Director's Message

Welcome to the 6th NUS Arts Festival 2011!

This year we dive headlong into the Asian paradigm, into unique spaces that allow you to relax in and admire, and also form your own views on, today's global Asia.

Watch the next instalments of shows begun by our young CFA artists last year, balanced seamlessly with local and foreign artistic talents. These include our Opening Show Anweshana - The Search for Nalanda by NUS Indian Dance, The Emerging Choreographers III by T.H.E. Second Dance Company, and The Good, The Bad and The Sholay by Checkpoint Theatre and NUS Stage. We are proud to work with London-based piano virtuoso Geoffrey Saba, US-based composer-educator-musican Prof. Kanniks Kannikeswaran, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, among others.

Look forward to fresh talents from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, like composer Chen Zhangyi, whose commissioned work Raintree will be performed by NUS Symphony Orchestra, and the newly formed Asia Contemporary Ensemble. Expect a strong CFA alumni showing like Tze and dancer-turned-choreographers, Khalid Bin Supandi and Leonard Choo, both CFA Alum Award recipients.

One of our most energetic and popular groups, NUS Dance Blast! will bring the festival to a rousing close with their 10th anniversary party.

Going beyond entertainment, the Festival merges the NUS qualities of global thinking and knowledge with young artistic talent. Asia's history and culture are the Festival's third dimension. We revive ancient Nalanda University through Indian Dance, screen Bollywood's quintessential classic Sholay and follow it with a young student's theatrical response. We expose attitudes and philosophies that influenced generations before via Camping and Tramping through the Colonial Archive and Yodok Stories.

We also manage to celebrate three anniversaries - NUS Harmonica Orchestra's 30th, ECNAD's 15th and NUS Dance Blast!'s 10th.

I would like to thanks Mr Ong Keng Sen and Prof K. Seetharam for contributing their time and opinions to the Festival's Artistic Advisory Panel. We are also grateful to the Artistic Directors, tutors and alumni who have made this festival possible, as well as to our valued sponsors and supporting partners.

Enjoy!

Ms Christine Khor
Director
NUS Centre For the Arts