Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Fire-BALLS
Fireball was indeed a "ball" of a time. It is, in one word... bizarre.
The venue was at the old Parliament House, situated behind Victoria Theatre. The building itself was really charming, having that old colonial flair & architectural style to it, albeit having been given a face-lift and all. The 1st part of the evening's journey started outdoors in front of the building itself. There, the audience was made to stand round this area which had 4 white styrofoam-looking podiums and in between them, a long red carpet leading from the pavement all the way into the main entrance of the building. So far so good.
And then.
The emcee of the show truly & absolutely reinforced my stand that for important occasions (like weddings, concerts, etc), he/she has to speak well. And i don't mean fako-Anglo accented ang-moh English, but articulation & pronounciation at the bare minimum please! This is how it went (more or less)
Emcee: Hello goo evening orr-diance, come come stand here for the gud angle to see the show...
(Audience trudges over to where he is)
Emcee: Gud gud, ok now let's introduce the beau-tee-ful dancers ya??
(Dancers move out onto performing area)
Emcee: Wow! So beau-teee-ful right audience? So lovely ya? They performing for all of you in front of this the Parliament House... see they make until so nice right? So exciting right orr-diance??? Look at the beau-teee-ful place here & the beau-tee-ful dancers. Wow, so many colours, all so lovely right?
(And it goes on & on... I think the only movement in the audience was the constant rolling of eyeballs)
Think you get the idea? If not...
(All the dancers, choreographers, musicians, make-up crew & our lovely Transvestite babes one by one took to the red carpet & were introduced to us by the emcee. It was like live credits, "Oscar" awards style...)
Emcee: Let's welcome our spaaaa-tial gas!!! (translation: special guests)
To the transvestite: Wow! You look so gore-jusss! (gorgeous)... all the feathers & lovely dress, so beau-tee-ful......
Enough. It was bad enough hearing him. Much worse looking at him in his 3 layered thick suit, in which he was sweating like nobody's business man.
The rest of the night was spent moving between 4 areas, in which different dance, music & arty-farty installations was presented to us. No conventional theatre seats wadsoever. You get to sit on sofas, on the floor or stand for different items. The whole thing took almost 3 hours... ending in the ex-Parliament chamber itself. Irony of all ironies - having a transvestite performing in a once-sanitized political space if you will. But all in all, it was indeed a novel experience. I could see that the Ecnad Company put in a lot of effort & thought to the whole concept, althought i felt that sometimes local artistes shouldn't try too hard to try to impress. i.e. Avant-garde ain't exactly appealing to the pple here, especially given that Singapore's theatre-going crowd is pretty small to start with. Well, i couldn't really appreciate it fully myself so perhaps i speak only for my rather cultural-deficient knowledge of such genres.
The venue was at the old Parliament House, situated behind Victoria Theatre. The building itself was really charming, having that old colonial flair & architectural style to it, albeit having been given a face-lift and all. The 1st part of the evening's journey started outdoors in front of the building itself. There, the audience was made to stand round this area which had 4 white styrofoam-looking podiums and in between them, a long red carpet leading from the pavement all the way into the main entrance of the building. So far so good.
And then.
The emcee of the show truly & absolutely reinforced my stand that for important occasions (like weddings, concerts, etc), he/she has to speak well. And i don't mean fako-Anglo accented ang-moh English, but articulation & pronounciation at the bare minimum please! This is how it went (more or less)
Emcee: Hello goo evening orr-diance, come come stand here for the gud angle to see the show...
(Audience trudges over to where he is)
Emcee: Gud gud, ok now let's introduce the beau-tee-ful dancers ya??
(Dancers move out onto performing area)
Emcee: Wow! So beau-teee-ful right audience? So lovely ya? They performing for all of you in front of this the Parliament House... see they make until so nice right? So exciting right orr-diance??? Look at the beau-teee-ful place here & the beau-tee-ful dancers. Wow, so many colours, all so lovely right?
(And it goes on & on... I think the only movement in the audience was the constant rolling of eyeballs)
Think you get the idea? If not...
(All the dancers, choreographers, musicians, make-up crew & our lovely Transvestite babes one by one took to the red carpet & were introduced to us by the emcee. It was like live credits, "Oscar" awards style...)
Emcee: Let's welcome our spaaaa-tial gas!!! (translation: special guests)
To the transvestite: Wow! You look so gore-jusss! (gorgeous)... all the feathers & lovely dress, so beau-tee-ful......
Enough. It was bad enough hearing him. Much worse looking at him in his 3 layered thick suit, in which he was sweating like nobody's business man.
The rest of the night was spent moving between 4 areas, in which different dance, music & arty-farty installations was presented to us. No conventional theatre seats wadsoever. You get to sit on sofas, on the floor or stand for different items. The whole thing took almost 3 hours... ending in the ex-Parliament chamber itself. Irony of all ironies - having a transvestite performing in a once-sanitized political space if you will. But all in all, it was indeed a novel experience. I could see that the Ecnad Company put in a lot of effort & thought to the whole concept, althought i felt that sometimes local artistes shouldn't try too hard to try to impress. i.e. Avant-garde ain't exactly appealing to the pple here, especially given that Singapore's theatre-going crowd is pretty small to start with. Well, i couldn't really appreciate it fully myself so perhaps i speak only for my rather cultural-deficient knowledge of such genres.
// posted by superlambanana @ 5:07 PM 
Comments:
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heez wish I could hear him. anyhow, most Singaporean's english is "half-bucket" and limited vocabulary. I wonder if it has got to do with our society. Not many of us are trained to talk and present properly u noe...
I cannot ap-pee-shate wierdish avant-garde dances and art. Yes, amazing eh? You think designers are not human... I'm more Money-focused than arty-farty to be honest haha. all those artists can survive on art alone it seems.
I cannot ap-pee-shate wierdish avant-garde dances and art. Yes, amazing eh? You think designers are not human... I'm more Money-focused than arty-farty to be honest haha. all those artists can survive on art alone it seems.
# posted by 
: 5/05/2005 12:56 AM
: 5/05/2005 12:56 AM
Just to add, since Ecnad is Dance backwards, shouldn't FireBall be Llaberif?
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# posted by : 5/05/2005 10:59 PM
: 5/05/2005 10:59 PM Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
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