I believe life must be spent pursing what makes us feel the most alive. It is the understanding of the fragility and brevity of life that propels my artistic endeavors. #youonlydieonce Dancing is a full-bore, visceral, three-dimensional live telling that has perhaps little to do with being productive but everything to do with being alive. And in a city-state obsessed with metrics and productivity, choosing to dance, to make my life about dance, is an act of rebellion. Art, I believe, has the power to open up possibilities, offer new perspectives, challenge our assumptions, show us the richness of life and help us answer questions like “what makes life worth living?”.  It is this question that drives my work and own artistic pursuit.

The mysteries of the human body deeply fascinate me. I am enthralled by its potential to communicate in ways that eludes words or other mediums, a language that we cannot seem to define but know it all the same. It is bodily knowledge that I am most curious about, the inherent wisdom, sensitivities, and its interaction with other bodies in space. We live in a world where people often only have bodies when they eat, have sex, and exercise. In between those islands of excess, we are passengers in our bodies, treating it as a vehicle of the mind and burying sensations with distractions, drugs, alcohol, and vanity. We seem to escape from our bodies when we seemingly do not need to use them. Yet, we cannot exist without our bodies and a living body is continuously in motion. I hope to explore the 24-hour lived body to reclaim the sensation of becoming alive once more, to un-numb and reacquaint ourselves that which lives deep inside us – our fragility, empathy, touch and what makes us human. I want my dance to offer the unmediated body, a physicality that is present, accountable, and unplugged. In a culture that values information and the mind over sensing, I wish to explore and hoard the body’s knowingness, the connectivity that has no wires – and share it with other human beings, that they too may experience that.

Inspired by Tomislav English’s practice, I sought to learn from his influences when I was in Europe last year, taking workshops from David Zambrano, Ido Portal, Fighting Monkey, Ultima Vez and Play-fight. My movement practice currently involves filling the different gaps by cross-training and intentionally exposing myself to different movement practices like bouldering, breakdancing, parkour, boxing and aikido.

My artistic process tends to involve a great deal of experimentation and play.  Openness is vital to me, leaving space for surprises, and as Anne Carson said, “for the infinite to enter”. I find great joy with working with artists and movers from wildly different backgrounds – it is a space where we can meet each other fundamentally, learn each other’s language, way of moving, and making work. It is for these reasons that I am convinced that collaborations are an important way to widen one’s horizons to different possibilities and modes of thinking – which thrills me greatly and I believe has become a fundamental part of my work.