which looks like something from a Chinese opera. I personally would mark dancers down for that kind of fingers but a Chinese judge would find this totally acceptable. By the way, many of the middle eastern master teachers also find the Chinese wayang fingers disturbing.

I questioned why there was such an uneven representation of the races – did the national statistics change while I was not looking? Also, as many Muslims consider the dance form haram, this would have prohibited many Muslim girls from performing in public. But still, I wondered where all the Indian and Eurasian girls were.

Scoring
Taking out our individual notes, we concluded that the winner would be Rani. Second and third place was still up for grabs, as it were, but after some discussion, we put Maia as second and either Layla or Sha Sha in third.

As I did not have the time to sort through my notes and scores, I did not tabulate them before the results were announced but in hindsight, if I had, this would be what they would have looked like.

Obviously in the Traditional segment, Rani took the crown by a wide margin. Maia and Sha Sha were credible but just no match for our Queen of Traditional. I was surprised to see Shayna ranked so high, beating even Joey and Layla till I reviewed my notes and realised why. While Shayna may have been technically less proficient than her teacher, Joey, or her classmate, Layla, at least her choreography was less lifted from a well-known dancer and teacher. Her partial adherence to originality & creativity helped pull her marks above the other two.

Similarly, Wei Ling, despite being a much weaker dancer than Jamila, managed to squeak past her because her choreography was more original and traditional, and was not stolen from yet another well known local teacher.

Casting our eyes now at the Fusion section, I admit I was necessarily more stringent.

Why such dismal scores? Because too many people seem to think Fusion is the ticket to invent ludicrous movements, slap together combinations of moves which do not make sense or have any reason for being, ignore all the principles of dance and music, discard common sense and good taste, and basically bullshit their way through.

The blatant disregard of intellectual property, manners and common decency is what has afflicted this category, causing the marks to be so disgraceful. Upon looking at 3A’s scores, hers were just as dismal.

In this category, it became even more apparent that the contestants who lacked in talent, at least had integrity and managed to overtake those with less moral fibre.

In case you think I am imposing my own moral codes on a contest of which I have no say, that may be true but I also interviewed the judges and other dancers who rejected the invitation to be judges on the issue of originality & creativity. Majority agreed that it is almost impossible to award points when the choreography was not created by the dancer or teacher. As one eminent dancer/teacher, who turned down the offer to adjudicate the Traditional segment, pointed out this not only affects the originality & creativity criteria but also rhythm & musicality as these are tied to the choreography.

To even think they can learn an ancient dance form in a week or reverse engineer moves based on decades of training and study is an indication of the terminal smugness some of these contestants possess.

To this thieving trend among many of the contestants, I have a question – what happened to your pride, integrity and dignity?

I had to look away from the Fusion scorecards before I lost my lunch as I collated the overall scores … not in a tiny room but honorably and with transparency. Here you go –

Before the announcement of the results, I also took the opportunity to interview some dancers and students I had seen loitering around on their predictions. Rani was the clear winner with the other two top positions bandied between Sha Sha, Joey and Maia.

Which is why the results were a shocker.

Dancerpades Part III - Fusion Lesions & Violations

2006-06-12T23:56:00.000+08:00

It is at this point that I begin to sound a little strident but you will have to excuse me because the insult and injury to me in this conclusion of Part III is extremely personal.

Again, I noticed a number of my foodblogger friends coming here and probably getting a bit of a shock at the seemingly endless dance-related posts. My apologies, me hungry friends, but I made a promise to some dance peers that I will give a detailed review of an event which happened recently and until I fulfill that, regular gluttonous posts will not resume. However, I can promise that they will resume soon with a review on a vegetarian restaurant, Iranian cuisine, modern Italian cuisine and maybe if things work out, another recipe. Till then, please bear with the dance posts.

Continuing on the Fusion segment of the Solo competition, we have –

Fusion Lesion
The brave little dancer from Alhambra was up next. Lay Khoon was the only dancer in this competition who did not have a costume change. Which, to me, was not really an issue as her white bedleh was extremely flattering on her and was modern enough to see her through the fusion segment.

Performing a pop fusion number to a remixed version of Enta Omri from the overplayed Bellylicious compilation CD, Lay Khoon again floundered with timing in her inexperience . I thought the interpretation of the music was a little feeble and the music was just too fast for Lay Khoon’s weak technical foundation.

Her stoic performance earned her a 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of technique; 4/10 for expression; 4.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored a 4.4/10.

I was not keen on Sha Sha’s entrance into her fusion number. Shrouded in her blue and yellow double veils, she looked like a mourning wraith creeping sideways into the stage. While this was meant to lend a dramatic touch to her entrance, it just came across as funeral and creepy.

Sneaky little …er, big … Sha Sha immediately appealed to my mushy, lyrical-loving side by performing a subtle, softly delicate piece to Towers of Dreams. While Sha Sha had not blown me completely away during her Traditional performance, she was much more appealing in her Fusion interpretation.

Her musicality and stage persona were more apparent and I liked her control of her double veils, which enveloped her in an ethereal cloud without swathing her from sight. It was then I really envied her height as the visual impact of her barrel turns with the double veils at such height was quite stunning.

Just as I was getting a little visually jaded, Sha Sha literally pulled out her next surprise. Whereas we assumed she was just doing a pop fusion, double veil routine, it turned out Sha Sha was actually performing a Chinese fusion dance. Tucked into her hip belt were two Chinese dance ribbons which she proceeded to unleash into twirling ribbons above and around her.

The surprise element was worth ½ point at least and I applauded her creativity until someone informed me later that the choreography appeared to be a Tamallyn Dallal’s number. Sigh. I had to reassess the points I gave her for originality & creativity. While it was a beautifully performed number and Sha Sha should be commended on her understatedly elegant performance, the lack of attribution is a sore point with me.

Technically, Sha Sha was competent in her middle eastern technique but to be honest, her Chinese ribbon technique was basic, albeit well controlled and visually captivating. Also, because so much attention was paid to her props, except for her opening sequence, there was not much middle eastern dance integration. I would have liked to see a better balance.

For her performance, I gave Sha Sha a 7/10 for presentation & framing; 5.75/10 for fluidity of technique; 6/10 for expression; 3.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 6.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she garnered a 5.75/10.

I have to take a deep breath at this point because the next dancer offended every inch of my body, mind, soul and spirit.

The next dancer was Jenna. From her attire of gold lame harem pants and choli, it was obvious her item would be an Indian fusion piece. Before this competition, a few dancers had joked that it was likely that some of the organiser’s students would rip off at least one of my Indian fusion choreographies. I had retorted hopefully that they were surely not be so disrespectful or delusional and would seek my consent or at least inform me if they were. As far as I knew, none of her students were up to par to perform any of my numbers without some serious coaching.

When Jenna came out, 3A again nudged me as if to hint that it was probably one of my numbers. When I saw Jenna holding tealights, I wondered but thought it could not be as I had not taught that lot how to dance with tealights to any of my numbers.

When Jenna laid on the ground and placed the tealights on her body and hands, I cringed at her corpse-like and totally inappropriate pose and told 3A in relief that it was not one of mine.

When the first strains of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s dulcet vocals wailed across the room, I sat there gobsmacked. Not only did she lift my choreography, she was massacring it right before my eyes. She and her schoolmates had seen me throughout the day but not once did she even give me the courtesy of telling me she was going to perform my number.

The lighting man was an idiot as he did not switch on a single light as Jenna crawled out from her corpse position gingerly balancing the tealights. All we saw were the flickering of tealights and vague flashes of a leg here, an arm there. This idiocy lasted for about 20 seconds as the first introductory notes rang a leaden toll in my heart.

However, he might just as well as left the lights out. Jenna proceeded to fumble through slight arm movements, more concerned with balancing a tealight on her head and hand, while my students in the room looked up at me with widened eyes and horror plastered across their faces. One actually asked me, “What is that??? It looks like it should be your Piya Rey but … did you teach her?”

My embarrassment knew no bounds. As I watched Jenna butcher my choreography because she had no clue how to dance with tealights and obviously could not replicate the movements of my choreography, my ire began to rise above my utter humiliation. Right there and then, I told my students if I ever caught any of them performing my Piya Rey in that fashion, I would hunt them down and kill them.

I was so angry that I began to mock stab myself through the heart and the dancers in the room who knew me and knew that that was one of my signature pieces all laughed and gave me commiserating and pitying looks. 3A sniggered and gloated at first but when she realised how genuinely upset I was, she began to cast extremely scornful looks at Jenna.

Let me just put this in perspective. Years ago I performed Piya Rey for a large corporate event and I kindly invited the organiser and Joey to be my “back-up” dancers for this number. Please note they were paid for this performance. While I dance upstage sans tealights, these two flanked me downstage with tealights. Because of their lack of Indian classical dance background, I choreographed some very simple poses for them which involved them moving the tealights around but barely dancing.

I have only performed this routine with tealights in front of a predominantly Indian audience and I have never taught this to anyone. The organiser and Joey, therefore, have never seen my Piya Rey with tealights number and only harbour dusty memories of my phenomenally stripped-down tealight routine for them.

As such, it was obvious, they ripped off the poses I taught them when they were my back-up shadow dancers, ripped off the choreography I taught their students at the workshop, tore it apart, ruined it and spat it out like regurgitated mush for Jenna to despoil at this competition.

How this can even be given an originality & creativity score is beyond me. Perhaps a score of the most original destruction of a ripped off choreography, yes.

To say I am furious is an understatement. We had known of the organiser and her gang’s duplicity and frequent piracy but the blatant audacity to do this in the faces of the ones they are ripping off is beyond the pale. I am beyond disgusted. I have not felt so violated since I went to see my gynae. Sorry Dr Rauff.

Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. Because Jenna did such a bad job of performing Piya Rey and the organiser and her minions did such a disastrous job of pirating my choreography, the audience was extremely cold towards Jenna's inflammatory insult.

Objectively, Jenna did not dance. She barely moved her hips in nebulously faint hip accents, she hardly moved from the spot, her movements were as Indian as Bill Gates and her middle eastern dance techniques were nowhere in sight. All Jenna did was balance the tealights and shuffle. She was essentially just a human tealight holder.

I was paradoxically relieved and angered. Relieved that no one thought I had anything to do with that travesty of a dance and infuriated that they had dared to blatantly rip me off while I was sitting there in the audience.

The good thing that came out of this was that my students now truly appreciated my choreography, teaching and style. As one of them disclosed, she had not really enjoyed this number before as she could not understand it but after seeing Jenna’s farce of a dance, she began to really appreciate my dance.

Now that I have ranted, I will rate this sham. Jenna got a 4/10 for presentation & framing; a 1/10 for fluidity of technique; 3/10 for expression; 0/10 for originality & creativity (although if I could give minus points I would); and 0/10 for rhythm & musicality. I think have been very fair as giving points, instead of a slap to face as vicious as the one they have given me, is incredibly generous of me I think. So, overall, this criminal thievery received 1.6/10.

The beauteous Jamila came next in her beautiful peach and blue bedleh which she later revealed to be her personal customisation from two different costumes. I commend her on her taste as she looked fabulous in it. But then again, she is so gorgeous that I think almost anything would look good on her.

This mainland Chinese dancer (at a later interview, Jamila informed me she is a Singapore citizen) glided through her Ayesh Beek number with vividly hued double veils. While there was much traveling and veils manipulation, her veil technique was not as strong as Sha Sha’s. However, she exhibited more middle eastern techniques and I rather thought this evened things out between these two rather similar dancers.

Again, she pulled out the popular (at least with her school) pharoanic arms which I thought was a little out of place with the music and she, too, displayed the unfortunate chicken shoulder shimmies and arms that so plagued Nyssa. Her fingers were weak, her travelling was marred by the same affliction blighting all her schoolmates - legs which were spread too widely. She really fumbled when she had to perform a Sohair accented traveling circles – her timing and rhythm just gave up the ghost and decided to take a holiday.

Still, Jamila is so beautiful that even with less than stellar techniques, you would be mesmerised. Even if she was squatting on the ground and picking her nose, you would still happily watch her and conveniently miss the distasteful acts as you bask in her glory. I was not sure if her choreography was another lifted number as someone stated that it might be another Tamallyn Dallal number. In light of all the precursors of duplicity, I marked her down on originality & creativity. I was not inclined to be overly generous in this respect being one of the victims.

I gave her a 7.5/10 for presentation & framing; 5/10 for fluidity of techniques; 5.5/10 for expression; 3.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.75/10 for rhythm and musicality, giving Jamila an overall score of 5.3/10.

My favourite dancer’s return to the stage in a gorgeous blue one-piece costume was both a pleasure and slight concern. Rani was the only one who wore a one-piece during this competition and again, that pointed to her real individualism that sets her apart from the rest in both style, class, originality and league.

However, since Alhambra is not known for their fusion, I worried that Rani might not perform as well as her outstanding Traditional piece.

As before, the difference between the schools was apparent. Whereas the organiser’s school would swirl, flick and float their veils for visual impact before discarding them to dance without prop, the Alhambra way was more creative. Sure, they did the requisite swirl, flick and floats but they also strategically released the veil, danced, and then seamlessly picked up the veil again for another segment of veil dance before discarding it finally.

Rani’s veil control was solid even if not flashy, like Sha Sha's or Jamila's. This could be pegged to the prevailing traditional style so advocated by her school. Again, her technique was obviously superior as she executed her hip and shoulder accents to the beat and with consummate control. Her timing and sense of rhythm were spot on even if I was not as impressed by the interpretation of the song.

But somewhere along the way, something went wrong. Listening to the music and seeing Rani turned her back to the audience for a prolonged period as she seemed to discreetly prod herself in the chest, 3A and I concluded that she was probably going to do a sagat segment within her performance. We were very excited as this would be the first and only sagat performance. Being a bit sagat-challenged myself, I was delighted as dancing to sagat will demonstrate another level of technical and musical superiority.

However, after too many moments had passed, during which time this experienced dancer still danced gentle taksims to the counts, Rani turned back to the audience empty handed. 3A and I looked at each other and I declared, “Note to self: Never put sagats in bra top in case they get stuck. At least she can carry off a costume malfunction now,” as I simulated two sagats plastered to the headlights. 3A smacked me. Bully.

Either Rani could not fish the sagats out in time or one of the elastic bands on the little cymbals had broken – something which happened to me once as the elastic on one side of the sagats broke, causing the golden disc to fly across the stage, almost taking out an audience member’s eye.

What a pity! Er … that Rani did not dance with the sagats, not that I did not maim someone with mine … I was very disappointed as I think that would have further lifted Rani from the competition. As it was I think she did well and was still the leader of the pack but I would have sure loved to see her leave everyone else in her bare-heeled dust with a climatic sagat flourish. Oh well …

Rani’s extended her lead with 7.5/10 for presentation & framing; 7/10 for fluidity of technique (minus point for the sagats stuck in bra incident); 7/10 for expression; 7/10 for originality & creativity; and 6.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Her overall score was 7/10. Not as good as her traditional piece but still lovely.

Poor Wei Ling, again in her unenviable position as the final dancer and right after Rani, was the last dancer from Alhambra. Also dancing to Enta Omri, but the original version, Wei Ling was stunning in a deep orange bedleh that made her look seductively burnished.

Her stage presence was strong and her confidence high. Watching her was pleasant despite her raw technical skills. I was not a fan of her interpretation of this famous song as she rushed her movements such that there were hardly any pauses as combinations collided into each other. It made figuring out what she was doing difficult because the movements all seemed to meld together with no definition or delineation.

Wei Ling’s sense of timing and rhythm also faltered and again, it was obvious she is quite a beginner. Still, I like her stage style and her unwavering smile and spirit.

I gave Wei Ling a 6/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of technique; 5.75/10 for expression; 5.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she garnered 5.05/10 for her efforts.

Hereby ends the Traditional & Fusion segments of the local solo competition for the Asia Global competition. We were dismissed for an hour as the judges deliberated.

I will relay my observations, discoveries and an exposé in the next Part. I warn you now, what I shall post next will shock and horrify you. It will also turn the entire industry on its head. However, I cannot in all good conscience participate in the deliberate fraud of our industry even if it casts a very bad light on all of us.

I need a stiff drink first …

Dancerpades Part III - Fusion Confusion

2006-06-12T09:12:00.000+08:00

And now … drum rolls … we have the fusion segment of the Solo competition. I knew this would be the most interesting segment because the organiser’s school is infamous for their myriad attempts at fusion. I was also curious as to how the Alhambra group would handle Fusion because of their usual focus on traditional dance.

I was in for a shock and a nasty one too and here are the reasons why.

Fusion Confusion
Shireen returned to the stage in a black and silver bedleh. She again chose to wield the veil and her fusion was to a remixed version of Sarah Brightman’s Harem. It was unfortunate that Shireen chose to use a veil again as she needs to gain a better control of this prop first.

The interpretation of the music was very poor where the veil was swirled wildly in response to the fast-paced chords and poorly executed spins demonstrated a weak sense of timing and rhythm. There was a lack of real fusion and again, Shireen appeared very uncomfortable with this genre and her own performance.

I gave her a 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 3/10 for fluidity of technique; 4/10 for expression; 3.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 3.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, Shireen scored a 4/10.

Anyone who knows me knows that Tarkan is one of my least favourite singers. Shayna sashayed into the stage dressed in a tragic costume of gold and yellow. No, those colours are not tragic, but the dangling strands of beads protruding from her nipples and middle of her top were. The look was ridiculously tacky and cheap and reminiscent of burlesque skits – I half expected Shayna to begin twirling the dangling strands a la stripper tassels and suspected that Janet Jackson was reviewing her costume malfunction tapes.

Matters were not helped by her choice of music. Tarkan’s Come Closer made me feel anything but that. She showed some nice camels but she kept posing throughout the song and unfortunately, these poses were as tacky as her costume. I found the choreography discordant and strange but the ending truly made an average performance into a travesty. Shayna’s ending pose was a side lunge, facing full frontal. Which meant her skirt split opened to reveal a tremendous amount of leg and a very undesirable crotch view.

Second time in a row today! Have the gods no mercy???!!

I have only seen this incredibly vulgar move once when her teacher performed at a concert last year. When she performed this move in panoramic view of a middle eastern dignitary, the poor man averted his eyes, made his apologies to me, immediately called it a day and left the building. That they have not realised just how offensive this move is, is a mystery to me.

Having heard of this infamous move but never seeing this for herself, poor 3A was horrified and hysterical with laughter. I was so embarrassed for Shayna I could not even look at her as she left the stage oblivious to her huge faux pas.

I gave her a 3.5/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of technique; 4/10 for expression; 3/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.5/10 for rhythm & musicality, making that a 3.8/10 for Shayna.

Thankfully, the next dancer was Maia. With her hair pulled back, a dramatically simple and tasteful orange, yellow, silver and white bedleh, Maia was a welcome return to common sense and classy style. When the first strands of Ancient Ruins by Issam Houshan drifted through the auditorium, I turned to look at 3A, who has been choreographing and teaching to this piece of music in the last month.

We were both eager to see Maia’s interpretation of this beautiful piece of music. While I thought it was not as well interpreted as it could have been, there were some elements which I rather liked. Maia’s natural lyricism and fluidity were much in evidence and I found myself rather enjoying the performance as she demonstrated a musicality and appreciation for her song choice that none of her schoolmates had shown as yet.

I was not fond of the over-use of pharoanic arms and she fell prey to her school’s predilection to standing with their legs too wide, resulting in a rather unattractive stance. Her taksim was quite lovely, as well as her shimmy undulations. I particular enjoyed a combination of exaggerated semi hip circles and heavy hip drops that she executed flawlessly.

Again, I noticed her weak interpretation of drum accents – something she might want to improve on so that she can be a more well-rounded dancer.

I was not sure if Maia had a hand in the choreography or if this was, yet again, another lifted piece from some master teacher. But I sensed that she did put in a fair bit of herself in this dance item. She had a grace and true feel of music that was quite rare in this contest, prompting me to mentally place her in the top three pending the performance of the rest of the contestants.

I gave her a 7/10 for presentation & framing; 7/10 for fluidity of technique; 7/10 for expression; 6.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 6.5/10 for rhythm & musicality, giving her a well-deserved 6.8/10.

Joey returned in a flash of gaudy gold and iridescent beads. While the costume was eye-catching, I did not think it flattered Joey as her earlier costume of bright red did. Since she is such a tiny dancer, it almost looked like the costume wore her instead of her wearing it.

Evidently pop fusion is Joey’s thing - she looked more animated than in her Traditional segment as Shakira belted out another of her Latin fusion songs into the room. Still, Joey did not appear to be in full form as she lacked the passion and energy required for a Shakira song.

Her chest accents were wobbly, which is unlike her, and these were noticeable as the choreography over-used them. Joey’s reverse camels have always been impressive and here, she did not disappoint. During her salsa fusion dance, I noticed her strangely floppy wrists and am still wondering what that is all about. Her hip accents were better executed this time but something must be up with Joey that day as she repeatedly displayed a lack of power and energy in her arms.

Again, her disturbing facial machinations detracted from her performance – pity.

I found the choreography competent but uninspiring and not particularly interesting. Therefore, I accorded Joey 5.75/10 for presentation& framing; 6.5/10 for fluidity of technique; 4.5/10 for expression; 5.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 5.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. This stronger performance than her Traditional piece garnered her a 5.55/10.

The next review hurts me more than it hurts the dancer. It was obvious Veira was performing a flamenco fusion number with her skirt and de rigueur flower in hair. What was odd were the two sandalwood fans clutched in each hand, which looked like made-in-Taiwan souvenirs.

She began the performance with a dramatic bent position still with the two fans, closed, in each fist. My hope that one was a backup was dashed. Someone please tell her we do not dance with two fans in flamenco. I expected a dramatic start to her interpretation of yet another Shakira song. Instead she gave a flick of both wrists to open up the fans, rose to upright position, braced the fans against each inner wrist after some desultory flurries and proceeded to continue to dance pretty much in that open-fans pose the whole song.

There are so many things wrong with that that I do not even know where to start. I was only glad that Antonio Vargas or any one from the flamenco community was not there. What was the point of the fans if Veira are not going to use them for anything other than directional devices? I was tempted to call her in for illegal abuse of props

It was less dance than posturing and except for her costume, there was really no flamenco fusion of any kind. A contestant had approached a flamenco dancer/teacher friend and former teacher of mine for a private lesson a week before the contest. I wondered if Veira was the contestant as I was embarrassed that my friend would assume that all middle eastern dancers would disrespect his dance form thus.

