sixth daughter

Charemaine Seet

Company: Seet Dance
Year the project commenced:2018 
Year it became impossible:2020 
Audience not reached: Several Hundred​​​​​​​
“My performance career has involved the acquisition, study and re-contextualizing of different movement languages from different cultural sources. In the 2000s, I returned to an embodied study of traditional Modern dance and postmodern dance movement cultures as developed by North American dance artists - notably Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. I was interested in the exchange, back and forth, of movement (and art) ideas of these practitioners with the aesthetics and philosophies of other (non-white) cultures - Consciously or unconsciously interfacing with them. These connections, as yet, unidentified or given prominence in Western European art/dance circles. In 2018 I began delving into the movement ideas of an art form of my own ancestral dialect group: Teochew opera. Interested in exploring the connection between rhythms and tonality of spoken language and the textures and dynamics of acquired dance movement. In 2019, Critical Path, the centre for choreographic research in Sydney, gave me a research grant to study with living practitioners of the art form in Singapore. As Teochew opera is a disappearing art form time it was critical to work with these artist as soon as possible.” – Charemaine Seet
2020 pandemic halted Seet’s planned travel to Singapore. And although travel will be possible again, the traditional art form of Teochew opera is fading from sight and time is of the essence. Still, Seet hopes to one day bring a production of this project to an audience but doubts it will be this envisioned version. “The raw honesty of the four women I have been working with, their capacity for endurance and humour combined with the apocalyptic reality COVID has created for us appears to be a prescient warning work like this is more necessary than ever.” Charemaine Seet
Collaborators:
Zenn Lim Soo Hiang - President of Thau Yong Amateur Musical Association
Javier Yong-En Lee - Member of Thau Yong Amateur Musical Association
As part of The Impossible Project we have been inviting artists to conceive of, attempt and document an attempt at An Impossible Task or to undertake a conversation with Anna Tregloan where she attempts (the similarly impossible task) of capturing their creative endeavours in sketch form.​​​​​​​
Anna Tregloan and Charemaine Seet spoke at length about the history and the project, Seet's family history and her methodology for embodying and re-expressing this threatened dance form.  As they spoke Tregloan attempted to create a visual representation of this imagined but unrealised project. Some of that sketch is below.

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