ABOUT
Welcome to my About page! Here I mention my journey, who I am, what I do and why.
Born and raised in Malaysia, I started my journey into movement at a young age starting with ballet and dancing in my living room. It brought me to a dimension where I could express myself in a different way, I decided to further my studies in dance at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore graduating in 2019 with a Diploma in Dance. Throughout the 3-year course, I trained in Ballet, Contemporary, Contact Improvisation and other Asian dance art forms such as Malay dance. Additionally, I was introduced to teaching differently-abled people which sparked my interest in working with them as I was drawn to challenging dance aesthetic norms.
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I decided to move to London to complete my BA(Hons) in Contemporary Dance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. After graduation, Isabelle Long and I were awarded the Trinity Laban’s Innovation Award 2022 to start up a community project to help young people with their mental health and well-being through movement by delivering dance classes in an inclusive, caring and accessible environment.
Alongside setting up Transcendance, I furthered exploring my facilitating dance practice by studying a Master's in Dance Leadership and Community Practice at Trinity Laban to deepen my knowledge in facilitating spaces for marginalised communities to explore and create movement. It gave me agency to challenge dance norms and to find alternative ways to teach movement. It helped to shape my artistic journey to find my core values.
PLAY
To be able to sit in unexpectedness and to discover a less cluttered and straightforward ways of being ourselves without words and without the usual rules of what is right or wrong. Letting go of the ‘shoulds’ and the shouldn’t’s and to be curious of what could be.
Through these values, I developed a style of moving which is inspired by contemporary and hip-hop which creates a style that focuses on groove, tension, explosion and fluidity. It is music driven but the movement and music are in constant play with each other. Co-existing and playing, none above or below.
The practice involves investigating the experience of being queer, a Chinese Malaysian in a white space, drowning in the struggle of living under capitalism, the constant cycle of production. While reimagining alternative ways of being and interacting. In addition, I explore the experience of joy and liberation that comes through community, sharing experiences of frustration, anger, and agency.
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I have worked with various choreographers such as Bismark Anobah, Sia Gbamoi, Kyra Mills, Divya Katsuri, Fubunation, Ezekiel Oliveira, Ming Poon, Madam Lim Fei Shen, and other student choreographers forms from NAFA and Trinity Laban. I have collaborated with various arts form such as music, visual art and film.