Fusion is harder to achieve because you need to be proficient in not only one but two dance forms in order to fuse them seamlessly. There must be a balance between the two and you have to observe the fundamental principles, spirit, soul and rhythm of both. Simply using a prop (and a wrong one at that!) and wearing a couple of accessories does not a fusion piece make.

I was so troubled I was almost reluctant to give Veira any points but I forced myself to be objective. She got 4/10 for presentation & framing; 3.75/10 for fluidity of technique; 4/10 for expression; 2/10 for originality & creativity; and 3/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, Veira received 3.35/10.

The moment Layla entered the room, I knew she was doing an Indian fusion piece. Her perky self was dolled up in braids, shocking pink choli and harem pants with gold trimmings. Frankly, she looked like a Chinese Barbie doll in Indian costume. Very cute.

When the music began, I knew immediately it was Rose Ottaviano of Perth’s Bhangra fusion choreography, which she taught at a workshop here last year. Same music. Same choreo. Again, it irked me that she was not attributed or acknowledged.

Layla’s natural effervescence gave the performance a nice energy and she made good use of the stage which was something that was lacking in many of the contestants.

However, while Rose had a certain edginess and dynamism when she performed this number, Layla was just too cutesy and bouncy to make this dance truly memorable. She also messed up the two fingered hand gesture that Rose choreographed and made it look more like a fight sequence in a bad Chinese kungfu movie … you know the ones where neon pulses of coloured beams shoot out from the ubiquitous two fingered stab of the usually mustachioed villain? Rose’s cheeky but controlled bhangra hand flicks also ended up looking like a drunk gay guy trying to flick flies off his head.

Personally I rather liked Layla’s performance even if it is not one of my favourite Indian fusion numbers, with much respect to Rose whom I adore and respect immensely. Layla’s energy and perkiness are always pleasant to watch and it was a pity that the audience was so lukewarm towards her performance. Again, I believe it was due to her over-use of facial expressions, moues, pouts and various artifices that distanced her from an audience who may have found this artificial and contrived.

I gave Layla a 6.5/10 for presentation & framing; 5/10 for fluidity of techniques; 5/10 for expression; 2/10 for originality & creativity; and 5.5/10 for rhythm & musicality, giving her a total average of 4.8/10.

Ayana walked onto the stage and I groaned. After the travesty of Veira’s so-called flamenco fusion I did not think I was up for another attempt. At least her fan was more like it, I consoled myself. I rather like Ayana’s lines. In her poses, she showed an attention to posture, lines and details that translated well although she had a tendency to lift her chin too much.

And at least Ayana twirled the fan while dancing to the Alabina song. Except she did not stop twirling it for a very long time. That was all she did while doing box steps, pivot turns and traveling. It got rather monotonous fairly quickly. Fortunately, she offered a slight variation when she closed the fan and started swiveling it with the other hand much like the “Copacabana move” terrorised, I mean, popularised by Barry Manilow centuries ago. I made a note to ask Antonio when Barry Manilow became a flamenco dancer.

Probably sensing my waning attention, Ayana proceeded to execute an extended floorwork routine beginning with a well splayed frontal split. She balanced the folded up fan on her head and this would be impressive if the fan was actually longer by more than 1½ inch from either side of her head. Perhaps due to her intense focus on balancing the fan on her head, her shoulder shimmies were completely off rhythm and tempo.

There is not much to say other than she wore a nice red and black costume and the exit off stage at the end of the song was really weak. Let’s just move on to the scores … 6.5/10 for presentation & framing; 5/10 for fluidity of technique; 4.75/10 for expression; 3/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, Ayana received 4.75/10.

Nyssa performed yet another item from her hotel lounge gig. This mediocre pop fusion number was so memorable I cannot remember the song. But I do remember Nyssa’s extremely bad arms. She is the biggest culprit of the chicken shimmy arms among all the dancers I saw that day. She was also the fondest of the “come-hither” arms. As I promised myself, I looked for a penknife to stab myself with but luck was not with me.

Her Sohair hip accents were fairly well defined but lacked power. On a positive note, she looked quite pretty in her cobalt blue and yellow bedleh.

Nyssa’s excessive flogging of pharoanic arms coupled with her slight awkwardness made these look like she was either surrendering to some looming UFO or making a very exaggerated shrug at one. The other distressing arm movement was the one I termed as the “sha ji” or chicken slaughter move where she mimics the throat slitting of a chicken clasped above shoulder level. Actually I remember a taekwando movement that is rather reminiscent! Hey, maybe it's a taekwando fusion!

Nyssa received a 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 4/10 for fluidity of movement; 3.75/10 for originality & creativity; 4/10 for expression; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored 4.25/10.

At this point, I am developing a migraine much like 3As by the end of each segment. I will return when my battered senses and sensibilities recover from the latest onslaught.

Dancerpades Part II - Still Part II

2006-06-11T22:11:00.000+08:00

The Asia Global look-back continues where the remaining 11 contestants perform their routines for the Traditional segment.

Zahira aka Joey was next. Age sucks … I have a real problem remembering all the new names of all the dancers whom I have known for years under a different (and usually real) name. Every time I attend a concert and an unknown, usually middle eastern name is announced, I am always mystified till the dancer appears and I inevitably go, “Oh, it’s So-and-So (real name) …”

So I will just call Joey .... er ... Joey here.

According to 3A, Joey is not only one of the main teachers but also the administrator or school manager for the organiser. When I interviewed some of the contestants from the organiser’s school, their loyalty and admiration for her as a teacher were palpable. However, Joey’s participation raised a question – would it not be awkward for both teacher and students to compete in the same category? Would it be fair? Would it be even more awkward if the student should actually out-perform the teacher and seize the prize from her? Did I ask this of the organisers? Did they reply? Answer – “Mutter, mutter, all sisters of dance, mutter, happy for students, mutter …”

Again, I bring up this point because many of us felt that there should have been a separate category for professionals and teachers such that there will be a more level playing field. It is also one of the reasons why we did not see some of the really talented dancers in Singapore in the event.

I first saw Joey's number performed at the 2003 Hossam Ramzy concert that all of us performed at. The organiser did a duet to Shik Shak Shok as Intermediate students of one of the local schools. Obviously, she adapted this to a solo. Performing this same number at the competition was unfortunate. Based on Joey's level of expertise and the years in which she had to develop her craft, dancing to a song which is generally used as “teaching music”, is definitely beneath her ability.

Perhaps she was overwhelmed with all her commitments but I was deeply disappointed. I believed she was better than this and felt that she did not push herself as a performer or artiste. This assumption was fuelled by her unusually lackluster performance.

I had not seen her perform in quite a while so it was with some bewilderment that I witnessed the myriad contortions of facial expressions splayed across her face during the performance. The Joey I remembered did not resort to such obvious artifice. The cloyingly coy expressions just did not suit her and made her appear contrived, taking away from the enjoyment in her performance. The excessively fluttering eyelashes, the moue, the opening of lips in mock ecstasy sat uncomfortably on a competent dancer who should not have had to resort to these to enhance her stage presence.

I believe Joey is capable of much more than her performance that day. Her arm work timing was erratic and strangely lifeless, she taksimed to fast riffs, utilised basic movements in her choreography that did not showcase her true skill and she appeared oddly tense throughout the performance.

Worse still, her choreography was not original or much changed from the days of the Hossam Ramzy concert, aside from adapting it to a solo instead of duet. 3A, who is more cognizant of the history of the industry, informed me that the choreography was actually the work of one of the organiser’s former teachers – a fairly well-known local dancer. When I asked the former teacher, she modestly refused credit but did look perturbed. I don’t know but it sure made the scoring for originality & creativity a bit of a mockery.

I gave Joey a 7/10 for looking so stunning in her fire-engine red and silver bedlah; 6.75/10 for fluidity of technique; 4.5/10 for expression; 4/10 for originality & creativity; and 5.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, Joey scored 5.55/10 – it saddened me. Perhaps I expected too much from her.

The next dancer was one of the budding prima donnas from the organiser’s school, Veira. Decked out in a bright blue bedlah, she looked slightly Turkish-influenced with her head-dress and heavily-beaded fringes.

I have one key word for her performance. Raw. More enthusiasm than control, this slim, young dancer was almost all hard shimmies. Her timing and control was off and it was clear that she is still a beginner as she pummeled out hard shimmies after shimmies with limited finesse. It would have been good to see some gentility and softness varying with power to make the performance more memorable. As it was I can barely remember the song and can only recollect excessive shimmies and the infamous “Not tonight, I have a headache” pose that she overused.

Apparently this young dancer is one of the semi-professional dancers at her school. I am more stringent and demanding of the professional dancers during scoring only because it is the only way to ensure a level playing field.

I gave Veira a 5.5/10 for presentation & framing; 3.75/10 for fluidity of technique; 4.5/10 for expression; 4/10 for originality & creativity – we did not recognise it which was good as it meant it might actually be her own choreography … if it was, I commend her on it even if it was very rough; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored 4.35/10.

Next up was Layla, also one of my more favoured dancers from the organiser’s coterie of dancers. This tiny bundle of curves is a charming doll-like package who I think, has potential if she can overcome some of her issues. I am hopeless at remembering song names but according to 3A, it is the song about the woman and her hipscarf. And the choreography is from Nayma Hassan, which we have seen many times and in fact, Layla performs this number regularly at her hotel lounge gig.

It was disappointing but unsurprising that she chose to go with the tried and tested so as not to weaken her chances. I was dismayed that they did not attribute the choreography to Nayma Hassan though.

Layla displayed a common problem among most of the organiser’s students – the overly wide-splayed legs creating a rather unflattering silhouette and line, especially on such a diminutive girl. I like Layla’s stage presence as she has a certain spark but it is dampened by the over-doing of facial expressions. For some reason, most of the organiser’s students employ a calculated simpering, coy stage persona which does not work well for all. Layla almost carries it off because she just looks so darn cute but she needs to temper it. If she had eased up on the excessive sidewards, come-hither glances, the fluttering eyelashes, the moue & pouts and silent little ahs and oohs, I think she would have stood a stronger chance of placing.

I thought the choreography was a little ambiguous. There were too many pharoanic arms and the very unfortunate “come-hither” arms (I have only ever seen these demonstrated by the organiser’s school) to make this almost too modern cabaret style to be truly traditional. But I shall not be pedantic as Layla executed better techniques, musicality and stage style than some of her schoolmates. I liked her undulations but felt she could have layered more.

The typically bad finish to her choreography made me cringe but I did enjoy her performance more than her predecessor. However, looking around the room, I sensed the room had not connected with her. When I analysed it in the quiet aftermath, I realised it might have been due to her facial machinations which created a wall of artifice between her and her audience. Her poor choice of costume may have aided in this alienation. The fiery alternation of orangey-red and bright yellow in a tattered handkerchief skirt seemed mishmeshed and badly put together. I think it created confusion (is this traditional or pop fusion?) and lowered her stage cache. A pity, as I still think Layla has potential but is perhaps heading in an uncertain direction. I wish her all the best though.

I give Layla a 6/10 for presentation &amp;amp;amp; framing; 6/10 for fluidity of techniques; 5.75/10 for expression; 2.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 7/10 for rhythm & musicality, giving her a total average of 5.5/10.

Following Layla was Ayana, a vaguely Japanese-looking dancer. Tall and standing proud, Ayana floated in with a veil number and a beautiful Tiffany-blue and white bedlah piece. The colour choice was excellent against her very pale complexion and I enjoyed her entrance. Until I heard the music.

She chose a Hossam Ramzy piece from his Flamenco Arabe 1 (I think) CD. Look, this is the traditional segment so fusion music like flamenco fusion is not acceptable. How this could have happened was beyond me, especially from the organiser’s school.

Sigh … anyway, her shimmy walk which was quite strong although she handled her veil poorly. She had a poor sense of drum accents and struck me as a dancer who would have been better suited to a lyrical piece because she exhibited some nice fluidity of movement. Her timing was slightly off, which is a nightmare when dancing to the demanding percussions of a Hossam Ramzy piece.

Frankly, I thought Ayana over-reached herself although she has studied the dance form for 2 years now. Hossam’s pieces are never easy to interpret unless you have an extremely strong sense of rhythm, musicality and timing. It’s worse when you do not understand flamenco and try to dance to it. She just should not have chose flamenco music for a traditional segment … I will not even go into how the middle easterners among the audience responded.

I gave Ayana a 7.5/10 for presentation & framing; 5/10 for fluidity of technique; 5.25/10 for expression; 3.5/10 for originality & creativity (she was creative but creatively wrong); and 3.5/10 for rhythm & musicality (wrong music, mate!). Overall, a 4.95/10 was the fairest score I could give her.

The next dancer was Nyssa, whom I had seen perform at the same hotel lounge act as Shayna and Layla. She, too, performed the same dance as her regular gig there. I have to shamefacedly admit I cannot even remember the song except that it was one of those common Arabic pop songs used by way too many dancers.

Tall, doe-eyed and lissome, Nyssa looked lovely in her green bedleh but I felt she should have worked more on her technique. Although slightly improved from her hotel lounge performance, she was obviously not up to contest level. Her chest accents, shoulder shimmies and hip drops needed work. Being a bit of a taksim fan, I winced at her poor taksim, musicality and timing. Her constant use of the dreaded “come-hither” arms increased the pain level. She also deployed rather basic techniques with minimal layering … just not something I would expect from an international contest hopeful.

I admit my scores for her were more stringent than for Shireen only because I know Nyssa is credited as a professional dancer at her school while Shireen is obviously a rank beginner. As such, I gave her 6.25/10 for presentation & framing; 3.75/10 for fluidity of technique; 4.75/10 for expression; 3.75/10 for originality & creativity; and 3.75/10 for rhythm & musicality. Unfortunately, her overall score was 4.45/10, her perpetually wide smile notwithstanding.

Finally, we saw some form of competition. The next contestant, Lay Khoon, was from Alhambra, one of the only three not from the organiser’s school. She was unmistakably a total beginner but had sought to participate in the contest because she wanted to learn from the exposure and also because she knew Alhambra needed a minimum of three contestants to participate. Such moxie is highly commendable.

A truly beautiful girl, she reminded me of a Bond girl (not the posturing fiddlers! The Pussy Galore variety!) with her bronzed skin, beehive do and flowing locks, white bedleh and heavy cats-eyes makeup. I half expected her to drag out a dagger from her hip belt and walk out from a shimmering sea of reflective water.

Unfortunately, Lay Khoon’s will and spirit were stronger than her ability. Her beginner’s status was obvious from her weak snake arms, timing, hip drops, hip circles, shoulder shimmies, wrist control and stage craft. Her inexperience shone through as she did not know how to exude a stage presence, which I thought was a tremendous pity as she was gorgeous.

At least with this choreography I knew it was definitely created by her teacher, Nur Shiblie, who has always eschewed other’s choreographic style to focus on her own demands on authenticity and traditionalism. While the choreography to another one of Hossam’s songs was a little too challenging for Lay Khoon, I could enjoy it without niggling doubts of its provenance or the sense of outrage for other dancers.

There was no disguising that Lay Khoon was a true beginner but I liked her spirit, loyalty and commitment. I gave her a 6.5/10 for presentation & framing just for her sheer beauty; 3.5/10 for fluidity of technique; 4/10 for expression; 5.5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. All in all, Lay Khoon garnered a 4.7/10.

A return to the majority came with the entrance of Sha Sha, another tall, willowy beauty from the organiser’s coterie. Looking delicately lavender under her sheer veil despite her towering height of 1.75m (we know this because the short and stubby MC insisted on questioning them about their height), Sha Sha produced a slightly uneven performance to Issam Houshan’s Tabel Ya Issam. Her hip accents lacked power and definition and there was a strange combination of fast reverse camels and stomach pops to drum accents that I thought might either have been a case of poor execution or choreography but it was hard to tell as it was all just so vague.

Her drum accent shimmies were quite strong though, as were her shimmy undulations. I think Sha Sha can be quite a lovely dancer but she had the tendency of twirling her wrists too much - extremely distracting. Her timing was also a little off and she, like the rest of her sisters, kept performing the truly horrible “come-hither” arms. By this point, I was ready to stab myself if I had to see those arms again.

Overall, her performance and stage presence was quite pleasant but she lacked that star quality I saw in Maia. I gave Sha Sha 6.75/10 for presentation & framing; 6.25/10 for fluidity of technique; 5.5/10 for expression; 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 5.5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Her average score was 5.8/10, which I thought was rather well-deserved.

The next dancer was Jenna, also a principal dancer at the organiser’s school – aye, they were out in fore. She performed to the ever popular Cairo Caravan’s Early Morning.

In her bright blue, gold and silver bedleh, Jenna glowed but started the traditional segment in a floorwork starting position. Not quite traditional and definitely more modern cabaret style but oh well … The full flowing detachable sleeves of her costume highlighted Jenna’s rather odd wrist movements which consisted of flapping or floppy accents. Her shimmies, stomach pops and hip drops were below par and she showed a weak understanding and therefore, interpretation, of drums.

But the worse movement Jenna committed was to execute a full frontal leg lift in front of the audience which she actually held for a few counts before relinquishing us from this visual horror. What … in …. God’s … green … earth … was … THAT???!!! ARRGGHHHH, My Eyes!!!

Words failed me as I noticed everyone who was a dancer in my aisle rocking with laughter or just plain covering their eyes in horror. I shall say no more as the Chinese believe that to see such “flashes” exposes you to extreme bad luck prohibiting you from winning the lottery. Not that I ever won anything but you never know … I can only feel sorry for the judges who can now play the racially and politically-incorrect game of –

Pinching the other judge’s hip scarf hard & saying, “What colour?! What colour?!”

Egads. I gave Jenna a 5.75/10 for presentation & framing (demerit points for flashing us); 5.25/10 for fluidity of technique; 3.75/10 for expression (more demerit points for blinding us); 4/10 for originality & creativity (can I give minus points for this cruel and unusual way of ensuring I am a pauper for life?); and 4/10 for rhythm and musicality. I would give her more points if she promises never to scar my eyes thus again. The overall score was 4.55/10. Moving along …

The next dancer was Chinese-born Jamila whom we know as Vivian or Haiqing based on the information that 3A had furnished us. A truly gorgeous specimen of womanhood, this toweringly (at 1.73m) lithe beauty would have won the competition just on beauty alone. In her bright fushia bedleh interspersed with hints of peach, Jamila performed to a drum solo. I found her routine familiar and was trying to figure out why when 3A whispered in my ear that it was Amera’s drum solo from way back in 2001 or so.

Worse, it was the choreography commonly performed and taught by the organiser’s former teacher who also had her Shik Shak Shok choreography lifted. As usual, there had been no attribution to her or even the acknowledgement that this was not an original choreography. Again I ask, how could we give marks for originality & creativity if these were not choreographed by the dancers or their teachers? As far as I know, Jamila has never been a student of this teacher. It was highly distressing and I truly felt for Ghram.

Focusing on Jamila’s performance, I did like her shimmies and she had a strong chest accents control but poor hip accents and 4-points shimmy pops. Her strong single undulations were well executed but I noticed that she lost her timing if more was layered on and she seemed uncomfortable with certain hip circle movements.

Still, you cannot fault Jamila on mesmerising the audience into almost dismissing all her technical shortcomings with her luminosity. Her stage presence was immense and thankfully she did not employ the same forced, overwrought facial expressions of her schoolmates. Rather, she had a quieter grace and stage charisma that could come across as a little dull and insipid if not for her glaringly stunning looks.

Many a male heart was broken when it was revealed that the lovely Jamila was married with a daughter. Even I was going slightly googie-eyed in the relentless onslaught of such radiance so I blithely gave her a 7.5/10 for presentation & framing (would have given her more but I had to be fair to the not-as-beauteous); 5/10 for fluidity of technique; 5.5/10 for expression; 2/10 for originality & creativity (I was tempted to give her even lower scores especially as the original choreographer showed up later and saw her encore performance - her hurt and sense of violation was obvious despite her classy biting of lips and tongue); and 5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, Jamilla received 5/10 for her performance.

Ah, we come to my absolute favourite of this segment – Rani. The principal dancer from the Alhambra school, this petite beauty has always been one of my favourites since I first saw her dance at the 2003 Hossam Ramzy concert. Then, despite an unfortunate hairdo that made her look decades older than she was, she showed incredible promise and a charismatic stage presence that was paradoxically understated yet captivating.

I knew Rani could dance but I had not seen her perform for a couple of years now. I also knew she would show us the real deal in terms of traditional dancing so I settled in to watch this lovely performer.

Her stunning looks were enhanced by her eye-catching orange bedleh with the flowing detachable sleeves. The only one who performed a saidi cane dance thus far, Rani made her mark immediately from get-go. Her timing was impeccable, her footwork sound, her technique polished without being ostentatious and her control of her cane absolute. Years ago, Rani was still fairly shy but she has really blossomed into the star that she is today. She exuded a confidence without overbearing smugness or forced coquetry that was a wonderful and refreshing change. Her stage presence was welcoming, warm, assured, yet modest and elegant.

That she felt the music and responded to it like a lover entwined in each chord and phrase was apparent. This is what musicality is about. Dance to the music. Not a choreography that you have to count to. Alhambra’s focus on “staying authentic and true” showed, despite what naysayers may opine.

Rani shone and showed us all who was mistress of traditional dance. I did not spot any mis-steps despite the horrific crime committed by the asinine sound man who flubbed up her music again and again, causing Rani to have to re-start about 3 times. But like the consummate professional and performer that she was, she did not let this faze her in any way and handled it with a grace and dignity that is rare.

I have no other words to describe what a joy it was to watch Rani dance but will just let my scores speak for themselves. 8/10 for presentation & framing; 8/10 for fluidity of technique; 8/10 for expression; 8/10 for originality & creativity; and 9/10 for rhythm & musicality. Rani undeniably won this round hands down with a score of 8.2/10.

And it is not just my opinion as everyone we spoke with during the break declared that Rani won this. I even went to Nur Shiblie’s seat to give her my premature congratulations. Which makes what was to follow even more of a travesty.

It seems almost an anticlimax after Rani and I felt for poor Wei Ling, the final contestant and member of the Alhambra contingent. In her sexy and flashy golden bedleh, this dancer demonstrated an equally flamboyant stage presence and confidence. Also performing a saidi cane number, Wei Ling suffered in comparison to her fellow schoolmate, Rani. Her control of the cane was poor and her timing was suspect. I admit I disliked the poor disposal of the cane and her chest accents, camels and ending split were not as well executed as they should have been. Poor 3A finally succumbed to a raging migraine at this point - a strange coincidence as she developed one at around the same point in the second half too.

Still, it was a valiant effort from the underdogs and I could tell she was a fairly inexperienced dancer despite her seemingly confidence. I gave Wei Ling a 6/10 for presentation & framing (I liked how she smiled without frightening me); 4.5/10 for fluidity of technique; 5.25/10 for expression; 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 4.5/10 for rhythm & musicality, bring her to a 5.05/10.

That’s all for the Traditional segment of the Solo Competition. Before I end this segment, I would like to offer a slight observation. Notice that all of the organiser’s contestants had middle eastern names although none, except one, possess any middle eastern blood? Notice that Nur Shiblie’s girls do not have a single stage name among them, choosing to keep their Chinese and Indian true names? Even though Nur Shiblie is middle eastern?

All I can say is Mahmoud Reda and the Kibbeh incident. So long, happy dancing and I will work on the next update on the Fusion segment of the Solo Competition.

To all my foodblogger friends, my apologies but until I fulfill my obligation to my community and complete the round-up, I am afraid there will be no food posts. I beg your patience and indulgence.

Dancerpades Part II - Traditional Soloists

2006-06-11T07:34:00.000+08:00

Yes, yes, I am late but there were mitigating circumstances and just be glad I am filing this story at all. To those who plaintively bemoaned, "Where's Part II?", here it is. Apologies for the very bad photos but I was quaking so much from fear I could not take proper shots ... oh my nerves are just all shot!

Part II of Dancerpades looks into the competition for the top local soloist held on 3 June 2006 and gives a breakdown and analysis of each performer and the event.

Evo or Eva
Obviously, the MC has speech impediments. Which would be cause for commiseration if he did not labour under the false misconception that he was incredibly entertaining or relish in his mutilation of not only the English but Arabic language.

Whoever hired him should have spent some time coaching him so he did not massacre the two languages or insult almost every dancer present.

The event is called Urban Evolution but our emo-but-actually-sumo-wannabe host persisted in calling it an Urban Evaluation event. Did he know something the rest of us didn’t?

Perhaps it is unkind of me, but I truly wondered if there was a plot afoot when he continuously butchered Alhambra’s name every … single … time he announced them. Al Umbrella. Al Ghabra. Al Hamburger. Since he is Malay and this is hardly an unusual name, I could only assume that he was either trying to be funny or had a mental block when it came to one of the oldest middle eastern dance schools in Singapore.

His jokes were beyond lame and wandered into a realm so painful that even little children groaned at his puns. The fact that he made fun of our dance form did not endear him to me and made me seriously question the wisdom of appointing him the MC for our inaugural international competition.

How Traditional Is Traditional?
I bring this up prematurely as it has been a topic of some contention prior to this contest. When we saw the segregation of categories, many probed the definition of traditional. According to the organisers, Traditional is termed as “Forms of classical, traditional, or simple Middle Eastern music to dance, [of which] there are several styles; classical, drum solo, cane, any folkloric or traditional style.”

While this may not be as much of an issue in Singapore where most of us tend to follow the Egyptian style, it may cause some problems in other countries where the American Tribal Bellydance style is quite popular. By the fact that they call it Tribal, which is considered as traditional, some may consider the American Tribal Bellydance style acceptable in the traditional category. However, in most parts of the world, excluding America, American Tribal Bellydance is generally considered as fusion since it is a style evolved from the enterprising Americans’ imagination, cultural preferences and desire for a flashier dance form.

Obviously this ambiguity never occurred to the organisers. However, when this point was raised by Nur Shiblie of Alhambra and supported by 3A Gurl and I, it was duly noted but apparently discarded as a valid concern.

The reason why I mention this now will become clearer when I post about the international leg of this competition – but remember that we brought this up in early May.

Battle of the Schools
I find it amazing that it can be called a national competition, to discover the best dancer in Singapore, when only two schools are competing. There were 14 contestants and all, sans 3, were from the organiser’s school. The other 3 were from Alhambra. When this question was asked, the response was markedly split. The organisers claimed that the community just did not send in the contestants because they were all busy or did not have the right candidates.

Almost every school or teacher I spoke to claimed either one or more of the following:

We did not have enough time to prepare as it was such short notice

We do not have the prerequisite 3 troupes minimum entry for a school to participate in the entire contest (please note that this was stated in the earlier applications requirements but appears to have been changed at the last minute as we noted that some of the participating schools, i.e. two schools other than the organiser’s, did not submit 3 troupes)

We are not supporting this event

We are professional dancers and believe we should not be participating in order to ensure a level playing field

We think the competition may not be a fair contest

As such, for the solo local competition, it transpired that only 2 out of God-knows-how-many-but-it-must-be-at-least-10 schools are involved. I am humming the song Question as I wonder at the validity of this competition in light of this. When I find my trusty (& dusty) calculator, I will attempt to do some new maths for you … no promises …

Casting the Stones
All contestants were judged on 5 categories of

Presentation and framing
Fluidity of technique
Expression
Originality & creativity (I have a gripe with this category but more on that later)
Rhythm & musicality

PowerPuff Girl
This is what happens when some young thing gets a taste of what she thinks is power and lets it get to her airhead. Prior to the entire show, the MC announced that no photos or videos were allowed except for the official camera people and the media. Since I was there as a member of the press, I was happily entrenched in my little corner a few seats up, knowing from experience that a little distance is required to capture the movements of the dancers as they travelled the stage.

A young Chinese girl approached me in the midst of the performances and with a very militant, rude and self-important tone, proceeded to threaten me. I don't know about you but I come from a lineage of warriors who were fairly well known for chopping off people's heads with a sword in a fit of temper. Luckily for her, the only weapons I had were my cameras.

Standing over me as I cast a gimlet eye over her and the line with which to strangle herself, Little Miss Self-Important blurted in one breath.

Excuse me, but no cameras or videos are allowed in here so you cannot take any pictures and if you persist in taking pictures, I will have take your camera away from you!

A victorious look contorted her pale face and I was not sure if that was due to her satisfaction in managing to say all that without taking a breath or in how she must have cowed me terribly. Slouching in my seat, I looked up at her lazily, unfurled my long legs that were lengthier than her entire body and said,

Will you now? Well, thank you so much for offering to take my camera. That is so polite of you ... and I would really like to see you try. (Strange how I develop a slightly southern drawl when I get pissed)

At this point, 3A next to me is trying humanely to save the girl's hide and drags the media pass pinned to my top to Little Miss Self-Important's narrow-slit eyes. Her supercilious behaviour even attracted the attention of the blonde gentleman across the aisle from me. He gave me commiserating looks, shook his head at the little damsel's lack of survival instincts and later remarked on their delusions of grandeur and their abominable rudeness. I credit superior manners and self-control to not relenting to genetically-inborn sword-jerk reaction.

Well missy, I happen to be a press member so I have permission to take photographs but thank you for threatening me. And in that tone. Before you even found out what the situation was. I will be sure to take great note of this.

The little idiot had the audacity to smile sheepishly and mutter a faint apology before scuttling off hurriedly.

What was even more amusing was that in the second half, I took my hair out of its usual chignon and apparently I looked sufficiently different enough to attract Little Miss Self-Important's attention again. She was almost a foot away before she realised with horror that it was me again. Paling even more than her normal pasty complexion, she did an about-turn but not before uttering, "Oh, you again!"

Nice.

The next day when I had one of my few chances to speak with the organisers, I mentioned her incredible rudeness and poor treatment of the press, only to receive a pithy response from them that she was required to do so. When I asked if threats and rudeness before verification were standing instructions or was I just special, they hemmed and hawed and I never received a single apology.

Outstanding.

Traditional Segment Contestants
First up was Shireen who hails from Egypt – the only true middle easterner in the group. It was obvious and totally understandable that it was a matter of personal and national pride for her to represent her culture. Having met her briefly before, I somehow harboured the impression that she had been privy to more intensive and extensive training. Thus, it was to some surprise that I realised that she is quite a rank beginner with just a year’s tutelage.

I was curious as to what Nur Shiblie would make of Shireen since she is an avid proponent of true representation of her culture. Shiblie revealed that she was surprised that a native-born Egyptian would take lessons from someone outside of her culture.

For your information, Shireen is a student of the organiser, who is a Singaporean-born Chinese. The organiser, in turn, was primarily taught and trained in Singapore by some of the most respected local teachers whom I know would prefer that I do not name them as they are too embarrassed to claim this extraordinary credit, since she has not credited them herself.

Clad in a dark brown and gold bedlah aka two-piece, bejeweled costume, Shireen attempted a fairly ambitious number involving a golden-hued, split veil. Ambitious because when you are a beginner, dancing with props can be dangerous. I like to tell my students that if you are unsure of a prop, do not use it. In case it comes back and bites you. Trust me, when performing with snakes, this might be a possibility! Unfortunately, it appears that no one told Shireen that.

Although she displayed some flowing movements, they were a little weak and revealed an uncertainty and lack of feel for the music. I attributed this to a mixture of nerves, lack of familiarity with her music and inexperience as I refuse to believe that someone of her background can possess less than stellar rhythm. But then again, I did once meet an African American who could not rap, play basketball or sing! Good heavens … say it is not so!

She danced to a Warda song. Dancing with a split veil throughout a Warda song is a waste of this wonderful singer’s vocals. Her songs are evocative, eloquent, wonderfully meaningful and usually hold such cultural (and sometimes political) significance that not to dance to each poetically-worded, impassioned stanza is a shame. To waft and weave uncertainly with half-hearted flicks of the veil diminishes not only the song but Shireen’s own ability.

As an Egyptian with a true understanding of the language, Shireen has a greater advantage over her competition. She could interpret the song to its fullest capacity through her dance. Instead, I was disappointed by her fairly weak 8s and undulations, poor veilwork, untimely snake arms and clumsy exit. Shireen appeared uncomfortable with the choreography and just did not connect with it at all, resulting in a wobbly (technical eh?) performance.

I truly feel that Shireen should and could have been guided better so that all her cultural advantages were optimised and her talent unleashed. I felt extremely bad for her as she has so much more riding on this. But I commend her on trying and would like to see her develop from here on.

I gave Shireen a 6/10 for presentation & framing; a 4/10 for fluidity of technique; a 5/10 for expression; 3/10 for originality & creativity; and 4/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored a 4.4/10 – a score I can honestly say I felt bad giving to her.

Second up was Shayna, whom I had seen dance once at a local hotel lounge. I vaguely remembered that she has sounder technique than some of her classmates (yes, she is one of the organiser’s students too … look, from here on, it is safe to conclude they are all the organiser’s students unless otherwise stated).

This time she wore a much more flattering costume that complimented her fair skin. Her cobalt blue and gold bedlah was visually striking and suited her petite albeit slightly heavy build.

Shayna performed a drum solo to Drums on the Beach – a piece of music Keti Sharif commissioned Elias of Australia to compose for her. I am quite familiar with this piece of music, having taken a choreography workshop for this song with Keti Sharif in Singapore about 3 years ago. However, for fear of looking like an absolute arse trying to replicate a fantastic dancer who could not have a more different body type and style than me; out of respect to her; and to avoid accusations of ripping her off, I have always performed this to my own choreography.

What got me was that there was no announcement or attribution of the music or choreography to Keti. A major faux pas. In our world … and this is an opinion voiced by the master teachers too … it is only right that a dancer attribute the choreography to the rightful dancer/teacher if 30% or more of it is derived from them. Even I, when I perform Enta Omri, will tell people that the original choreography was taught to me by Eva Cass. Although I have adapted this greatly, I still give Eva her much-deserved and due respect, even after she has given me permission to use her choreography. That’s the other thing … never perform a choreographed dance of another dancer/teacher without their permission. Worse if it is for a competition. And way, way worse if the dancer/teacher just happens to be there. Why this is significant will become clearer soon.

Anyway, Shayna displayed relatively well defined hip accents and shimmies. However, the interpretation of the song was inordinately reliant on shimmies and I reckon that was a result of the choreographer forgetting most or all of Keti’s choreography and inability to create anything else. Knowing the organiser’s style, it is unlikely that they would rely on improvisation for a performance so it was a safe bet that every excessive shimmy was choreographed and rehearsed to the nth degree.

I was not entirely fond of the excessive chest accents which were typically performed with greater gusto than grace but fortunately, Shayna had a rather pleasant stage presence which stopped it just from looking unsavoury. I felt for her when the CD skipped – this was a hint of what was to come. The sound man at the National Museum should be clobbered with saidi canes, burnt with the shamadans and beheaded with our swords!

For such an experienced dancer (sic - she claims she started dancing at 22 as if it was a very long time ago when she looks all of 25), I was surprised at her “floppy” arms, poor hip drops timing but not at all surprised at the extremely tacky finish, which appears to be a signature move now that I have seen her perform more than 3 times. I did not feel that the drum solo was traditional enough and was more modern cabaret style because of the interpretation and choice of movement combinations. A discussion with Shiblie later also revealed that she found the “traditional” aspect of the drum solos questionable.

I gave Shayna a 6.5/10 for presentation & framing; a 6/10 for fluidity of technique; a 6/10 for expression; 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 5/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored a 5.7/10 – a fairly decent effort from one of the principal dancers from the organiser’s school.

The third dancer was Maia. OK, I have to admit right up front that she is my 2nd favourite dancer at this competition. Perhaps I am prejudiced since I am such a fan of lyrical style that her dance style automatically appealed to me. Prior to the contest, she informed us that she had injured her knee and I felt terribly sorry for her but wondered at the wisdom of such heavy performing (she was also in the troupe competition), jeopardising her long term dance career. We’d all seen way too many dancers retire prematurely, never to be able to even dance for fun, because of such pig-headedness. Still, not my student or body …

But selfishly I was glad Maia persevered as she lent a much needed grace, class and charisma to the show. Her velvet green bedleh was not the most flattering. Although the colour was quite pleasing against her tanned complexion, the beaded loops running from nipple to side of breast was just plain tacky. I cannot tell you how I absolutely abhor such reminders of tasteless, black & white, vaudeville burlesque skits which ridicule and humiliate our community.

I recognised the choreography as a Yousry Sharif piece but again, there was no attribution to the great master. It makes giving scores for originality or creativity rather ludicrous. I reckoned Maia was not fully prepared as she exhibited an uneven control of her shimmies and hip twists but made up for these with lovely arm work and some nice Sohair hip accents. Her timing seemed a little off, impacting the rhythm and musicality scores as she occasionally shimmied at the wrong times, and displayed poor traveling hip circles to the music.

However, until my favourite dancer in this category and despite some of these shortcomings, Maia impressed me the most with a stage styling and star quality I had not seen in any of the other girls.

This lovely dancer received a 7/10 for presentation & framing; a 6.5/10 for fluidity of technique; a 7.75/10 for expression; 5/10 for originality & creativity; and 6/10 for rhythm & musicality. Overall, she scored a 6.45/10, perhaps a seemingly miserly score but I am basing it on an international contest standard and, I believe, therefore fair … and anyway it is my personal opinion which no one is mandated to agree with.

On such positive and fairly glowing review, I shall stop here while I give you a chance to read, scoff, agree, ridicule, curse, guffaw, ignore or worry over what I have opined so far. I will respond to comments shortly after I finish the review so please bear with me.

Dancerpades Part 1 - Judicious Misgivings

2006-06-04T02:25:00.000+08:00

From the desk of Machiam Malu, shamefaced alter-ego of Manamakan

Singapore, 3 June 2006

I spy … with two cameras, two notepads, one accomplice and a whole lot of balls.

The so-called Singaporean leg of the so-called international dance contest commenced today. Such excitement! Such colours! Such noise! Such a lot of fun, happy people!

Actually I am not so sure about fun, happy people since a lot of peeps looked really glum and nervous when I greeted them today. I would be offended if I did not have such a healthy self-esteem … I might think they are actually displeased to see me! I am such a sensitive creature … *sniffs delicately* …

Unfortunately, I had a prior engagement which made me 15 minutes late and I was scuttling as fast as I could towards the National Museum entrance when I heard the tell-tale sound of rollers on concrete. All dancers know that sound.

It is the sound of our roll-on bags filled of costumes, make-up, jewellery, music and what-not that we cart around performance to performance. Trolley dollies have nothing on us dancers – we can cart double our body weight in those things.

Rolling, rolling, rolling … Raks Sharqi!

Turning back, I spied another dancer, Rani, who was obviously dressed for performance.

Hey, Rani! Long time no see! You in the competition?

Yeah! Are you performing?

Hell no! Are you in the solo or troupe segment?

Solo.

Eeks, you do know that started 15 minutes ago, right? Hurry! And good luck – will root for you!

Thanks! See you later!

We both dashed off in separate directions and I was lucky that I had collected my press pass the day before so I did not have to deal with the inevitable hassle of dealing with clueless door bitches.

3A Gurl was already seated in a fairly prime position and had saved me a seat. Good woman! Fortunately, or unfortunately, the event featured the world’s most loquacious and annoying MC so the contest had not began yet as everyone suffered through the inane ramblings of the empty vessel holding the mike hostage.

I will now go into a many-part account, play-by-play of today’s dancerpades. First up …

Judicious Misgivings
At first I had a little difficulty understanding the man’s heavily-accented English but I did catch his announcement that all the judges were from China and Taiwan. That caused some misgivings in me, which I later realised was a sentiment shared by a number of other dancers who attended the event today.

Let me explain why. Firstly, this competition raised a great many questions just by its name. Someone please explain to me what Asia Global means. Despite many requests for clarifications, the organiser muttered that it was a global contest that only involves the Asian countries. Ah, I see … I get it!

Asian Global = Oxymoron! *Beaming proudly now and patting self on back*

Which leads to the second question I asked. If it is meant for Asian countries, why is Japan not participating since they have the largest dance community in Asia? The organisers never quite got back to me on that.

I also asked why our nearest and dearest cousins across the Causeway were not invited. In fact, when we found out about the competition in early May, we sent emails to some friends in Malaysia to check on their participation and no one had heard about it. Till late May, they did not receive a notification or invitation … and by the time they did, they did not have enough time to form a contingent to represent Malaysia.

The one question I posed which was answered succinctly was the query as to why the second largest and most established group was not invited – the Australians. Apparently, I was naft as Asia does not include Australia since they fall into the Asia-Pacific category. I fully concede the point and also the point that the Australians would have beaten our hip scarves off as they have so many years of experience and performances over us. Still, I strongly believe they should have been included as the Australians have much to offer the community and would have speared us to strive for greater excellence.

Where is Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, India and quite importantly … Hong Kong? Is Asia much smaller and more Chinese than I thought?

The only foreign participation it seems is from China and Taiwan. You see the problem now, don’t you? How can you invite judges from these two countries to officiate over the Singapore contest? Surely this will raise disquiet about conflicts of interests and bias?

Unfortunately, this line up of the panel of judges was never revealed to the local community beforehand.

The fact that the judges were the respective teachers/dancers of the winning Taiwanese and Chinese contingents competing tomorrow was another real concern. Another worrisome thought was that having a completely Chinese panel will not yield balanced evaluations. Without besmirching the knowledge, experience, integrity, professionalism and savvy of these esteemed teachers/dancers, these issues should have been considered and addressed and the opinions of completely objective members of the dance community sought beforehand.

Surely it would have been fairer and less controversial to invite judges from non-participating countries such as Egypt, Australia, the US, the UK, Timbuktu, East-Bum-Feck ... look, any country which is not participating in the contest would have been a better choice.

And yes, the organisers originally planned on inviting local judges who are not from the dance scene but that raised questions about their suitability and qualifications. The organisers had pleaded a lack of funds impeding the invitation of judges from Egypt - the most logical choice. When we suggested Australia, since air tickets are much more affordable, they claimed financial constraints and extreme hardship. Last I checked, China is more expensive.

But perhaps the fact that the Chinese and Taiwanese judges were flying down here anyway to compete was a mitigating reason for their selection as judges. Obviously, economic sense overcame common sense.

As it was, the judgments meted out later in the day appeared to justify our concerns and validate our fears. Which leads us to Part II, coming up shortly.

Ticket to Rant

2006-06-03T02:50:00.000+08:00

WARNING: LOOOONG DANCE RANT - NON-FOOD RELATED & WILL BE SO FOR THE WEEKEND AS I FILE STORIES ON THE DANCE SCENE

It was not my intention to give this event the publicity it does not deserve. But the developments of the past few weeks pretty much forced my hand.

Evasive tactics, inadequate information, conflicting announcements, uneven treatment and just plain poor management compelled many of us to take the sort of aggressive actions we normally eschew.

Why so kiasu (that means afraid to lose in Hokkien and is a national trait no self-respecting Singaporean or resident can do without)? Because, despite numerous emails and calls from various members of the dance community, the organiser deigned not to respond to many of us because of our open and direct voicing of our concerns and opinions about this competition apparently held to promote our dance form to the world. Even getting information on how to obtain tickets for the shows was akin to getting blood from stone.

But let me not beat a dead horse in case it rises up and decides to do a pseudo-saidi dance move (insider joke, people, so don't worry about it). Many of us dancers dutifully queued for tickets today in the hot sun, in a room with no chairs or air-conditioning … and also no organisers and very lost, albeit super helpful and nice National Museum employees who had been given zero information and knowledge on how to handle a bunch of zealous dancers and curious tourists, just to see an event supposed organised for us.

Mind you, these were tickets just for tomorrow’s competition to pick the local representatives. The tickets for the final, so-called, international contest on Sunday will only be available from 9.30am on Sunday itself … the competition will begin at 10.30am. I shall say no more but guess what my thoughts are when they start with F and end with R.

Some dancers could not spare the time in mid-afternoon to indulge their curiosity. Thus, to aid my fellow dancers who could not attend any of the competition events, either due to time constraints or because they were just one of the many unfortunate members of the community left out in the cold information-wise, I decided I will post a running commentary when I return each night from covering the event.

Please note that these are my opinions and observations and may not be factual until I obtain clarification from … someone … anyone … since the organisers do not seem to think they owe anyone explanations.

I am not bitter … yet … just appalled. You will be too when you read about our experiences today.

We were told we could only obtain tickets from 1pm onwards at the yet-to-be-officially-opened-National Museum of Singapore. Each person was entitled to only 2 tickets. And we couldn’t re-queue for more tickets … something that came up after I jokingly said I could do what I usually do at amusement parks for my favourite rides … flashback to getting off The Viking and immediately queuing up again 7 times until someone distracted me by announcing dinner.

Thus, 3A Gurl, Charmaine, Charmaine’s mum, and a friend’s helper, all arranged to meet at 12.30ish at the museum just in case there were more kiasu peeps than us. Frankly, I doubted that was possible but 3A’s fervour and fanaticism is catching.

I was late so I arrived at around 12.40pm to see 3A sitting on the steps with a pale-faced and rather frightened looking young bloke. Hmmm, doesn’t look like 3A Hubby … toy boy?

It appeared I was 3rd in line after her and Pale-Face. How, Pale Face. He blanched … I could smell fear on him and I beamed even more broadly to his great discomfiture. The poor man had been conned into lining up for tickets for his colleague whose girlfriend was competing in the event. Rather convoluted, isn’t it? No wonder 3A and I kept messing up and declaring him the boyfriend, which terrified him even more.

And how he suffered. Stuck for 45 minutes with two cackling, half-crazed, aged dancers. Hi, my name is Waldorf and this is my friend, Staedtler. It was fun for us as we were in our element, leading the charge of many others to come. 3A somehow became the unofficial leader, loudly interrogating all and sundry and announcing (sans loudspeaker … not that she need it) the details of the event to everyone since she had researched it to the zenith. At one point, I half envisaged her with a pointy flag on a stick raised in the air like one of those tour guides. The funny thing was everyone was willingly and blindly following her and asking her all sorts of questions as if she was the organiser.

You might think that presumptuous of her but someone had to as the organisers did not show up till 1.15pm and even then they did not know the details and had no clue what was going on. If not for her, there would have been utter chaos.

We waited in an empty atrium for about 45 minutes with just a gold-draped table and fancy stain-glass roofs mocking our inertia. 3A & I sat down on the marbled floor, startling everyone who stared at us as if we were incarnations of Gandhi. 3A actually started buffing her nails, to the great amusement of Pale Face … who by this time had gotten used to us and buoyed by the presence of others, was looking less pale and petrified. I noticed Charmaine kept her distance … Judas …

At exactly 1.05pm, when there was still no sign of any officious looking people, 3A called the main organiser. While I did not hear the entire conversation, I was seated near enough to her to catch the drift. Paraphrasing, it went something like this …

Hey, A, this is 3A and I am at the National Museum with a whole bunch of people queuing up for the tickets of the competition but there is no one here. Can I just check what is going on and is there someone we should be looking out for?

Crackle, crackle, hiss, hiss … you are already there, and I am not, so what do you expect me to do about it? Just wait for someone to turn up. Crackle, hiss, hang up.

Silence.

Niiiiiiiice.

We were forced to tell everyone that the organisers would be late and that we only had to wait. That we were trying to smooth things over for them despite everything is an indication of proper manners inculcated in us by our parents and schools, for which we thank them and pityingly wish A had the privilege of.

When the harried organiser employee arrived at 1.18pm, she was apologetic and quite lost. She started counting out the available tickets on the spot, on a piece of A4-sized line paper with some numbers scribbled on it in pencil, from which she was obviously subtracting from the total of 200 … in front of 3A and I.

10, 10, 10, 20, 30

Excuse me, what are those numbers? I asked, smiling winsomely. (Don’t scoff!)

Oh, they are reserved tickets.

But I thought no reservations were allowed? I asked wide-eyed and innocently.

They are actually for the participants.

Oh I see, but I thought the theatre can house about 240 people and thus only 200 tickets were made available to the public because 40 were reserved for VIPs and participants? I blinked limpidly at her.

Er … blink, blink ...

Can you spell R..O..A..D..K..I..L..L?

I took pity on the beleaguered girl as she was just an innocent patsy. At such close proximity to the Holy Grail-like tickets, I could afford to be generous. Until she revealed that the tickets were not ready.

I’m terribly sorry but we have not printed them out yet but they would be ready in half an hour. You can leave your name and come back to collect them or we can leave them for you at the door tomorrow.

Silence … see below internal monologue …

Gee, I did not realise you did not know you had to distribute tickets today when you bloody announced it in early May! What the blooming, godforsaken, inane, f…

We pause now to censor the extreme usage of unsavoury language - regular broadcast will resume when rabid female is calm again.

Deep breaths … counting backwards …

Even Pale Face and the Japanese tourists behind him exchanged looks with 3A and I. We scrambled to write our names down but tacitly and simultaneously, announced that we would return in 30 minutes to collect our tickets. We had no faith that the tickets would actually be there tomorrow at the door. Can you blame us???

The five of us adjourned to a nearby café for coffee to wait out the great print job. Along the way, we acquired a follower, who we later realised was a student of the organiser. The poor dear had no clue what she was in for and at first she was chortling and snorting with hysterical laughter with us. Until she asked us if we were students of the organisers and we nearly died laughing.

What annoyed me was one of the organiser’s students informing me that they had been told that I used to be a partner and had learnt from them. Ironic when they used to turn up at my house to seek my help to correct their techniques and for choreography assistance and the only class I was ever involved in with them was when I taught a workshop for them. How interesting the way things are portrayed in Singapore! Lovely.

Unsurprisingly, the young innocent disappeared once we returned back to the Museum to collect our freshly minted tickets. Along the way, I tried to give the organisers the benefit of the doubt and mused that perhaps the hold-up was due to the sorting out of serial numbers on the tickets. The others gave me dubious looks but conceded that was possible even as we each silently thought that was incredibly lame. Asians are just so tricky … all those sub-text!

Getting my grubby hands on the ticket was a palpable relief … after all that trauma, these babies are as prized as a box of Godiva choccies. Or a bucket of Bluff oysters. Or a 100-year Grand Marnier. Or … sorry, got distracted there …

The tickets were printed on colourful paper. Green for the 3pm show and yellow for the 7pm show. Cool. Until I peered at Charmaine’s. Her 7pm tickets were blue and her 1pm show tickets were yellow. I was confused. I checked my yellow-papered tickets again to ensure I had not gotten the 1pm show tickets by mistake. Nope … 7pm it was.

Er, excuse me, miss, are my tickets printed on the wrong coloured paper? I think my colour coding is wrong.

Oh, no, no … there is no colour coding to differentiate the tickets. Why? Do you want to change to a colour you like?

Silence prevailed as I tried not to howl hysterically at this additional idiocy. You have no idea how proud I was of my supreme self control when I replied that I was fine with my pretty colours but had to look away, bite my lips and stare steadfastly at my tickets to maintain my composure. And then I noticed that there was no serial number.

These tickets that could not be prepared beforehand were just plain tickets with no coding, serial number or customisation.

Am I in the twilight zone? Is the organisation of tickets such a mammoth task? Did Pale Face think that dancers must be all muscles and limbs and no brains?

After being in events management for decades, such incompetence, arrogance and self-delusion is appalling to me. Being a member of the public, such cavalier disregard of my needs is off-putting. As a dancer, such criminal misrepresentation of my community is beyond the pale.

I attend this event out of fear. Fear that we will suffer needlessly for years to come because of the actions of a few. Fear that I will forever be apologising to the general public and friends who might have had to suffer the same indignities. Some may view our actions and rants as catty but seriously, they are all driven by fear.

For years we have fought for extremely hard-earned respect and dignity for our community. We have had to swallow many bitter pills, great insult to dignity, personal sacrifices, financial deprivation and struggle to keep our heads up and our conscience clear by doing the best we can not only for our fellow dancers but for our audience and scant supporters in Singapore. We are now in desperate fear that the years of struggle will be for naught as our voices are ignored, causing us to dance our way out of a murky future.

What’s sadder is that instead of roaring like lionesses, we are reduced to mewing like angry kittens because all our protests and passive aggressive resistance have been batted away by the arrogance of outsiders who think they know more about our industry and our dance than us and have set themselves as our spokespersons.

I will be spending this weekend in shamefaced horror and wounded dignity. Please … wish me good night and good luck.

Your incredulous dance correspondence,
Machiam Malu

Glutton's Bray

2006-05-30T01:29:00.000+08:00

Eating out with others is always an adventure. It helps if you are dining out with close friends whose tastes and preferences are well established nuggets of information and everyone automatically or easily agrees on a choice of cuisine or restaurant without undue hassle.

But when you are breaking bread with a relatively new friend, who just happens to be vegetarian, it becomes a much more interesting proposition. Mal and I had arranged to meet at the Durian aka The Esplanade, Singapore’s attempt at building a cultural icon, one Sunday evening to watch some friends perform at the outdoor atrium.

Most of my friends are not particularly interested in that particular genre of music and the ones who are would be on their only one night of break from performing. Mal just happened to be the only other person who would willingly give up his night of rest to watch another group perform. Thus, we two die-hards met in the early evening to watch the show.

The sun seemed to set rather early that day, casting a purple glow over the burnt golden evening hue. Something must have been in the air too as mild-mannered Mal became an absolute animal in the midst of a particularly jamming rock song and after failing to entice me to join him in his madness (I couldn't as I was wearing an extremely mini denim skirt), started headbanging and jumping around with a 60-something-year-old Chinese man. It was hilarious, especially as the old man outdanced and outlasted Mal. Finally, Mal had to admit to the shameful fact that he had been bested by an old codger.

Our friends were cracking up on stage from watching Mal and his geriatric dance partner. I think that may have been the reason they wisely called an end to that set. Mal was completely knackered and starving after that and we decided that we would catch a bite to eat before the next set.

I knew Mal was a vegetarian. We went out for a meal a while ago and it was only after I had suggested a couple of carnivorous venues and he just nodded and smiled genially, that he let on that he was fine with the suggestions as long as they had a salad bar.

And oh, by the way, I’m vegetarian.

Duh! Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?

That occasion, I managed to find an Indian restaurant nearby that was a favourite of mine because of its wonderful rooftop view – Indian restaurants are brilliant for vegetarians. This time, though, we barely had 45 minutes for dinner before the next set. I was hard pressed to think of a good vegetarian restaurant that was quick and in the vicinity.

Mal hastened to assure me that he was perfectly comfortable with any restaurant as he was not fussed about his food. Finally, due to time constraint and because we were both dead hungry, we decided on the Glutton’s Bay at The Esplanade.

Glutton’s Bay is supposed to be the best of best in hawker food. To be honest, I am not that keen on the short stretch of theme park-like hawker stalls. I have an intrinsic problem with anything which I consider, rightly or wrongfully so, institutionalised. And to even attempt to do that to hawker food just offends every sensibility in my street food hungry body.

But, I was game if Mal was so we trekked the short distance to Glutton’s Bay and were dismayed to see how crowded it was. Just as we were reconsidering our options, Ms Beady Eyes spotted an empty table with a single chair and quickly dashed over to “chup” the place before any one else could. While Mal was still reeling from my Chariots of Fire routine, I had managed to snag another chair from of a table of happy, smiling tourists.

Hey, welcome to Singapore! You need that chair? No? Cool, can I have it? Brilliant – have a great meal and ta!

Yeah, I’m fast that way.

Obviously Mal and I could not share a meal. Being the gentleman he was, he let me go first to browse the stalls while he kept guard over our table. It wasn’t very hard as they had closed off half the place for a filming of one of Singapore’s Mediocre’s … I mean Mediacorp’s, incessant barrage of variety shows.

I picked the stall with the shortest queue which did not look like its food was the reason for the brevity. It so happened to be the line for oyster omelette, a dish I adore but seldom indulge in because it is just so unhealthy. All that grease! All that starch! All that luscious little sacs of briny sweet seduction! All that crisp-edged, spongy golden egginess! All that … please … a moment of silence as I drool shamelessly …

………

Right, now that we got that out of the way … I dutifully queued up patiently at the stall and while I was there, I noticed that the stall keepers were a young husband and wife team. But the food porn ladened lightbox proclaimed that it was one of Singapore’s best oyster omelette stall with a rich history of excellence and one of the oldest stall with the original recipe, etc.

I scrutinised the couple. The husband looked barely older than me – hey, I am NOT that old! And the wife looked like she was in her 20s. It just did not add up. Doubt and skepticism crept into my mind. Still, I had been queuing for a while now and I was reluctant to relinquish my place so I decided to give them a benefit of the doubt.

Watching them work was fairly interesting as although they worked with their backs facing each other the entire time, there was a comfortable ease and warmth emanating from them that had nothing to do with the blazing fire charring the heavy bottomed wok. I would have been highly bored if I had not engaged the couple behind me into conversation about the merits of black or white carrot cakes – other dishes offered by the oyster omelette stall.

I loved the fact that it was served on a fragrant sheaf of leaf and that the oysters were plump, succulent and fairly large. It looked quite appetising and I happily carted this back to our table as I apologised profusely to poor Mal for leaving him on his own for so long.

Since I am an infamously slow eater, I started on my omelette while waiting for Mal to return with his food. The first bite told me that while the fire had appeared to flame flamboyantly high, the hawker had not adjusted the temperature correctly in the process of frying the oyster omelette. When she ladled the starch and the eggs onto the griddle, the heat was not high enough to give the omelette a crispy, firm, caramelised crust while retaining the moisture and tenderness within. Instead, it was slightly soggy and the crust was leathery.

Fortunately the oysters were wonderfully fresh and bursting with all the juiciness of the ocean. There was enough shredded coriander leaves to lend a refreshing bite that countered the richness of the dish. The chilli sauce was tart and spicy – a wonderful complement. It would have been wonderful if not for the inadequate omelette base. What a waste.

Mal’s choice fared little better. When he told me he was ordering char kway teow, I gave him a jaundiced look and a raised eyebrow.

Er, dude, you do realise there are sausages, fish cakes and cockles in that dish, don’t you?

Apparently, he’d ordered char kway teow sans these. I paused in mid-gobble to consider this. So, that’s like fried noodles with … fried noodles then? It sounded beyond sad but ever curious, when his dish came, I took a morsel and chewed thoughtfully.

Salty, way too sweet, firm noodles and … nothing else. This was a straight carbo dish with nothing else to lift it from the doldrums of gluten overdose. I felt really sorry for M and asked if this was how he ate all the time. I wondered why he had not ordered a plate of stir-fried vegetables instead. Mal’s response was that he was very hungry and that he was not particularly fussy about food. Food was just a way to fill himself up. For shame! And him a doctor too!

How can we be friends?!! This will not do. While I am not vegetarian, years of association with people who are has given me some leads on some fantastic vegetarian restaurants in Singapore. I bossily informed Mal we could not be friends if he was going to be so cavalier about food and that I was going to feed him properly if it was the last thing I did! I am so Peranakan sometimes.

So you might see some posts here in the next few months as I go on a quest to educate my clueless friend that being a vegetarian does not mean living a life without the joy of food.

We departed Glutton’s Bay underwhelmed by it. I was not surprised as I knew it was a tourist trap with over-priced hawker food that you can find better, cheaper and much tastier in so many other places. It was the reason why I avoided it before and this experience did not change my mind in the slightest. To me it is another Newton Circus, except the latter has more variety and the advantage of being 24 hours.

The oyster omelette scored a 7/10 for taste and a 4/10 for health. Mal’s char kway teow kosong scored a 5.5/10 for taste and a 5/10 for health. So, will I go back to Glutton’s Bay? Not if I can help it. I give the venue a 8/10 for its open-air and bustling ambience and close proximity to the theatre, a 6/10 for its selection of food, and a 4/10 for its value which I deem as the cost of the food divided by the quality of the food.

Overall, it scored an average of 6/10, certainly undeserving of its title and a poor representation of Singapore’s food to tourists and culture lovers.

Two-Faced Herb

2006-05-29T17:02:00.000+08:00

I believe most people are oxymorons … me being one of the biggests. At a recent event, I met a bunch of herb-peddling individuals who had some very interesting insights into herbology and man’s relation to that.

One of the comments was that all plants have an inbuilt balancing mechanism. Sounds really dull, eh? I was getting ready to switch on my snoozing-with-me-eyes-open-and-a-fixed-smile-on-me-face mode when the chap said that it basically meant that a plant may have poisonous traits but it would also have elements in it that can battle that toxicity.

Interesting. He used an example of how a particular herb may have the ability to prevent cancer but also by the same token if one of its components was isolated and taken in excess, it would be carcinogenic.

I rather like the concept of herbs bearing the yoke of a two-sided coin – one side may bring all the promises of paradise, and the other all the terrors of hell. These plant-huggers went into a discussion about how man used to consume herbs in their entirety and thus experienced their full benefits. Nowadays, many of the herbal concoctions or supplements are only a fraction or derivatives of these herbs. Sometimes, the isolation of properties in these herbs creates toxicity that will require other balancing agents, which they thought was terribly silly when you can just consume the herbs naturally and in their entirety.

They had a point, I thought, but I was also rather amused at their vehemence since they were peddling herbal supplements too. Black paint is popular in the DIY shops I reckon.

What was my point again? Oh yeah … that we, that is us humans, are much like vegetables. Er … like plants I mean. I think us food bloggers are even more plant-like. Let me explain.

Take me for example. I would like to pursue a healthy lifestyle of fresh foods, balanced meals, healthy diet and enormous wealth beyond what Bill Gates could ever aspire to, the power to cure all illnesses, the beauty of Angelina Jolie without the bad taste of hooking up with peeps like Billy Bob Thornton and Bad Pitt, and … sorry, got carried away. Yeah, healthy diet and all that.

However, being a food lover, I love rich, unctuous food that will clog up all my arteries including any aspiring offsprings’. I experiment with heavy creams and consume ridiculous amount of food in my bid to discover the tastiest, the most original, the richest or the most delightful concoctions. I've also tasted some really atrocious food in my culinary inquisitiveness.

Balancing the desire to be healthy and satisfying my cravings is really challenging. I admire and deeply respect those among us who stay true to their convictions and eat according to these. I have many vegetarians friends who either decided to change their lifestyles out of moral issues or just a desire to be healthy. I like me veggies but I also like the animals that eat those veggies. I’d stick to being an indiscriminate food devourer.

So there I am, feeling rather herb-like. I know I should be eating healthily especially in light of my new medication regime but I found myself having unreasonable cravings for curried foods and rich coconut creams. I was drinking lots of fruit juices and exercising as best as I could. Then I’d walk down to the nearest food court after exercising and buy the biggest, baddest coconut curry meal.

Can you spell oxymoron? I can … see?

It’s worse when I go out and buy a supposedly healthy yong tau foo meal. Yong Tau Foo is supposed to be healthy. With its tofu cubes and fish-stuffed vegetables, fresh vegetables and light broth, yong tau foo is the health food of choice among weight-conscious women in Singapore.

But what does yours truly do? I asked for a thick curry broth instead of the clear vegetable broth. A healthy dish mutated into a rich, spicy and heavy dish. It was fantastic! Let’s do that again! Burp!

Wanton Cravings

2006-05-29T05:17:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you just feel wanton. A craving consumes you and your eyes glaze over with a sheen of overwhelming and almost uncontrollable lust.

Your breath comes in short, laboured and shaky pants as you feel your skin itching and tingling while goosebumps cascade in waves through your body.

It could be a simple, seductive wet gleam of a smooth, rounded, earthy-coloured contour. The firm, red hue of well-hung flesh. Wrinkly globes of succulent mouthfuls. All enticing you to take loud, greedy slurps, bites and licks.

What the hell were you thinking of??!!!

Egads, you lot …

And All That Jazz

2006-05-25T20:31:00.000+08:00

Did I call it or did I call it? Not that it was that hard as it was obvious that Taylor Hicks out-performed Katherine McPhee.

Did I have to sit through 2 hours of excruciatingly contrived and naft American Idol to find out the results? Probably not. Am I a captive audience with nowhere to go and an ice pack holding my ankle hostage? Yes. It's obvious the American Idol producers are trying desperately to win some viewership away from the country awards. So here's my own "awards" ...

Daftest & most painful high-school skit - Puck & Pickler; Wolfgang, you keep that up and I may have to say your name with the same disdain as Bourdain when he says "Emeril"

Biggest bad fake-job - Pickler's "I'm too country to know how to pronounce Shanghai" William Shatner style of acting

Most unfortunate pairing - McPhee & Meatloaf. Egads, it's Beauty & the Beast! Meatloaf really suffered in comparison next to the strong and pure vocals of McPhee. He looked like a lecherous old coot leering down her cleavage and when she pushed him away during the performance I rather think it was not entirely an act. There is no way Meatloaf is McPhee's idol. The producers must have misunderstood when she tried to order a meatloaf for dinner

Best tongue-in-cheek irony - Making the virginal Corvais kid sing What's New, Pussy Cat a la Tom Jones is pure evil; that's like asking Shirley Temple (the kid) to sing like Lil Kim

Most hilarious intro of a judge - the spoofing of Simon Cowell to the music of Da Ya Think I'm Sexy ... too funny

Most starstruck - I cannot decide between Chris Daughtry or Elliot Yamin; Chris was obviously desperate for the approval of Live, especially when Ed Kowalcyzk's superior vocals made his sound flat, and Elliot was railroaded by Mary J Blige who not only sang the duet like a solo but also walked abruptly off the stage at the end, leaving Elliot to stare after her wistfully

Best Impersonation - Mary J Blige's spot on impersonation of The Fly

Best decision - the group number by the guys really showcased the weak singing by whats-his-name-the-pretty-boy-with-puppy-eyes-&-floppy-hair who went off key more times than I've lost my house keys, and Buck-with-the floppy-hair who still needs an interpreter to decipher what he is singing, further justifying why they were booted off

Best Surprise - Prince! Colour me purple with surprise! What are you doing there, dude? Why??? Glad to see ya even with the those scary females gyrating so much they almost knocked the standing mike down but ... you are too good for this!

Most Amusing Exit - the Golden Idol girl who wisely left the trophy on the ground and fluttered off quickly during Dave "Strung Out on Drugs" Hoover's manic convulsions on stage

Most Tragic Performance - Toni Braxton. What ... The ... HELL ... Was ... That??! I bet Taylor Hicks had a Crying Game shower scene after that and might need therapy for years now. Stop borrowing Paris Hilton's wardrobe, growling/lip synching your songs (that can be the only explanation for the non-singing ... even Prince's backup dance screamers sounded better) and use that fabulous God-given voice instead! Jaysus!

Poorest Wardrobe Budget - Toni Braxton again. Them cheap bastards only gave her enough to buy the top and not enough for the bottom

Most Scary Makeover - Clay Aiken; does anyone else think he looks like Pee Wee Herman after he was arrested for his er ... self-help in the cinema? I thought the Peter Pumpkinhead look was bad but Clay Aiken must have really pissed off his stylist this time because that is some powerful hair dye - it made Aiken sing like a constipated country singer.

Most patriotic statement - No, not Hicks' "I'm living the American Dream" but Seacrest's proud announcement that the 63.4 million votes gathered at American Idol were more than what any president has ever garnered. Wow, something to be proud of ... a network channel gloating over the fact that the country cares more about their show than the fate of the nation

Best Kick in the Teeth - Live's performance at American Idol; never has the show been so contemporary instead of a schmaltzy B-list fest

After that self-inflicted torment, I was just sitting there nursing my left arm and ankle and playing my music when I decided I needed a break from “working”. Yes, listening to music is working as I am constantly envisioning movements and formations in my head and can't keep still.

I thought I needed a break and listen to music just for pure relaxation ... music that will not entice me to mentally choreograph or foolhardily move my body to, jeopardising my recovery. I have an intensive weekend of rehearsals of coming up and I have to be on my feet. It’s time to be sensible. I put away my music and replaced them with some jazz and blues.

While rummaging through my CD shelf, I spotted a much loved CD I’d put together for the times when I need to chill or space out. Cool … my favourite song is in it. Here are some pictures of what I am envisioning when I hear it. Those of you familiar with old jazz classics may be able to guess … or those who know me well would definitely know the song.

Here’s the lyrics if you are really stumped.

I'm feelin' mighty lonesome
Haven't slept a wink
I walk the floor from nine to four
In between I X
XX
Love's a hand-me-down brxx
I'll never know a Sunday
In this weekday room

I'm talkin to the shadow
One o'clock till four
And Lord, how slow the moments go
And all I do is pour
XX
Since the blues caught my eye
I'm hangin' out on Monday
My Sunday dreams to dry

Now man was born to go a lovin'
But was a woman born to weep and fret
And stay at home and tend her oven
And down her past regrets
In coffee and cigarettes

I'm moonin' all the mornin'
Moanin' all the night
And in between it's nicotine
And not much heart to fight
XX
Feelin' low as the ground
It's drivin' me crazy
This thinkin' 'bout my baby
Might maybe come around
Come around

Bugger, I'm moving to the music again ...

Sticking My Neck Out

2006-05-24T20:51:00.000+08:00

OK, I did not mean to have a multiple post day but sitting here with an ice pack over the ankle is really boring. Anyway, I just wanted to stick my neck out there to say I predict Taylor Hicks will win American Idol. And deservedly so.

Why?

Because he is real. And he wants this oh so badly. You can see it in every nervous twitch of his eyes, every strange convulsion that seizes his body as he grooves to his song, every raspy strain. He sings every note with every atom of his being from his grey roots to his really bad maroon velvet jacket. He obviously needs a fashion stylist - I would never have let him out of the dressing room looking like that!

While Katherine PcPhee is clearly the stronger vocalist, there is something contrived and calculated about her. She is much too aware of the camera and plays to it to the detriment of the song sometimes. A truly beautiful girl, she strikes me as way too cabaret and runs the danger of being a caricature of herself. When she sang the really boring song, My Destiny, I thought of Kelly Clarkson and she suffered in comparison. Kelly Clarkson would have injected raw power, an edgy soul and a bit of rock into that song to make it contemporary and interesting instead of bland. But Katherine McPhee delivered it with a bland, saccharine cabaret style that just did not connect with the audience. Sadly, I think her tearful father makes a stronger connection.

With the Soul Patroller, the man cannot disguise his total absorption in his craft - scary as that comes across sometimes. His song choice was not that much more exciting but at least you felt it. He looked into the camera without once fluttering his eyelashes. I really appreciated that.

I still like Elliot Yamin and I think it is sad but inevitable that he was eliminated. The boy has a wonderful singing style but zero stage presence. I would happily give him dance lessons because he definitely needs it. And Chris Daugherty was amazing in my opinion but he needs voice lessons so he does not wreck his vocal chords prematurely. I am sure he has a fantastic future ahead of him - the bands are all clamouring for him and I cannot wait to see which one he will choose.

Anyone up for predictions? Lay it on here.

Go Soul Patrol!

Dance Superstars From the Mother Ship

2006-05-24T19:56:00.000+08:00

There is much noise and disturbance in the force these few months. Three major events are vying for all the dancers’ attention, resources and loyalty at the moment.

Although we are used to conflicting and competing events, never has there been so many lines drawn in the desert sands at the same time. Frankly, I think it is extremely unfair on all of us as it forces us to take sides, ration our limited resources and worst of all, miss out on a great many opportunities.

These events claim to be for the benefit and edification of our industry yet because they have all been planned back to back, many of us will not be able to enjoy them as we can only afford to attend one or two of them – and even then in limited capacity as participation costs money!

Worse, some of these events are so badly organised and blatantly manipulative that most of us will have to suffer unfair penalisation, hardships and great inconvenience just to gain information to make an educated decision on our level of participation.

In the bid to carve their personal empire, claim dominion and stroke their own egos, some of these events organisers have inflicted their own selfish agendas on us to our detriment. I think it is unconscionable and after reviewing my options, have taken a stand to openly support only one where I think the overall agenda is much purer and less self-serving.

In the last few weeks, many of us have sat and watch with incredulity as two of the organisers commit more mistakes than Britney Spears in her child rearing attempt. We’ve gasped, choked, rolled our eyes, mocked, cracked up and scoffed at some of the ridiculously barmy antics. It’s enough to make me refuse to be associated in any way with these two events. No matter how they turn out, I know they will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of all dancers and audiences, marking our industry negatively for years to come.

Someone remarked that although they are badly organised and harbour dubious intentions, any kind of publicity for our industry is desirable. I disagree. I think they will damage the industry and create a negative and false impression of us among the general public, which the rest of us will end up having to fight for years to come.

The speculations of intent, plans and ability of all those involved in these three events have kept all the dancers very busy these weeks. Conversations inevitably veer towards debates on the merits and demerits of the individual events.

Early this morning, Charmaine anxiously watched the clock till she deemed it polite and reasonable to call me to discuss the so-called international competition hitting our shores next month. Chomping on the bit, the poor dear immediately launched into a discussion of the Taiwanese leg of the competition. She informed me that the details and agenda posted on the Taiwanese counterparts’ website deferred from the information disseminated by the local organiser – who is also the main organiser of this entire competition.

I had no answers for her on the discrepancy except to say that from experience, I would not believe a word the local organiser says. Nothing is set in stone and things will always change as long as it suits her purposes. I advised Charmaine to take nothing at face value and to adopt a “I will believe it when I see it right till the last moment” attitude.

In the midst of our conversation, she informed me that someone had approached a dancer friend and teacher for private lessons. This clueless dancer wanted to learn the flamenco style of dancing with the fan for her fusion segment of the competition – a compulsory category.

We hissed with incredulous laughter as we figured out which school she came from. It is obvious she and her teacher have no concept of what flamenco really is. She did not realise that the fan in flamenco is not a dance prop suitable for fusing with our dance. Her arrogance in thinking she can pick up flamenco in a week, with just one lesson, before the competition also amazed and amused us highly.

I was in tearful hysterics as Charmaine recounted our dancer friend’s scornful comments about the cluelessness and lack of ability of this aspiring dance superstar.

Hours later, 3A Gurl called me to discuss the other competing event which will feature a highly respected and eminent musician. I shall not go into details but we suspect that the organiser of this event might have forgotten to inform the star of the show that his concert has a change in dates and venue. We were in horrified hysterics that such a mistake could be made and again, it reinforced my determination not to get involved in this event except as a spectator.

In the midst of this conversation, 3A revealed that she has done some snooping and came across the blog of one of the so-called international competition’s organiser’s students. Yes, go back and read that again. I did. This student also happens to be a contestant in the competition. Actually, I think all the contestants are students of the organiser as most dancers in Singapore have decided to boycott the event because they were only informed about it a couple of weeks ago while the Taiwanese, Chinese and the organiser’s students knew about this and prepared for it way back in March. In fact, the Taiwanese winners were chosen in April while most of us only received a mass email in early May. Nice.

Anyway, 3A said this student blogged that she was doing a flamenco fusion piece for the creativity section. What a coincidence! I immediately conveyed Charmaine’s account of the clueless student to her and after we calmed down from our hilarity, we deduced that it might be the same girl.

3A read out what CC (Clueless Contestant) had written. Apparently she stated that she has only just began practising for the competition. She has just started “writing her choreography” and declared that finding the music to fit it all into was a challenge, especially as she is musically “retarded” or something to that effect.

Silence reigned for a few moments as we choked back our laughter before we lost it completely. If this is how they choreograph dances, no wonder this lot always have to go around shamelessly emulating the choreography and style of others!

Do you know how long an average choreography takes? For stage??? Not in a week that is for sure. And certainly not when it fuses a dance form that you are not familiar with.

And what is with the “writing the choreography” and then trying to find the music to fit it into? Is she for real??? I am hoping it is a case of bad English because they obviously have no concept of how to choreograph otherwise. First you find the music, or in my case, sometimes it finds you. Then it haunts you. It pushes you to interpret it though dance. It consumes you till you piece together the combinations of movements and steps. You dance and dance it till the steps all meld together with the music – hopefully seamlessly.

It is certainly not writing down a set of movements and then desperately searching for the music. That is completely arse about face. Music comes first, then dance. It does not matter which dance form we are talking about … it is the same across the board.

I scornfully remarked that CC should be an engineer and not a dancer. 3A interjected that she was indeed an engineer with alacrity and amusement. Jaysus. Is this the future of our dance world? Manic note writing? Mechanical dancing? Analytical choreography – if you can even call it that?

After all my years of dancing, I know I am still a fledging and possess mediocre talent. I try to learn and be open to new experiences and teachings. I admit my limitations and am cognizant of my lowly place in the whole scheme of things. I would never dare to over-reach myself but humbly beg the superior knowledge and guidance of my peers.

I was amazed when one of the organiser’s students once informed me that she was a principal dancer after 6 months of lessons and how the master workshops had nothing to teach her except choreography and even then, it was “just choreography”. I was hard pressed not to chide her for her arrogance as the master teacher she was talking about, Yousry Sharif, is truly one of the masters of choreography – a fact her inexperience and arrogance have blinkered her to. She could not tell good choreography from MTV video moves and believes she knows more after 6 months than a master of 16 years or more.

My issue with the students from the organiser’s school is that they harbour this deep-seated and totally unjustified and unwarranted impression that they know it all.

The fact that a student with less than a year’s experience believes that she can choreograph a dance, fusing a dance style she has no knowledge of, is indicative of how messed up our world is. I know many experienced and good dancers who, to this day, do not claim to be able to choreograph dances in their chosen dance form. Choreography is a completely different skill from dancing because it requires an additional level of creativity and vision. Yet this neophyte happily revels in her ignorance and arrogance. Amazing.

I always say that the more you know, the less you know. How true. I know nothing because I obviously am doing choreography wrongly all these years – you are supposed to scribe it first then frantically look for the music. How silly of me. I know nothing because I cannot even walk in the presence of Yousry without feeling inadequate and wanting, what more dance for him. I know nothing because his choreography has always challenged me beyond my abilities.

But I do know that our world is being over-run by too many people of this ilk. It is a sad state of affairs indeed.

My Beef Balls Are Better Yours ...

2006-05-24T02:10:00.000+08:00

Balls to you. Yeah, that was my reaction too. I was awakened from a much-needed sleep by 3A Gurl one morning after an exhausting night of battling pain and medication. For a few moments, my befuddled and sleep-addled brain reeled from the shock as I wondered what I had done to deserve this cussing.

It took a few minutes before I realised 3A was talking about beef balls. Apparently, her mother carted a bunch of beef balls all the way from Malaysia for her when the parental units were visiting. Dazedly, I asked if Singapore had suddenly run out of beef balls. I was informed that Malaysian beef balls were superior because they use real beef.

I was pondering Singaporean beef balls' usage of fake beef and was trying to imagine what a fake cow would look like when 3A wisely deduced from my sudden silence that I must be imagining mutant cows in my head. She headed that off by telling me that Malaysian beef balls do not contain any tendons or spare parts but only the freshest, yummiest fresh meat.

Oh, I see … reluctantly I let go of the mental vision of Far Side-ish mutant cows.

I was terribly curious about the bovine difference across the Causeway but due to my illness, I did not have an opportunity to try these out till a week after I collected them. One day when I was feeling well enough to cook but still ill enough to crave soups, I unearthed the beef balls and decided to cook a huge pot of soup to last me a couple of days.

I wanted the Malaysian beef balls to take centre in this soup so I could gauge their alleged superiority. Further rummaging in my dismal fridge proved my resources were limited to some sad looking vegetables since I had not had the chance to go shopping during my recuperation. It was obviously time for another leftover soup. I unearthed an aged clump of broccoli. Eying it dubiously, I managed to trim and cull a fairly respectable amount to convince me that a simple broccoli and beef balls soup dish was a possibility. Don’t you just love alliteration in your food?

Broccoli and Beef Balls Soup
2 cups broccoli florets
About 15 beef balls
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
½ large onion, sliced
½ cup prawn stock
Beef bouillon cube
1 tsp red miso paste
1 tbsp groundnut oil
Salt
Black pepper powder

1. Heat the oil and add the onions and garlic and sauté till softened and fragrant

2. Add the prawn stock and about 5-6 cups of water with the beef bouillon cube and miso paste and bring to the boil

3. Add the beef balls and mushrooms and cover

4. When the balls rise to the top, add the broccoli and cook for another 3-5 minutes

5. Check the seasoning and add salt if it is still too bland or water if it is too salty. Give it about 3-5 dashes of pepper and bring it to a simmer before turning off the heat.

6. Serve hot with rice

Honestly, the Malaysian beef balls were quite delicious and had enough bounce to give it a nice texture yet retain its tenderness. However, I truly could not discern anything particularly unique in taste, texture, shape, aroma or even appearance to lend it a significant difference from locally produced or available quality beef balls.

Then again, I tend to make my own beef balls and if I did purchase any pre-made beef balls, I typically purchase the Vietnamese or Thai ones with their distinctive coriander or laos top notes. Still, I was incredibly touched by 3A’s thoughtful gesture and cherished each Malaysian beef ball for all the best intentions and care with which they were hand carried across the border.

The soup was a wholesome delight. Tasty, healthy, flavoursome yet uncomplicated, it was a wonderfully comforting and satisfying. This fluid incarnation of the archetypal Chinese combination of beef and broccoli was easy on both the eyes and the palate. The mushrooms were slick and almost creamy against the nubby texture and soft grassiness of the broccoli.

I happily slurped three small bowls of the soup with some hot, steamed rice and I swear I could feel the instant effect of all that wholesome goodness. With all the medication I had been on, my body was shakily fragile but after dinner, I felt a blessed stillness anchor me gently.

What a welcome relief! I attributed it to the soup. Perhaps some of the maternal love from 3A Mum was transmitted from the beef balls? Perhaps all of 3A Gurl’s concern for my health were embedded into the individual balls of well wishes? Whatever it was, I was grateful for it.

For taste, the soup deserved a 8.5/10. For health, it garnered a well-earned 9/10. For a symbol of friendship and caring, it warranted a 10/10.

Sometimes food nourishes not only the body but the soul and faith in human kindness. It reinforces my mantra of Make Food, Not War. Which ranks right up there with my other mantra of Make Dance, Not War. Do not continue that line of thought now … this is a family blog.

Beef Balls
Broccoli
Soup

Broken

2006-05-23T09:40:00.000+08:00

Injury. Injury. Injury. Words that strike fear into the heart of every dancer. Right now, I am sitting here nursing my ankle hoping that it will regain enough strength and resilience for a 3-hour class I am teaching tonight.

Photo from http://www.onstage-studios.com/Toe-Shoe-Stretch.jpg

I do not think there is any part of my body that I have not sprained, broken, torn or bruised. Embarrassingly, not all of these injuries are due to dance … quite a lot of them are actually due to my supreme klutziness. Each day is a battle against time’s ruthless acquisition of flexibility, stamina, strength, resilience and will. It might help if I could walk with same grace as I dance. Sigh …

Dancing is so much more than technique. It is also so much more than making loud movements to deceive the eye.

It disheartens me when students want to jump start to choreographed numbers when they have no grasp of basic technique. Running before you learn to walk leads to broken ankles. And then there are the dancers who always pull out the “money moves” – loud, aggressive showstoppers to seize the audience’s applause. These are tried and tested showy tricks which appear technically difficult but are actually, and usually, pulled out in desperation to conceal lack of technique, skill, creativity, subtlety and refinement. Hey, I use them too – hangs head in shame. Most of us have at least one or two money moves which we use fairly often. But on the whole we try to limit these.

A particular dancer, best known as BW, is infamous for her money moves. Her dance is best defined as 80% money moves and 20% acting. In fact, she is the creator of the “diamond” technique. Being a fairly large girl, she has learnt to trump out hard, raw movements to compensate for her size. These showy moves inevitably elicit gasps and loud applause from the audience, usually in appreciation that someone of her physical attributes can execute those moves. I am not being snarky here but this is a constantly overheard comment about her.

Photo from http://www.engagement-rings-jewelry.com/images/diamonds.jpg

On one hand, I feel insulted for her that the applause is because of her size. On the other hand, I cringe every time I see her dance as I see how she tries to cover up her weak technique with money moves all over the place. All at the expense of well-thought out choreography, a true feel for the music and … well … soul.

She once approached me to ask for the “secret” behind my lyrical style – all under the pretext of unsubtle flattery of my “lyrical grace, fluidity and preference for lyrical numbers”. She even pulled out her usual crock about us being sisters in dance. What am I talking about? Everything about her is obvious. I just wished she had the balls to just come right to confess that she wants to learn my style instead of insulting my intelligence and putting me off my food.

I admit I am not the best teacher as I can never explain my lyrical style. It would be like trying to explain my soul. Where do you start? Where do you end? Can words convey everything? Or is the unspoken more powerful and moving?

Stumped for a way to answer her question fairly without condescension or scorn, I could only offer her one of the truths I hold dear.

“You dance for the clamorous applause at the end of your performance. I dance for the seconds of silence before the applause at the end of mine.”

It was terribly hard for her to comprehend as we are such different people, what more dancers. For her to try to emulate my lyrical style would be as fruitless as forcing me to perform one of her full frontal pelvic thrusts during a lyrical number.

Months later, she showed up at my door with one of her teachers, seeking my help in correcting their undulations. I really am way too polite. Many of the other dancers chided me - I should have shut the door in their faces. But I just could not force myself to be so rude. I’m not a total fool though. I know that they were not there simply to learn how to execute an undulation … they were hoping to learn how I would execute taqsim - an improvisational slow number. They even brought the song. You cannot see me now but my eyes are narrowed to wry, Garfield-like half-mast slits as I typed that.

The taqsim portion was only a 28-second solo bit. By virtue of the name, it means improvision. Yet these two took detailed notes and recorded every move at each 5-10 second intervals. They even counted out the movements and used a stop watch to time them. I knew then these two would never be able to truly perform a lyrical piece. They had no soul. Everything was calculated. They will never realise you cannot calculate soul.

I have a signature dance but I have never performed it the same way twice. The basic choreography is there but I might change a particular combination of movements here, or the direction or the number of repetitions there. Because each performance is danced with a different energy and soul. Sometimes they are the same – the mournful lover waiting for her beloved’s return. Other times, the angry, scorned lover takes over. Yet others, the shy and fragile girl or the cheeky flirt. They decide how the dance will go. Not the number of counts. Not the detailed notes stolen from the movements of another dancer.

I immerse myself into a character or song prior to performance much like method actors. For weeks before a show, I listen to the song again and again or songs with a similar cadence, feel, sound or energy. I listen to the whispering in my ears, my head, my soul. I identify who is speaking to me and I begin to inhabit and open myself up to that soul. Each time I perform that song, a different muse sings to me.

If it is the gentle, mother-earth figure full of curves and soft caresses, I am quieter, more introspective, calmer and softer in my interaction with people. If it is the angry, vengeful lover, I am edgy, fiery, slightly dangerous and high-strung. If it is the shy, bashful girl, I try to avoid people that entire week. That’s not to say that I am schizophrenic but that these traits, already in me, come much more to the fore and are heightened during the week before performance.

But what happens if you have back to back shows and they are two very different dance styles or energy? These past weeks I have been planning and choreographing two very different pieces of music. Talk about dual personality!

One song is a Latin song which calls for fast, fiery movements with a subtlety seductive and slight jazzy beat. It calls for an upbeat, cheeky, fiery and passionate interpretation. The other is a classical lyrical piece full of mournful, soft wails, sensual saxophone tones, flowing rhythms and light, gentle fluidity.

Fluctuating between the two is challenging. Like two lovers, they are jealous and possessive and demand complete fidelity and attention. I’ve never been good at two-timing and thus, the past few weeks have seen me struggling to juggle between them without sacrificing one for the other. Switching between the two muses takes a huge conscious effort and will.

Sometimes one muse will speak much louder than the other and you have to heed her. Other times, the other will pout and hide herself away in pique because you have neglected her. Muses are capricious things and can wreak havoc should you underestimate their importance or fail to show them the due respect.

How so many of the dancers out there can dance without a muse puzzles me. Yesterday, I met 3A and J for afternoon drinks. Sitting in the balmy outdoor café of the Oysta Bar, part of the Indochine group, we caught up on gossip, news of the dance world and serious discussions of the social issues our age group face.

The abysmally slow service forced us to have a longer and more leisurely afternoon than we would have like. It must have taken us about 30 minutes just to get our check and another 15 minutes to get our change. During that time, 3A made a comment about a fellow dancer, S’ decision years ago to focus on dance as a career. She scoffed at S’ naiveté and her lack of real feeling for music or dance. I wondered at the paradox of S’ decision when she did not seem to harbour the same love for dance as many of us. For most of us, we live, breath, eat and drink dance even as we go about the daily routine of our lives.

S and I once went overseas for a performance. There was nothing to do in the afternoons while we were there but rather than dance or practise, she preferred to spend her time watching telly in our hotel room. I was so bored and in the end, managed to harangue the hotel into arranging for a function room for me every afternoon to practise, choreograph or just plain work out. Yet this is the woman who claimed to love the dance so much she gave up a career for it. I just do not understand it.

After knowing her for many years now, I also realised she does not fully choreographs her dance numbers, preferring to wing it. While I believe that you should dance with soul and not mechanically, when you are a stage performer, you do need some element of planning - showmanship, impeccable timing, cognitive and intelligent usage of the entire stage area, awareness of lighting and many other elements in order to deliver a performance that restaurant or club dancers cannot aspire to.

Again, 3A condescendingly told me I was the one who was naïve and not everyone was obsessive-compulsive like me. O … K …

With shows likes So You Think You Can Dance and the coming, farcical, so-called international dance contest that is about to hit Singapore next month, it is little wonder that so many aspiring dancers enter the scene with little comprehension and appreciation of dance. They see the bright costumes, the dramatic make-up and the accolades of the audience and they crave the glitter and glamour of it all.

What they do not see is the broken toe nails, the blistered soles, the torn ligaments, the sprained joints, the pulled muscles, the hours spent repairing costumes, the vast amount of money spent at master classes, the hours and hours spent in front of the mirror working on one single combination of moves again and again till it is perfect. They do not see the struggle to keep the body limber with the onset of age, the aches and pains from past injuries and the fickleness of audiences.

As I reflect on this, I am icing my ankle and hoping for the best tonight. A broken down dancer, sitting gingerly on the bed, balancing the fragile remains of her instrument, counting the shortening threads of her life. It’s a hard lot I chose. Or did not choose, if you consider that my family made that decision for me from birth. If given the choice, would I do it again?

Yes … definitely.

I once hung up my shoes for many years to please the selfish and insecure desires of an undeserving spouse. I did not realise I not only shelved my shoes but also my happiness, freedom and passion. I lost myself. When I truly had nothing left, it was dance that lifted me and made me feel alive again.

For every broken ankle, every torn ligament, every tear of pain, every crippling insecurity, every insult to dignity, every blow to the ego … it is worth it. I do not want to imagine the day when I cannot do this anymore. When my body finally concedes the battle. It is a frightening thought and scares me more than death. I fear when that day comes, I may turn around and realise I have nothing to live for.

Photo from http://www.freewebs.com/var1/bussellshoes.jpg

So ... Injury. Injury. Injury. I’ll take that. As long as I can still dance.

So You Thunk You Could Dance?

2006-05-22T16:15:00.000+08:00

I love foodblogland. Only here would someone see a funny video and think of you. OK, that may happen in real life but here, that someone would even send you the link to the video so you can enjoy it too. Bless!

I recently received an email from Tankeduptaco stating that he'd just seen a dance video and instantly thought of me. At first, I was not sure what to expect and this was at 7am - a time when my mental faculties are never at the bluntest, what more sharpest.

But what a fabulous way to wake up to the day ... laughing my arse off. I just had to share it with all of you. Especially those of you from my world of dance.

Note: It's a 6-min, non-stop performance and any of us who have to do solos will know that that can be tiring. The poor man obviously lost steam in the last 20 seconds but it was definitely a worthy performance and one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time.

Makes me think of the time when I wanted to put together a comedy dance show taking the mikey out of all the different dance styles and the Singapore authorities did not see the humour in it. Oh well.

Enjoy all. I did. Thanks Neil!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

WHB#33 - Radishing Spring Time with Stephanie Salad

2006-05-22T01:21:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I participated in Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn so I thought I should contribute again even if my post does not expound positively on the "herb" of choice. Hopefully it will pass mustard ...

It’s tough overcoming childhood prejudices and trauma. One of my greatest culinary trauma was being sent to visit an aunt at a young age.

Aunt Jane married a Shanghainese man and swiftly entered family history as the only one to marry a Chinese until Aunt Kris joined her rank decades later. However, unlike Uncle Francis, who had to endure the unnerving judgement of the family, Aunt Jane’s spousal choice was made without consultation. So when she turned up with a cheerfully round Chinese man as fait accompli, they were left with no choice except to learn more about the newest member to the family.

Fortunately, Uncle Ed was a very nice guy. Round, short, dark and perpetually cheerful, he was an odd foil to hatchet-faced, bad-tempered, catty and bitter Aunt Jane. There was only one problem with him. His cuisine.

To be honest, we knew as much about Shanghainese cuisine as the workings of jet propulsion. Wait … one of us, being a rocket scientist, might actually know more about the latter. When Uncle Ed started teaching Aunt Jane to cook Shanghainese cuisine, she was understandably quite keen to showcase her new skills to us and we were delighted for her.

Some background information on Aunt Jane … I am not fond of her but rationally, I can understand what made her such a bitter person. In our family, every newborn has his or her fortune read at birth and that document is kept hidden by our grandmother. Every decision regarding the child’s upbringing is decided by that document. I think it is unconscionable as it has created many tragic situations in our family.

Aunt Jane was one such victim of this ridiculous tradition. Apparently, it was foretold that she would bring misfortune to her blood relations and be a terrible blight to her parents. Thus, she was fostered out to allay this catastrophe. From a very young age, she was separated from us and sent to a Chinese family who took her away and unbeknownst to us, forced her to work in their factory as child labour.

The family lost all contact with her for many years till by some lucky coincidence, a relative relayed news of her existence. Grandpa located her and brought her home. By then, Aunt Jane was a young teen and a very angry teen at that. She came back to the family home embittered, hateful and with a chip on her shoulder that would have crippled Atlas. She never recovered from what she perceived as the family’s betrayal. She never forgave my grandmother and spent the rest of her life hating her and begrudging every member of the family.

Her time away from us also gave her a marked difference from us. She spoke Chinese and barely a word of English. She was uneducated but taught herself how to read – a feat I greatly admired and give her huge kudos for. She was very Chinese in attitude and preferences. We might have doubted her lineage if not for the fact that she had the aquiline family nose, light coloured and wavy hair, deep set eyes, pale vanilla skin and high cheekbones that marked almost all the sisters. She was also a less attractive version of my mother.

Aunt Jane’s alienation from the family meant she did not have the benefit of culinary training. She could barely cook and what she did cook was absolutely disgusting. When Uncle Ed began her Shanghainese cuisine training, we were over the moon, thinking it would improve her dismal cooking skills as she steadfastly refused to learn anything from us. How wrong we were. I do not know which part of Shanghai Uncle Ed came from but it must have been some village where they only eat big, flat, elliptical-shaped, white noodles with tasteless broth and lots of spring onions.

Aunt Jane’s Shanghainese food was ghastly and I remember being very hungry and ill during my visit. My mother had gone off on one of her trips again and was loathed to return me home in case her visitation rights were revoked so she dumped me with Aunt Jane instead.

I spent a week listening to Aunt Jane detail the faults of every member of the family, complain about how mistreated she was, rail about how spoilt I was and how I was the spawn of the devil – she hated my father. Not that she particularly liked my mother either as she was always jealous that my mother received all the beauty and opportunities denied her. Placing me in Aunt Jane's care was the most irresponsible of all the irresponsible acts my mother committed.

Aunt Jane was also very cheap so each meal was extremely spartan. For some reason, she had an aversion to salt so her food was incredibly bland. One of the most traumatic meals that scarred me for life was a soup made of radishes with the ubiquitous white noodles that she declared to be typically Shanghainese. I barfed after the third bite as the radishes tasted like pooh – not that I would know what pooh really tastes like ...

I lost 2 kg in a week and I was already a very skinny child. When I returned home a week later, my grandmother sent me to the doctor and he diagnosed that I was suffering from starvation. That’s how bad Aunt Jane’s cooking was. I would valiantly force myself to eat her food only to puke my guts out. Lucky guts ... at least they could escape while I was trapped with Aunt Jane.

The repercussions from that visit were manifold. One, my mother was refused visitation for a long time and the custody battle was prolonged for more years. Two, I never had to visit Aunt Jane again – ever. Three, my diet was monitored closely for years after that and I had to eat way too many health supplements, giving me a phobia of taking pills for life.

Four, I developed a hatred of radishes and refused to eat them for years. The only acceptable radish was horseradish and even then, as a condiment only. It was only in my mid-20s when I had to eat daikon at a Japanese dinner that I learnt to accept and appreciate it. Even now, eating radishes is a conscious effort.

Recently, in a bid to boost my health, I bought a red radish. OK, OK … I was attracted by the vibrant crimson hue. I am such a visual creature sometimes. I liked the red radish so much I spent an inordinate amount of time photographing it. I rather think it flirted ridiculously with my camera as the ruby seductress came across rather sexily on “film”.

I decided to make a crisp, fresh salad paired with prawns for a healthy lunch. I sorely needed colour and texture to perk my lagging appetite and restore my health. The end result was wonderfully gratifying and, I must say, a great success. I present my Spring Time with Stephanie Salad but as usual, measurements are iffy as I cook instinctively … so taste as you season.

Spring Time with Stephanie Salad

1 ½ cup red radishes, sliced into semi-circular pieces

1 cup haricot verts, trimmed and cut into 3-inch pieces
1 ½ sugar snap peas, trimmed
1 cup zucchini, cut into thick matchsticks

1 ½ cup fennel, sliced – I included the leaves as well

1 cup carrot, julienned
1 tbsp sesame seeds
About 1 tsp dried Italian herbs – I used the McCormick brand
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Juice of 1 lemon
About 2 tsp honey
About 1 tsp nam pla aka fish sauce
Peppered Prawns:

- 4 large tiger prawns, unpeeled
- ½ red onion, sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
- 2–2 ½ tbsp white pepper powder
- ½ tbsp Shaoxing wine
- Pinch of salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil

1. Heat up some oil in a pan and add the haricot verts, fennel, sugar snap peas, zucchini and half the radishes

2. Add a couple of pinches of salt and the dried herbs and sauté the veggies till they are just cooked through but still crisp

3. Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds

5. Toss all the vegetables together, both cooked and raw

6. Whisk the lemon juice, honey and nam pla together. Taste and adjust seasoning till it is lemony, sweet and salty at the same time.

7. Pour into the salad, add the sesame seeds and toss well. You'd wanna let this sit for a wee bit so that everything has a chance to meld together and intensify in flavours.

8. Heat another pan with some olive oil and sauté the garlic cloves and onions till softened and starting to turn golden

9. Add the prawns, the wine, salt and pepper and cook on high, covered, stirring occasionally till the prawns are cooked through and the pan is quite dry

10. Plate the salad and garnish with the peppered prawns

Despite my aversion to radish, the salad was quite tasty. The fresh crunch of the raw vegetables intermingled with their softer, cooked counterparts worked well with the plump, succulent prawns. The clean, sweet, aniseedy flavours of all the veggies really played well with the aromatic bite of the white peppered prawns. It was very satisfying and delicious and I felt all virtuous and healthy with each morsel.

My eyes were seduced by the colourful mélange while my teeth relished each crunch. The complex flavours cavorted merrily on my tongue. By turns sweet, peppery, tart, salty, herby, licorice-like and juicy, this dish was a playful culinary adventure. I had fun making and eating it but I do admit that it was a fair bit of prep work.

I give the Spring Time with Stephanie Salad a 10/10 for health benefits and an 8.5/10 for taste. Perhaps one day I might eat radishes again without flashbacks and any hint of nausea. Perhaps then this salad can warrant a perfect 10. Till then I rather photograph than eat it.

Weekend Herb Blogging
Radish
Salad

Be True To Yourself

2006-05-21T10:26:00.000+08:00

WARNING: NON-FOOD AND BORING POST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Things are dire when your gay friends start telling you to date more. My best male friends are usually gay and tend to be a rather protective lot, becoming impregnable human shields when they sense the unwanted attentions of an unsuitable straight male (they have exacting standards - Mr Fashion Disaster, or Bad Hair-Do, or the more common Mr I Wanna Shag Your Friend Rotten and Be Generally Disrespectful Towards Her) who has trained his shagdar on me.

It is amazing how an extremely camp friend can suddenly turn all macho and physically threatening, enclosing you in a tight circle between him and the bar counter when USM (Unsuitable Straight Male) starts zeroing in on you. I would blink rapidly with a stupefied gaping fish look when this happens. Most of the time, I am very grateful for the rescue since I have the unenviable talent and supreme arse luck of attracting real wankers who will piss me off within 3 seconds of their stripping me nekkid with a single glance.

Getting my well-intentioned friends to turn off their protective shields can be a real battle which I have resignedly conceded. Perhaps they just do not want to lose their favourite fag hag. But when they start haranguing you to date, you know there’s something fishy in the land of Singapore. Did the men in Singapore suddenly rise up in estimation of my discerning and extremely fastidious friends? Or am I suddenly aging so badly that they decide I need to get hitched before I lose all physical attraction?

The first conjecture is fairly laughable as we spend so much time eye rolling and shaking our heads at the antics of local straight men. The second is an extremely scary thought which sent me to the mirror for a few minutes.

My Aunt Kris can spend hours in front of the mirror. She would disappear halfway through dinner and would not return for ages just to gaze fondly at herself in the mirror. The first time her boyfriend-then-but-later-to-become-her-husband came to dinner, he very confusedly asked me what the deal was. I told him she had to make her nightly pilgrimage to Land Narcissus to offer the customary dinner time offerings of practiced poses, smiles and facial examinations.

My father could never walk past a mirror or any reflective surface without coming to a standstill to admire his own image. He would always have a comb (oh, to be related to a Westside Story character) in his back pocket which he could withdraw with a flourish to drag through his greased up hair-do. Because of all these embarrassingly vain quirks which run in my family, I developed a slight disdain of mirror time as I grew up.

Despite many people’s common misconception, I spend very little time in front of the mirror. The only time I do is in the mornings when I am doing my morning ablutions to hygiene and put on my face in order not to scare little children and small animals. Other than that I do not look at a mirror except to glance at myself when I go to the loo and at the end of the day when I remove all the makeup.

The longest time I spend in front of the mirror is when I am doing my stage makeup and examining my costumes so I do not have a costume malfunction a la Janet Jackson “accidental” mishap.

Perhaps it is because I am actually embarrassed by my own image. I hate seeing pictures of myself and I can barely watch me on screen. When I see any recordings of my performances, I would watch it only with clinical eyes to dissect my dance and stage techniques. Otherwise, I would cringe and wince in pained embarrassment and wish that I could be swallowed up by the ground.

I think it’s because I do not feel like I look. Apparently, I look sexy and that is a common perception. People take one look at me and peg me as some kind of (gag) walking sex bomb. Therefore, how people respond to me at first encounter is usually very insulting. They either hate me at first sight (usually women) or they imagine me in weird and unpleasant situations with them (usually men with not a chance in hell).

Seldom does anyone look beyond this. And when they find out I seldom go out to clubs, detest pick-ups, am a goofy clown, and would slap anyone silly who even looks at me wrong, there is always a look of great shock and disbelief before they awkwardly and hesitantly readjust their small brains to see beyond their cartoon caricature perception of me.

I always wonder at the great divide between how I see myself and how I come across to people. But apparently, according to my friends who never hesitate to tell it as it is, I come across completely differently and it is only after getting to know me that people realise I am nothing like what I physically appear to be. In the words of a friend, I look “like a porn star” but am the “biggest clown” around. She ended this by saying “It’s always a shock to find out that you are soooo nice when you look like such a bitch.” … Niiiice. Thanks, Sue.

From decades of self reflection and helpful and eager contributions from friends and acquaintances, here’s the current analysis.

My self image is of a rather brooding character who smiles and sparkles because she was trained to but who would rather hide in her little sanctuary alone.

“You are the most bubbly and sociable person I have ever met.”

A definite façade. I have to be in my work but unbeknownst to all but my closest friends, the wider I smile, the more I dislike you. A perpetually wide smile means I think you are an idiot and am contemplating the many ways to disembowel you. Watch the eyes. If they gleam, you are dying a hundred horrible deaths. If they sparkle, worry. If they are soft and really look at you, you are a friend and I am going to ask you soon if we can blow the joint and go somewhere less pretentious and real. Like a food court to eat. Otherwise, I am silently yearning to be home alone.

She is very goofy and extremely clumsy, gets lost easily and has many freak accidents because her head is always in a cloud of music or contemplation of what kind of taste combinations would work in a recipe.

“You are so sexy and graceful. You look like sex walking.”

Eeeuuww! Yeah, rrrright. Until I walk right into a mirrored pillar. Or have a scaffolding fall right on top of my head. Or fall down into a manhole. All true stories, people. Sex is definitely the last thing in my head when I am walking around trying to figure out where I am with my phenomenally poor sense of direction. And I walk according to the song I am listening to. Fast song, fast walk. Slow song, slow walk.

She is a real clown who makes many wise cracks and finds way too many things funny.

“You are soooo funny, you kill me! So weird because you look so seriously glam and you turn out to be such a joker!”

Glam? Me? Sure I like to dress up but I think my style is more bohemian and eclectic than glam. I avoid wearing clearly discernable brands because I think it is tacky - why should I model and market for them for free? And I love humour! Without it I would have sliced my wrist ages ago.

She is private and hates being the centre of attention. She is a paradox because she loves performing on stage but hates being watched off it.

“You are so dramatic! You get attention because you crave it! People watch you because you are such a diva and there is a spark about you that people will just notice and watch.”

Drama queen, eh? I only want attention when I am on stage. Off it, it makes me feel like I am being stalked. Creeps me out. Makes me nervous. I start looking over my shoulder to see who is watching me. I get a little nauseous and I want to run home to hide. I admit I am quite dramatic and animated with close friends but it is certainly not to be the centre of attention - it is a genetic thing.

She is klutzy and awkward and has a face only a grandfather can love (her mother considered her the weak link in a family famed for their beauty and her grandmother thinks she should have looked more Chinese and less mixed).

“You are so graceful and sexy. You have a face that is neither here nor there and people do not quite know what to make of you. Exotic and Chinese blokes tend to come on to you because they think mixed girls are easy.”

Gee, thanks. We already covered how graceful I really am. A dancer friend’s mum told me that for such a graceful dancer on stage, I am a bloody disaster off it, as she bandaged my knee after I fell off a chair at her house when I laughed too hard. True story. No, I was not mothered … just clumsy. Can’t help the face. Born with it. Note to self: Avoid Chinese blokes.

She is too gangly and has an unbalanced body.

“You have such long limbs – a real dancer’s body.”

Not true. Double jointed, which spoils the lines. Knobbly elbows. Short waisted which makes me look matronly and top heavy. Boobs too big for a dancer, and legs way longer than body, throwing the balance off. Sigh.

She is shy around people she does not know and gun shy about talking to men in case the first words they say is “Do you know you have nice tits?” or worse, say nothing and start trying the old let-me-put-my-hand-on-the-small-of-your-back-to-guide-you-to-your-seat-and-hope-you-do-not-realise-I-am-coping-a-feel. Pervs.

“You look up for it because you are so friendly and open. The tits thing? What to do, they are so out there. Coping a feel? Hey, they’re guys … what do you expect?”

This is from a gay friend. I am so too shy. Which I cover up by being all sparkly and smiley. I am usually super friendly towards women at first meeting - probably trying to gain their acceptance when I see the instant dislike in their eyes. The goofy humour is to put them off guard. Once they start laughing, they usually start hating me less even though they still harbour a wariness that I will try to steal their men or attention from them. Most times, once they get to know me, they start treating me with a fond condescension as the token “safe” sex symbol in the group.

As for the pervy guys. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!!

Why this long self analysis and narcissistic posting today? Because I spent last night teaching a class and then meeting a gay friend for coffee. As I made my way to meet him, my taxi driver started conversing with me and began the usual line of questioning. What you, ah? You do what, ah? You very beautiful and sexy leh, you married aleady? Why you don’t date one, so pity? You free some night?

Sigh ... bang forehead against keyboard. All I did was tell him where to go. And before you ask, I was wearing a long skirt, a printed top over my sports bra and had my hair in a messy bun. Nothing sexy about it. More like work-out sweaty and messy looking.

Upon meeting A, I complained bitterly and asked him why I was always so arsed luck and it sparked a long debate on what pheromones I may be emitting. He speculated that in my past life I may have been male and a real dog so this life, I am being punished for the transgressions of my past life. Not sure about all that but if it is true, I wanna go back to my past life and beat the shit out of myself.

Should we apologise for how we look and attempt to dress or look how we want to be perceived? In work, we dress for success but are we true to ourselves? I’ve tried to dress down, look demure and blanket any personality I have in order to gain acceptance. But they never do really accept you. How can they when they do not know you?

Much as my physical appearance creates eddies of trouble for me, I do not think I want to change it. My inner self image might not mesh with public perception but at least I can recognise myself.

Days Late But In Full Support

2006-05-18T13:29:00.001+08:00

Oy, you all ... Listen up! Thems peeps are trying to stamp us bloggers out. No, you say! Yes, indeedy!

OK, OK, maybe they are not trying to stamp us out but they sure have an interestingly different set of standards for us. Now what did we ever do to deserve that? Because we exist? Because we are not selling anything except our own convictions and passions? Because we do not charge you a buck to read our blogs? Apparently, that should be penalised, it seems.

I shall not go on about it because I think I have ranted enough today (and also because I only got to know about this today and totally missed the no foodblog day ... duh!) and Chez Pim says it so much better anyway. So I've taken the liberty of re-posting some of what she said on her blog here but please go to her wonderful blog for a more comprehensive read.

And save us from the falling sky too please. I'm really bad at doing the Chicken Little dance ...

"This day is without food blogs.

The sky is falling. Yes, I'm not just being Chicken Little. The sky is falling. And hardly anyone is looking. That's what kills me.

A huge change is brewing in the US Congress, fueled by lobbyists from large telephone companies and service providers. If these lobbyists are successful then the face of the Internet that we know and love will change forever.

From the NY Time's Editorial Desk May 2,2006:
"One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate".

But access to the Internet is not exactly equal now, is it? People pay for varying speed of connection to the Internet, dial-up, DSL, T1, etc. Those with more money can access the Internet at much faster speed than those with less. That's what you think, yes?

That is something different though. Currently, consumers can pay for different speed of connection, but once they are connected to the Internet, there is no difference between accessing the massive Yahoo.com or the little chezpim.com. But when the new law is passed the service providers will be allowed to dole out different websites or services at different speed, essentially by creating two-tier Internet: one with super fast speed for the sites who are willing to pay, and the other with only the slow lane, for those unwilling or unable to pay up.

That means that the phone companies can tell you that if you want to access CNN.com, you can use the fast lane, but if you want to see your friend's blog, you will have to use the slow lane.

This is a blatant violation of the principle called Net Neutrality, and it will change the face of the Internet forever. And since a huge part of the Internet goes through the US, or through routers and switches owned by companies in the US, this change will affect you no matter where you are. "

There is a call to action at savetheinternet.com where you can sign a petition if you so wish.

Net Neutrality
Save The Internet

Have A Nice Day

2006-05-18T12:05:00.000+08:00

Am I a coward? An ostrich hiding its head in the sand?

I admit to being an emotional creature, incapable of watching a sad movie without shedding a tear. Couple that with an overly-analytical and brooding nature (after I have shed the tears) and a sizeable guilt complex courtesy of a Catholic background, well … it’s just not pretty.

Cognizant of my weakness, I tend to avoid situations or environments which would foster and encourage such emotional instability. This stems from self preservation and a humane consideration for the general public. People get awfully uncomfortable when they sense an oncoming emotional breakdown.

Recently I was asked if I would be interested in watching a preview of World Trade Centre. My immediate response was “Hell no!” which garnered me an extremely ugly look from the person. She must have thought I was an incredibly cold person to be so disinterested in such an important topic and I frankly did not feel inclined to explain myself to her. So shoot me, my rebellious instincts always rear up in the face of sanctimonious, presumptuous people more inclined to react with their LV bags than their brains.

But for you guys, I will make the effort because I actually like you. Whoever you are. As long as you are not that LV bag-toting hack who pissed me off.

Where were you on September 11? What were you doing? Who were you with?

I do not think any of us over the age of 8 will ever forget the exact moment we heard or saw the news. For those of us who were there and survived, I simply cannot even begin to express my sorrow and commiseration.

I was at home, working on my lap top, in front of the telly in the living room, and I glanced up just in time to see the ticker tape run across the screen announcing that a plane had just crashed into one of the Towers.

At first I thought it was a teaser or some sort for a movie. My brain just could not connect to the reality and it took a few minutes of rapid blinking and open-mouthed befuddlement before I switched channels to CNN. I sat there stupefied as I watched the burning shell of a once imposing building. The irony was that I was working on a disaster recovery presentation. It hit me hard and I remember chanting the words, “Oh my God,” over and over again.

After a while, I managed to move from my settee, my hands shaking and my vision blurred from unshed tears. To calm myself, I decided to have a cup of tea and I was still watching the telly from the kitchen when the second plane flew into my television screen.

At first, it looked like an airline advertisement. There was a surreal serenity with the plane flying unswervingly and smoothly through the blue skies. It looked as if the plane was just flying behind the tower so it was real shock right to the heart when flames and smoke plumed from the tremendous crash. I was pouring hot water into my teapot at that moment and the sight shook me so badly I ended up scalding my hand. The pain made it so much more a reality. Of course it was nothing on the pain, suffering, horror and grief that would follow for all the victims of this horrible crime against humanity but it seemed to herald that this affects me just as it would affect every single human being on this planet for centuries to come.

I will never forget September 11. Every move, every thought, every word and every graphic picture seen on that day will remain with me for the rest of my life. I’ve shed the tears for those lost and those who are left behind. I’ve experienced the repercussions from these senseless acts of terrorism when I have been detained at airports. I’ve lost people I knew.

To tell me I do not care just because I refuse to be a tool of manipulation in a public relations event is a foolhardy action. Ms LV Bag was actually very lucky I did not send her flying to Paris without the benefit of a plane.

You do not need a movie to remind us of what has happened in the last decade. It will never go away. Our lives have been forever changed and our interaction with each other become even more barbed and cautious. I am sure the producers of World Trade Centre have the best intentions but for me it is still too soon. I am a private person in grief and I do not like to rip that mourning shroud apart for the viewing pleasure of others.

I simply do not think I am ready to watch a movie about Sept 11 or the World Trade Centre. That’s not to say I do not read and find out the facts and myths on a daily basis. It’s just that watching a movie about it does not sit well with me at the moment. Perhaps in another five years when the memory is less raw and I will not be reduced to a sobbing mess within the first 10 seconds, I will watch the movie. Even if I watch the movie now, it will be in the privacy of my home, alone, when I can take out the individual jagged shards of memory and relive each cut and laceration on my soul.

We all grieve in our own way but the greatest tragedy is when we impose our shallow preconceptions on the world. Ms LV Bag can piss off and shout her bleeding heart into another LV atrocity. Get over yourself. September 11 & World Trade Centre is every day in my psyche. I do not need to attend a movie preview to demonstrate my feelings on the matter.

So here’s my twin towers to you, Ms LV Bag. Have a nice day.

Ser-vivor, Hospital Food

2006-05-18T09:09:00.000+08:00

I’ll tell you now … I hate hospitals. I hate doctors. I hate anything associated with the antiseptic smells, the white or pasty pastels shades of their uniforms, the general malaise of physical illness, emotional upheaval and the smell of fear and despair in the air.

True, occasionally a hospital can be the venue of joy when a new life opens its eyes to gaze at the bright lights beckoning it forth into our world. But on the whole, hospitals mean death, sickness and despair to me. Suffice to say I hate them and I try never to step foot in them.

It’s not really a phobia. More an intense dislike bordering on mild hatred. This bias extends to those who work in that profession too. An elderly client once harangued another doctor to set me up with “some nice young doctor”. The look of utter horror on my face followed by a sawing motion over the wrist convinced her that that would be a very bad idea. By the same token, I hate dentists too. I’m not sure if it is the smell, the bland, soul-seeping lack of colour, or the totally sterile and cold environment that every atom of my body, mind and soul rages against.

I know it is terribly prejudiced and quite possibly asinine of me to harbour such disdain but hey, I never claimed to be absolutely rational or reasonable.

Which is why it is so ironic that I actually spend a lot of time in hospitals and in the company of doctors. I swear the gods have it in for me. In both my professional and personal life, I seem to be surrounded by doctors. I’m not quite sure how that happened since I try to avoid them like the plague. In fact, one of my first real jobs was in the medical conventions business. Which meant I spent a lot of time not only in the company of doctors but also in hospitals. Worse, I had to go for bi-weekly meetings in a hospital where the only way to the venue was via the pathology department. The gods have a bloody evil sense of humour.

Besides being incarcerated in a hospital bed when I am ill, I have done many odd and unusual things in hospitals. I’ve taught dance in a hospital. I’ve painted a mural on a hospital wall. I’ve delivered food to the wards. I’ve organised workshops and seminars in hospitals. I’ve also rehearsed in a hospital at 11pm with 3 other insane dancers before. And recently I attended a seafood feast in a hospital.

You know hospital food is truly horrendous. I always believed it was a diabolical plot by the hospitals to ensure you will leave as soon as possible to escape the food so they can free up the bed for other victims. But if you told me a month ago that I would have one of the best seafood feasts in a hospital, I would have laughed in your face.

One of my closest friends in Singapore is a beautiful, multi-talented, highly intelligent, and kindest doctor I have ever met. And I have met quite a few. It is quite easy to hate this paragon of beauty and brains if she did not have such a fabulous personality. Hanging out with her is always fun, mentally stimulating, stress and angst-free and best of all, gastronomically rewarding. The woman likes her food. Boy, does she like her food. Most of our gatherings involve food and Ser knows some of the best places in town so I unabashedly go to her when I need culinary inspiration.

I always knew Ser can cook as I was once invited to her home where we cooked up a storm in a basic kitchen (she was in the midst of moving of sorts), using beyond basic kitchen equipment and aluminum foil for plates. It affirmed my belief that flatware and utensils do not a feast make. It is the ingredients and cooks who create the magic. I have been in situations where we are challenged by lack of ingredients, equipment or space and the food has been phenomenal. Compare that to the many occasions where I have dined on the finest china, been served the most expensive truffled this or that and the food has been a flaming insult to my palate … I’ll take the aluminum foiled feast anytime, thank you very much.

Ser was holding a small farewell party at the hospital where she works for a couple of her housemen and knowing my avid foodblogmania, invited me to partake of this feast. What got me was that she was going to cook all the food in the hospital. No, not in the hospital canteen or kitchen. In their office pantry. Which boasted one toaster oven, one microwave oven, a turbo broiler (finally I am not the only person I know who has one!), a hotplate and … that’s it!

This is Survivor (or Ser-vivor if you want to be corny ... OK, I shall then!), Hospital Food Style. I just had to be there. So off I went, carting two cameras, one tripod, and one empty stomach to a hospital for a clandestine seafood feast. How surreal is that? I avoid hospitals like the plague and here I am happily cavorting in the halls of a hospital with a camera looking for food.

By the time I got to the hospital, Ser had corralled her assistant cook, aka starving and well-trained houseman, to harness his scrubbing skills for the bountiful crabs and clams purchased from KK Market that morning. Those crabs were huge! Some of them were even bigger than my hand extended to the fullest! But CA (short for Chef’s Assistant) was up for the task. You know, maybe doctors have their uses after all as he did a really good job of scrubbing the crustaceans. And it was all done with such surgical precision too!

Ser, like me, is an instinctive cook and basically just throws in whatever suits her mood at that moment. Tasting, throwing … more tasting, more throwing … panic, not enough bowls … all hands on deck looking or receptacles … pouring, wiping the spills like crazy … more tasting, some throwing … and so it goes.

It is busy in the tiny little pantry with a table groaning under the weight of fresh seafood, bottles of condiments and spices, makeshift containers, one toaster oven and a hotplate. Lord, the smells in the room! What antiseptic smell? If hospitals smelled like that all the time, I might have less of a problem with them. People kept coming in and out of the pantry enticed by the glorious aroma of fresh seafood cooking under the loving hands of a passionate food-lover.

Ser ruled the space like an Asian Nigella Lawson. There was an uncanny resemblance. Ser was casually focused, retained her grace under pressure, was seen licking her fingers and spoons many times, her eyes sparkling from behind her beautiful waterfall of hair, all smiles and gentle, infectious humour and was just haphazardly charming and comfortable while cooking up six seafood dishes.

Yes, people, there were six humongous dishes. All cooked on a little hotplate, an equally little toaster oven and one turbo broiler. The microwave oven was hardly touched. And it only took her about 3 hours from the time they arrived in the hospital. Amazing.

What’s even more amazing is that it all tasted incredibly delicious. There was a spicy chilli clam dish that was redolent with wine and garlic; a wonderful preparation of the plumpest prawns in spicy chilli broth and its counterpart in dryer garlic and butter sauce. Too delicious for words. The only fly in the ointment was the lobster which took an incredibly long time to cook in the turbo broiler, prompting me to call it the Lobster That Would Not Die. I know seafood affects me in strange ways ... supreme corniness being one of them.

The crowning jewel in Poseidon’s bounty was the Sri Lankan crabs. These massive babies were cooked in an unusual sauce made of mashed salted egg yolks, turmeric, wine, garlic and spices. It was utterly delicious and there was much smacking of lips, cracking of shells and sucking of juices in the conference room.

I shan’t wax lyrical anymore but let the pictures speak for themselves. I’d like to thank Ser for her selfless and wonderful gift of cooking such a grand feast and inviting me; the hospital for once changing my dire opinion of hospitals in general; the other doctors and housemen who proved to be great fun and sports; my father, my mother, my … oh, sorry, having a Cuba Gooding Jr moment there.

Dude, save some for me!

I'll think about it

Fine, be like that ...

Just like surgery

After that huge feast, Ser, Charmaine, her mum and I went to a quiet little café to rest our swollen bellies and sated taste buds with some coffee and conversation. The coffee was a wonderful end to a lovely feast, with the swirling creams and chocolatey bittersweetness. I was one deliriously happy camper. I feasted in the place of my nightmares but it turned out to be fabulous afternoon of scrumptious food, great company and lovely memories. I cannot think of a better way to spend a day.

But I am still not a fan of hospitals.

Of Clogs and Chinese Pastries

2006-05-17T10:26:00.000+08:00

Graeme’s last day in Singapore was spent in Chinatown as we combed the shops for wooden carvings for his new apartment. In the midst of this expedition, we met 3A for a quick lunch and bless the girl, she brought some freshly made egg tarts from Tong Heng for dessert.

I’ve loved this diamond shaped ambrosia of the gods since my first bite at age 12 when I was visiting my mother. Her office was near Chinatown and during my visits, she would always take me on an excursion of the tight little alleys, bustling shops and colourful characters. Chinatown was a wonderland of sights, sounds, smells and tastes to me.

I particular liked the side street where languorous snakes slithered in ignorant bliss of their forthcoming fate of being bled, skinned and stewed as Chinese medicinal and tourist attractions. The old Chinese lady in her dark blue sam foo and black trousers who served the most delicious beef noodles but spoke nary a word of English. The Indian temple that stood incongruously right in the heart of Chinatown with the soothing low hum of chants, spectacularly painted statues and enchanting chimes that lured me to peek past the huge wooden doors at its entrance.

My mother used to let me run free in the streets of Chinatown, encouraging me to visit every stall and talk to as many people as possible. This was such a novel experience and change from my grandmother’s extremely proper and tight control at home that I would be filled with a heady sense of freedom as I roamed the busy streets. I would stand next to the snake man as he skinned the snakes. I remember he used to marvel and point out the little “kwailo kid” who never cringed or ran away at the first sight of blood dripping from a newly skinned snake. He did not know I grew up in a kitchen. Nothing fazes you when you have seen live chickens strangled, pigs disemboweled, crabs stabbed in the eyes and what not. Fear Factor has nothing on my grandmother’s kitchen.

The turtle soup lady was another favourite. I had my first taste of turtle soup when I was visiting my grandfather and when I saw the stall, I made a beeline for it. For some reason, the sight of a lone little girl perched on a tall wooden stool slurping away on turtle soup seemed to amaze the locals. I would then wander to a stall filled with colourful wooden clogs. I like wooden clogs shops because my grandfather used to bring me to visit his friends who made wooden clogs. I loved those visits!

The stooped old men who shuffled painfully half bent in the dark and dusty grottos, the smell of perpetual saw dust, and the piles of sawn and polished wooden clogs were extremely novel for me. I was intrigued by the wooden and metal equipment clasped between the legs of these old artisans as they pared wooden curls from blocks of wood to shape the distinctive bases for the wooden clogs. I wanted to try these but they would never let me, fearing that I would hurt myself.

I could barely communicate with the Chinese-speaking old clog makers as they petted my hair and marveled at my skin but the kindly twinkles and indulgent smiles on their faces told of their fondness of me. One of them always called me Rose for some reason and had a suspicious wet sheen in his eyes when he looked at me. He always said farewell by pressing a little pink paper wrapped lao puo bing aka old wife's cookie into my small hands and a tight, shaky hug as he blinked away his tears. I never forgot him and always wondered why he was so sad.

Despite their simple lifestyle and exhausting work, they always stopped for tea when we visited and laid out treats for me. I knew even then that they were giving me treats that they denied themselves. Their lot was a hard one and it was obvious they lived on the brink of poverty. Wooden clogs making was a dying art and people just were not wearing and therefore buying wooden clogs anymore.

With each delicate bite of the little Chinese pastries offered by these kind old men, a growing realisation hit me - I might not see them again the next time I visited. They were so old and so stooped and like them, their art was dying. My heart would grow heavy with a persistent, gentle sadness as I realised that the brightly red wooden clogs and my visits were perhaps the most vibrant things in their lives now. A forgotten art. A misplaced group of artisans. A life spent stooped in the service of others who have cast them aside.

I remember my last visit to them. I always left reluctantly because I loved visiting them but that last visit, I knew somehow I might not see them again. True enough, I did not return to Singapore for many moons and when I asked after them, my grandfather told me they had passed away. I think mine might have been the only tears shed for these forgotten old men lost in the dusty annals of Singapore’s neglected history.

When I saw the wooden clog shops in Chinatown I remembered these old men. I naturally gravitated to them but it was a disappointment as I could tell the wooden clogs were machine made and the shop keepers wooden tourist peddlers. Chinatown has changed tremendously from my childhood romps. It has lost that spark of the unexpected, the bustling noises, smells and feeling of unfettered trading that made Chinatown so special. Nowadays, it is colourful, manufactured and contrived. You still get the occasion shop of delights, the wonderful smell of food and the call of enterprising shop keepers but to me, it has lost its soul.

I miss the Chinatown of old and wish the clean, newly painted and spruced up version could recapture its raw liveliness and buzz. Till then, I only go to Chinatown to buy the occasional delicacy and dim sum. As I stroll the sanitised streets of Chinatown, memories of Chinatown past and Chinese pastries will always be tied to dusty, wistful sadness shaped by the worn, calloused hands of a group of lost wooden clogs makers.

One of my favourite places is Tong Heng. The smells from this small corner shop right in the main streets of Chinatown are heavenly. The rows of Chinese pastries always make me drool. My mother was the one who introduced me to their egg tarts, which looked like no egg tart I had ever seen. For one, they are diamond shaped while I am used to seeing the common circular discs of golden eggy goodness. And Tong Heng’s egg tarts are massive! They look like they have been on steroids.

I had not eaten the egg tarts for a very long time and 3A’s thoughtful contribution to lunch ignited the embers of dim sum mania. I adore dim sum. If you put me in a dim sum restaurant and told me to stay there for an hour while you ran errands, I would have consumed almost every type of dim sum available in the place and still be eating when you came back to collect me. This is a true story by the way.

The memory of the silken egg custards encased in crumbling, crispy pastry lingered in my mind for weeks after that. When I was at the office recently, I made a point of passing by Tong Heng so I could purchase a box of their egg tarts for 3A Gurl & Hubby. Of course, 3A and I consumed a couple before the husband even returned.

I have never had egg tarts that tender, smooth, tasty and unforgettable. I swear Tong Heng’s egg tarts are addictive because I went back again shortly after and purchased two to chomp on as I made my way to the office. And no, my office is not really on route from Tong Heng … my greed made me make a wide detour just so I could feast on the egg tarts.

That afternoon, still egged on by my gluttony, I decided to purchase some dim sums from a nearby coffeeshop. I’d seen the delicate little puffs, rolls and dumplings in this shop but had never tried any. My decision was based on a faltering appetite that would not allow me to eat normal portions. Small portions were all I could manage so dim sum seemed like a sensible and fun option.

Miniature char siew paos so cute I just had to purchase some were surprisingly delicious. The pastry was fairly soft and fluffy and the barbequed pork filling slightly sweet but on the whole it was still a nice repast. I also bought some beancurd skinned wrapped dim sum with a savoury seafood filling. The skin was a little tough for my liking and the filling a little too salty but paired with a sweet chilli sauce, it was fairly decent.

I wrapped up my small dim sum meal with the divine egg tarts from Tong Heng. They were too fabulous for words. Bugger, just writing about them is giving me cravings. I wonder if I have enough time in between meetings to go get some today …

Miso Confused Soup

2006-05-16T11:53:00.000+08:00

The body is an amazing thing. It’s so vulnerable to everything yet so resilient. Is it our will that keeps our bodies from crumbling under the weight of our harsh environments or is our slavish devotion to it the only thing keeping it going?

My body is a volatile litmus test of everything that tosses and swirls in varying currents around me. Because of a long-standing condition, I have become extremely sensitive to the subtlest warnings from the fragile shell attempting to sustain my wandering spirit. Food, therefore, can contribute extreme joy or supreme discomfort.

While I have been trying to win the battle of wills with my body, my appetite for normal food has recently languished. Sensing its need for hydration and efficient distribution of resources, my body has been craving soups and porridges which are easier to process.

On a recent supermarket run, 3A and I bought a large tub of red miso paste each. The label claimed that it was MSG-free, a definite boon for me since I fear I have become increasingly intolerant of MSG. On one of the nights when I was feeling sufficiently well enough to cook, I dug the hefty tub from the fridge for a simple supper.

I had no clear idea of what I wanted to cook except something fast, soupy and hot – real comfort food for the first time I was able to cook in a while. Fishing around my fridge, I pulled together a haphazard gallery of leftover suspects. Broccoli, leftover roasted chicken, silken egg tofu, baby dou miao aka bambino pea shoots, sea kelp, snow peas and shiitake mushrooms. Not a bad haul. I got to work on a pseudo-Japanese-Chinese soup dish which I cornily entitled Miso Confused Soup.

I was still recovering which meant I cooked intuitively and quickly and did not really bother to take notations so if measurements or instructions are a little vague … suck it up.

Miso Confused Soup

½ cup coarsely shredded leftover roasted chicken
About 1 ½ tbsp of red miso paste
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed gently

1 cup broccoli, trimmed into bite-sized florets

1 cup of fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
½ cup sugar snap peas, cut in half

1 handful of sea kelp – soaked in hot water to soften
1 ½ cup baby dou miao

1 tube silken egg tofu, sliced into 1 inch thick discs
Oil

1. Heat 1 tbsp of oil and sauté the garlic and onions gently till softened and fragrant

2. Add about 1 ½ litres of water and throw in the sea kelp and bring to the simmer

3. Add the miso paste and bring to boil again before lowering the flame to simmer for about 15 minutes for everything to harmonise and reduce slightly

4. Add the broccoli, sugar snap peas and mushrooms and bring to simmer

5. Start heating a small pan of oil to about 1 ½ -2 inches inch. Make sure it's hot otherwise you'll end up with Goodyear Tyre tofu shotputs instead. When bubbles form around a chopstick when you stick it into the pot, add the discs of tofu to deep fry in a single layer. Fry till golden brown and crispy, remove and drain on a paper towel

6. Add the dou miao to the soup and taste. If too bland, add more miso or a touch of soy sauce. If too salty, add a pinch of sugar and more water.

7. Let the soup simmer for about 8-10 minutes

8. Layer the bottom of a bowl with the chicken shred and ladle over the soup

9. Place the crispy tofu discs on top and eat while it’s hot

You can add noodles to this dish if you desire a more substantial meal. The soup tasted phenomenal the next day but try not to keep longer than overnight.

I think that the red miso paste did have some MSG in it despite its claim otherwise as my body reacted to it immediately after dinner. I found myself constantly thirsty for the next few hours with a slight migraine, which told me I should use less of it next time and rely on other ways to flavour my soup.

Other than that, the soup was very nourishing and healthy despite the deep fried tofu. The bright greens of the soup played up the bright golden hue of the tofu medallions and I think this visual enticement perked up my lagging appetite. The salty miso with the hint of almost fermented beans tempered by the sweetness of the vegetables topped with creamy and eggy tofu were a confluence of familiar flavours with a slight twist. I ate two giant bowls of this soup – a real feat considering how my body kept rejecting food before.

I give my Miso Confused Soup a 8/10 for taste and a 9/10 for health. There’s nothing like comfort food, confused or otherwise.

Beyond the Ashes at Ikukan

2006-05-16T06:30:00.000+08:00

Firstly I want to thank everyone who sent me emails and comments expressing their concern and how they missed me. I am incredibly touched and surprised by all the well wishes and apologise for worrying you guys. It has been an incredibly busy period which was not helped by a relapse in a chronic health problem. I am recovering still and trying to balance the workload, health and sanity. So apologies for the posting hiatus here - I will try not to have such long absences. I will respond to each and every email and comment shortly so please bear with me ... and now to the post proper (sic).

It’s always an adventure dining out with a date. The tentative, gentle exploration of each other’s culinary preferences. The uncertain compromise and relief that the first hurdle was resolved amicably. It helps if it’s with someone with whom you have dined before in the most inebriated state and still managed not to send him running for the hills at the sight of your ravenous foraging.

I've had the misfortune of researching a series of “dates” in the course of my work recently and have had to recruit hapless but safe male friends to undertake this hazardous mission with me. It has been a minefield of potentially awkward misunderstandings, scrupulous avoidance of mixed signals and heightened stalker radar alertness requiring every ounce of my beleagured diplomacy skills and fleet footedness. The stress level is extremely high and would be hilarious if I did not feel so endangered.

My encounters with M always revolve around food or music. Since our first meeting and immediate gravitation towards each other because of music, we’ve managed to find many other common grounds despite our seeming differences. So every time M makes his monthly or so business visits to Singapore, we inevitably end up going on a food and music expedition. In between, we discuss everything from art to medicine to dance to religion and philosophy with the main themes always being food and music. He was ideal as the first victim of my mission improbable.

The latest culinary trail led us to Ikukan – a serendipitous choice made almost simultaneously without prior consult. My last visit to Ikukan was eons ago when a local foodie friend herded four of us to this hidden bastion of Japanese cuisine for a sake and food tasting. None of us had been there before and we were eagerly anticipating a night of wondrous new taste sensations. At first, the location was rather suspect as he led us past a carpark right in the heart of the business district, into a small back alley. Surely there cannot be a restaurant in this dark, remote corner?

I did not know quite what to expect but it certainly was not the well appointed, quiet, simple elegance of Ikukan. Yes, there was the ubiquitious rice paper and bamboo partitions, the sake barrels and the creepy and cheesy waving cat that always looks like Chucky’s pet. But there was also a lovely, shaded outdoor verandah with lush greenery, soft lighting and clean lines. I did not expect such a romantic, almost tropical setting. It should have been slightly incongruous with the dignified serenity of the very Japanese indoor décor but somehow it worked. I really liked this little oasis of al fresco delight which looked out into the quiet alley. I remember thinking that it was a pity I was dining in such romantic surroundings with three blokes who are lovely but certainly not my idea of date material. And before you think I am up myself, two of them are married and the last one is like an uncle to me!

My memory of Ikukan swirled with glossy images of spectacular sushi salads gleaming with glorious orange gems of roe, sashimi so fresh I could feel the sea breeze rifling through my hair, and sake so potent and abundant that I regretted wearing 3-inch heels that night as I tottered gingerly on the slatted tiles of the carpark on the way home. When M suggested that we go Japanese the night of his arrival, I immediately thought of Ikukan. But before I could utter the first vowel, he asked if I knew of a tiny little restaurant off Club Street. I was delighted and amazed at this psychic culinary connection and the happy decision was made.

Sadly, because we did not make a reservation, we were unable to sit in the verandah. The staff took pity on our abject disappointment and set up a little table just off that so we could enjoy the cool night air and tasteful foliage. I decided against sake as that white lightning has a fast and dangerous effect on me and I wanted to enjoy M’s lively conversation as well as the food.

In an unfashionable fit of patriotism, M requested for Italian wine. Unfortunately, Ikukan's wine menu did not extend to Italian wine which I thought was very odd since their sister restaurant right next door did. Turning his nose up at the inescapable French selection, and hesitant about the "new world wine" from Australia, M compromised on the Spanish selection, even though I thought the selection was below average. We ordered a relatively inexpensive white wine from Spain in the range of S$60-70 a bottle (those familiar to Singapore would snigger as even the cheapest plonk starts at the S$40 range in restaurants here).

Am I terribly unromantic disliking dim lighting when I am scrutinising and trying to shoot my food and wine discreetly? By the way, M is well trained by now and will hold up food items to help out in the surreptitious photo shoots.

The Torre Abalde was light. Very light. Too light for me. Even in the soft amber glow of the discreet down lights, the almost non-existent colour of the wine was an obvious tip off. It was crisp but had no body, layers or complexity to it. I found it insipid and a wash-out, barely deserving the 5/10 score I gave it. Admittedly, it was a no-brainer table wine which went down fairly well with the clean flavours of our dinner but then, so would lemon-flavoured water. I would have preferred a crisp Kiwi sauvignon blanc to enhanced the wonderful sashimi salad. M gently suggested that I was a wine snob (me!??) and I had to remind him that me dad started out as a sommelier. So OK, he ended up a raving alcoholic chef …

The food choices were considerably easier as I was still waxing lyrical about Ikukan's sashimi salad. M happily agreed to this recommendation as long as he could order his saba grilled on volcanic ashes. I wondered if it was an indication of his ancestry – Pompeii, burning ashes and all that. But his choice was an informed one as Ikukan's saba is to die for. Having experienced their signature dish before, I was a willing accomplice in this fishy business.

The first dish up was the sashimi salad. Silence abounded for about five sacred minutes as we slurped the plump, succulent slivers of raw salmon into our expectant mouths. Rappers can go on about how fresh this or that is but dudes, you do not know what fresh is till you luxuriate in sashimi that transports you to a clear, bubbly brook of gently icy waters on a hot, sunny day. You can almost feel the refreshingly cool caress of the waters on your heated skin as you slide the slivers of the salmon across your tongue. The crisp, peppery salad is a tantalising foil for the salmon and the dressing’s slightly earthy, nutty flavours demand your attention without slapping you in the face for it. Yes, I had visions of the Monty Python fish dance as I typed that last line out …

M and I did not let a single leaf, or vibrant orange gem escape our rampant chopsticks. We awarded this heavenly salad a 9/10. Appreciative moans and contented hums rang from our table and I think our server was rather amused by our beatific beams of satisfaction. Upon her recommendation, we decided to try the spring rolls. I know, we had the same reaction when we spied it on the menu. Spring rolls in a Japanese restaurant … how tacky.

I have a distrust of spring rolls. Too often, it is offered in beyond mediocre, fake Chinese restaurants mangled by rancid, burnt overnight oil, stuffed with limp and putrid juliennes of leftover ingredients, and mummified by leathery, cement-like pastry skins. Unless the quality of the restaurant and chef are beyond reproach, I typically eschew this cruel torment.

These spring rolls were done in a pseudo-Indochinese style. The menu and our server touted it's "gourmet fusion" of black truffle and mizuna leaves. Bit of the tired ole fusion business here but M and I were feeling adventurous.

Alas, it did not assuage my constant grouse that too many chefs let the truffled perfumes of extravagant, epicurean delicacies go to their fluffy, mushroom-clouded hats. The mizuna leaves were much too hardy, intensely flavoured and tough for such a delicate concoction. The truffles were heavy handedly shoveled into the rolls with the unnecessary splash of truffled oil. The two battled for supremacy in a bitter contest of overpowering gaucheness. In no way was this dish subtle or refined. It was uncouth, tough, bland, unbalanced in flavours and texture and demonstrated a lack of understanding and appreciation of the ingredients. The only saving grace was the presentation. I thought this dish did injustice to Ikukan’s otherwise excellent quality and food philosophy and gave it a 2/10. I think they should remove it from their menu pronto and never let it see the light of day ever again.

The next few dishes were much safer choices. The slivers of salmon and swordfish sashimi were beautifully and simply presented on glossy, organic-looking boulders of ice. The salmon was lovely but the swordfish was a disappointment. Perhaps the chef was having an off day or in a hurry to bugger off home because the swordfish was sliced with the delicacy and finesse of an axe murderer. Hey, Manson, cook much? The cut was inferior and it was much too fibrous and in uneven chunks. I was beginning to wonder at the inconsistent quality of Ikukan that night. It was obvious there were two chefs at work that night and one of them should have gone home before we got there.

The final fusion dish was a much greater success, garnering a 9/10. Spotting the foie gras chawanmushi in the menu, I ordered it with alacrity. Sadly, I have a terminal weakness for foie gras. The chawanmushi was tender and silky, making its sinuous journey down the throat a sensual pleasure. The foie gras complemented the delicate egg custard with its velvety unctuousness, and a generous gloss of nicely balanced sauce. Strangely, it struck me as having a more Chinese culinary undertone and oddly awkward and rustic in comparison to its other more sophisticated brethern.

But note that while I was making these observations, I was still wolfing down every slippery spoonful. For lack of better words, it was bloody delish, compelling M and I to demolish this dish with a woeful disregard of table manners. I begrudgingly took a picture in the midst of this wanton carnage, giving M the opportunity to inhale more than half of it. I blame you guys for every bite denied me.

Ikukan further redeemed itself with the next dish – its signature saba grilled in volcanic ashes. The well proportioned (i.e. big ... I like ...) whole saba, sans head, is a mastery in simplicity. The freshest saba is grilled over volcanic ashes which impart a smokey aroma and flavour. A restrained squeeze of lemon is the only adornment this wonderful fish requires. Tender, moist, flakey morsels bring the sweet essence of the sea and earth to every starving cell of your palate. I defy you to eat this without once closing your eyes in bliss with each delicious nuance.

Conversation came to a halt as M and I slobbered over our saba. It was the only dish we refused to share and although I was completely stuffed three quarters into it, I still picked the fish clean.

The rest of the meal passed in a satiated daze as we lingered over the memory and taste of the ash-burnished saba over a rather pleasant orange muscat and coffee. The night grew cooler but the volcanic rush of ecstasy over the luscious saba was a warm ember that was fuelled by good company, intelligent conversation and considerate service.

Ikukan still entices me just on the merit of its sashimi salad and saba. Obviously I give Ikukan’s saba a 10/10 which helps pull up its overall score let down by the wine, spring roll and swordfish sashimi. The service is above average even if the staff is not terribly knowledgeable, a prevalent condition in Singapore. Taking that into consideration, I give Ikukan a 7/10 for service. Ambience rates a respectable 7.5/10 while quality of food warrants a 8/10 with portion size a 7/10. Value, which I define as whether the food and service warrants the price you pay, is about 7/10 – the black truffle and mizuna spring roll was blatantly over-priced at over S$30 for that sorely unimpressive assault to my palate.

If you want to be pedantic, Ikukan scored an average of 7.3/10. It is still a worthy choice but Ikukan should stick to doing what they do best, i.e. contemporary Japanese, and leave the fusion stuff alone until they can ensure some level of consistency and sophistry in this area. I’d definitely go back but might give their “gourmet fusion” dishes a miss until they can convince me that they have refined these.

Fire & Ice and Everything Nice

2006-04-22T08:31:00.000+08:00

It’s true dedication when I am passing by a hawker centre after a meeting and decide that I should check it out for the blog since I have never been to that particular one before. I’d just eaten but a hawker centre of that size deserved some exploration.

I was at Alexandra Road for a meeting and as I wandered around, I spotted a large hawker centre with quite a lot of stalls still open even though it was 4.30pm. I wasn’t particularly hungry so I decided to try some of the local desserts. The stall I patronised was obviously a franchise. Anytime you see the words “House of …,” it’s a franchise.

Despite my misgivings, I decided to give it a try by virtue of the fact they had a rather intriguing sounding dessert – Pear with Fungal. Er … really? Suppressing a gulp (and a little bit of nausea), I decided to investigate.

The stall owner must be a fan of Mind Your Language. I can imagine many a sheepish chuckle and relieved giggles as unsuspecting potential diners like me discover that the dessert is an innocuous sweet Chinese soup of Chinese pears and white cloud fungus.

As it was such a hot and muggy day, I decided to purchase some to test the combination of sweet, crisp pear with mushy, slippery white cloud fungus – a sure-fire cure for over-heated systems as these two are cooling foods. I was not too convinced that it would be a tasty marriage but perhaps I was just slightly biased as I am not a keen fan of cloud fungus. Still, the food adventurer in me decided to give it a go.

I also purchased some glutinous rice balls soup, something I am not that fond of too but since I was on a mission of culinary pushing-of-the-envelop, I decided I would go the whole hog. And also, I fancied the idea of a fire and ice dessert sensation.

The icy cold, cooling and mushy Pear and White Cloud Fungus soup flirted with its complete opposite, the hot, spicy ginger soup with the chewy and glossy tang yuan aka glutinous rice balls filled with black sesame and peanut pastes. Even the colours were contrastingly vivid!

I expected to enjoy the cold Pear and White Fungus soup more since I typically prefer cold desserts. And it had little Chinese almond halves in it which I adore so I thought it would be the obvious winner in the contest of fire and ice. But surprisingly, the glowing pale concoction left me cold. It had a strange, gluey taste and texture that was slightly, disturbingly chalky. The pears had a tang to them that did not pair well with the white cloud fungus or the almonds. What little white cloud fungus there were, were so overcooked they almost melted into the soup. I found it rather unappetising.

I resigned myself to eating the tang yuan, with the consolation that it is near impossible to mess up ginger soup so I could at least enjoy that. As expected, I did not enjoy the peanut-filled glutinous rice ball although the dough was a lot more tender and glossier than normal. Furthermore, the peanut filling was dry and I could taste that it had been roasted the day before, as the oil was slightly rancid.

I quickly moved on to the black sesame-filled glutinous rice. Much, much better. The black sesame paste was smokey and nutty yet sweet enough to temper it. The slightly gritty texture highlighted the moist, chewy and slippery glutinous shell and it was altogether rather nice, even if it is still not my favourite dessert.

Thankfully the ginger soup was generous and slightly thick, which makes me wonder why the House of Desserts is so partial to starch in their sweet dessert soups. I find the addition quite unpleasant.

As I left the stall, I pondered on the fact that the stall advertised itself as a vegetarian dessert stall. Surely all desserts are vegetarian? What desserts are meat-based??? Perhaps they meant vegetarian as in using no animal by-product? Hmmm …

Still, I am glad I gave it a try because I got to try a new dish and realised I did not like it. And I tried another dish I normally do not like and discovered I do not dislike it as much as I thought I did. I’m still not going to go out and buy myself some glutinous balls but if I did, I would choose the black sesame ones and avoid the peanut ones.

Well, that was fun … now where’s the Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food?

Double Hoax

2006-04-22T07:13:00.000+08:00

WARNING: RAVING RANT AHEAD

You really can’t teach old dogs new tricks. 3A and I certainly demonstrated that when we stayed up till the wee hours of the morning just in the hopes of catching a dance performance.

No, we are not groupies … just two sad has-been with nothing better to do it seems. It all started when I’d received an evite from dbl O, a club in the Mohd Sultan strip of nightclubs and bars, advertising the Belly House parties from 19 to 22 April. Normally, I disregard such invites but this one captured my attention because of the sultry promise of the following:

Admittedly, much of my attention was snagged by the tantalising words, “Magnificent Muscular Men”. Amused and curious, I sent it to some dancer friends to check if they knew who the performers were. The consensus was that the “live” drummer was probably the psychotic, stalkerish and eminently untalented drummer blacklisted by most of the dancers. And the dancers might be from the KK school of dancers. 3A and I were curious and bored enough to decide to pay a visit to dbl O just to catch their performance, since it had been a long time since we’d seen KK’s dancers do their thing.

Now, I have to talk a little about Mohd Sultan Road. In the late 90s, it was the hotspot of nubile young things, pounding music and humongous lines outside the many trendy nightspots. A common tableau was extremely young and illegal patrons queuing for hours to get in or staggeringly drunkenly out to upchuck glamorously into the five foot walks.

Taxis lined the streets of rich pickings and it was fairly amusing to watch the desperate, last ditch attempts at pick-ups of another kind as you leave the clubs. Amusing and alarming in equal measures because so many of the young girls were often so inebriated, they were lying prone on the pavement as morally-bankrupt blokes stood over them hopefully caressing their little silver foils tucked in their pockets. Those were the days when just passing the street made you feel old.

3A and I felt old this time around too. Because dbl O still harboured the Mohd Sultan ‘tude – full of nubile young things and more attitude than style. However, Mohd Sultan had become a shadow of its former self. Shabbier and infinitely quieter (so quite it was empty), there was an air of silent, despairing desperation of a street clutching hopelessly to its former glory. It was in denial of its has-been status and was trapped in a dated, terribly unhip time warp. Much like 3A and I, actually.

Sure we had our hay days of partying but we stuck out like two extremely sore thumbs in dbl O now that we are on the dark side of our 30s. It did not help that we were inappropriately dressed. The door bitch/bouncer refused to let 3A in with her messenger bag. It was obvious it was not the size of the bag. We were given the choice of bag checking 3A’s bag or leaving. 3A was uncomfortable about the security of the club so we were forced to go back to her place to change to a smaller bag. Later, 3A groused that there were many girls there with much larger bags than hers. I did not have the heart to tell her it was not the size but the lack of style they were giving us hell for.

Truly, dbl O was reveling in its own delusion of coolness. Which is quite ironic since the décor was incredibly tacky, the music banal, the service atrocious and the performances horrendous. It was also really boring. The most outstanding thing about dbl O was the staff’s attitude. I did not appreciate the door bitch/bouncer’s looking down at 3A because of her attire and the obvious fact that she is not a clubber. Another bouncer spent the entire night walking the perimeters of the dance floor and telling people not to drink on the dance floor when they were no where near it. The staff were so unjustifiably full of themselves, had really poor attitudes and no concept of how a club should be run.

Bless 3A though. She actually worried that we might get picked up despite my telling her that we would never have any worries in clubs like dbl O since we are old enough to be many of the patrons' mothers. And seriously, no bloke would even give us a second look. I don’t think 3A has quite realised that we are has-beens in the clubbing scene yet. Yes, denial is not just a river in Egypt. I certainly hope we do not mimick Mohd Sultan’s slow kicking and screaming slide into the sunset.

We were definitely an incongruous sight in dbl O. It would not have been as bad if we had situated ourselves discreetly in a corner but 3A was determined to have a good view of the stage, which meant that we were smack dabbed in the centre of things.

I could feel the garish spotlights highlighting how out of place we were. It did not help that where we were standing was right under the very cold and draughty air vents blowing right into us. And we were not dancing … just standing there, making our presence highly conspicuous and suspect. What was worse was that I had a vague suspicion that our position announced our presence to all of KK’s students – something I truly dislike. Sigh … I really, REALLY like my anonymity and hate people taking note of my appearances. But I just gritted my teeth and ignored the many questioning stares.

After all that waiting, the two drummers only set up at 11pm. There was a palpable air of restlessness from the natives. The drummers were complete strangers to us, which was a relief. I always like “discovering” new drummers. However, I thought it was extremely poor planning that they began assembling the stage only then and we were treated to their fumbling set-up of the mikes (of which there were not enough) and velcroing of the skirting to the small platform. They did not even do a sound check resulting in the two drummers not being heard above the dance music.

While the advertisement did not claim that the tabla players were middle eastern drummers, it certainly implied it with the theme. Therefore, it was disappointing that the two drummers used Indian tablas and bongo drums. And to be honest, they were not very good but then again, I cannot say that with absolute certainty because of the messed-up sound system. And the Indian tabla player had no clue what he was doing because he had to physically walk in circles around his set of 3 Indian tablas and 1 bongo drum in order to play each drum. Tragic.

With such uninspiring drum performances, 3A and I should have cottoned on to the possibility that the dance performance may be just as disastrous. But since we had endured so much to even get into the club, we were determined to see at least one dance performance.

All I can say is that it was a good thing it was Ladies Night, so entry and all the house pours were free, as I would have kicked up a big fuss and insisted on leaving if I had to pay money to suffer through the dbl hoax experience.

We waited and waited but did not see any dancers. What we did see was dbl O’s idea of a Kasbah Harem set-up. They had makeshift valances made of cheap, shiny green faux satin trimmed with gold tinsel and embroidered Malay-style ribbon. Indonesian checked sarongs lined the walls and I had to check I was not at a Malay wedding instead. But the pièce de résistance was a large tube of fire-engine red mesh right smack in the middle of the club. It looked like a Chinese lantern gone very very wrong, sporting a jaunty frond of the same green atrocity adorning the beams above us. At first we assumed it was someone’s bad attempt at a light feature till we realised to utmost horror that it was meant for a “cage” dancer.

Just as we reached this scary conclusion, we spotted four girls decked in lurid, cheap spangled bras, hip scarves and diaphanous slit-to-the-waist harem pants. They looked incredibly tacky but it was made worse by the fact they were all wearing their harem pants tucked into high, kitten-heel boots and matching head scarves. Behold the gay French Legionnaires trying out for a role in Moulin Rouge!

3A excitedly grasped my arm (I have bruises … the woman likes to grab my arms and she has strong fingers) when she saw them, convinced they were the dancers. But I spied the play syringe and vials of tequila clutched in the clueless damsels’ hands and informed 3A with great relief that they were just the tequila mamas.

This relief was cut short when at 1.05am (yes, we actually waited till then! Someone give us a medal for tenacity and stupidity please!), one of the tequila mamas pried herself into the red light district and began gyrating, wriggling and undulating to a music unheard by anyone else in the club. I do not know what song she was hearing in her head, but the rest of us were obviously on a different channel. Aghast, 3A and I just stared at her with our jaws almost dropping to the ground. Unbelievable! Not even KK’s girls would stoop to that!

I wish I had something positive to say so I do not sound like a raving bitch ranting away but it was truly a horrible night and a complete waste of time. I take issue with dbl O for completely false advertising, poor taste, abysmal service and just plain lousy entertainment. 3A and I left at exactly 1.15am. Honestly, I would have had more fun washing my hair.

And what magnificent muscular men??!!! Now that was just wrong to mislead me thus!