RUDRA, Singapore’s pioneering Vedic metal band, will be bound and suspended in rope on stage at Esplanade on Saturday 17 October, in Still Lives: Singapore by artists Daniel Kok and Luke George.
The one-night show starts at 7.30pm at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre and runs two hours with no interval. It is part of da:ns focus: Connect Asia Now, the Esplanade weekend of contemporary dance by or with Asian artists from 15 to 18 October.
Part performance, part living sculpture
Still Lives turns a single moment into a space where audiences watch personal memories, relationships and cultural histories tangle together. Kok and George have staged earlier versions in Venice, Melbourne and Glasgow. The work won two 2022 Green Room Awards in Melbourne, for outstanding achievement in contemporary and experimental performance and for design and technical achievement.
The Singapore edition was developed with Esplanade. Band members and their instruments hang inside rope structures across the theatre, and the audience walks through the installation.
Why RUDRA
RUDRA has played Vedic metal since the 1990s, and the band’s path ran alongside Singapore’s fast economic and cultural change over the same decades, and the production uses that story to ask which parts of the country’s cultural identity sat outside the mainstream.
Marco Cher-Gibard designs and performs the sound, with lighting by Katie Sfetkidis.
What to expect in the room
The work includes consensual tying and partial human suspension. Rope is used as a visual element in a non-sexual setting, with no nudity. There are no fixed seats. Audience members move freely and can sit on a range of seating or stand, so comfortable clothes help.
Admission is for those aged 16 and above. Standard tickets are S$38, with concession tickets for students, NSFs, seniors and persons with disabilities. SG Culture Pass credits can be used.
Also on the Connect Asia Now weekend
BATU, a new Esplanade commission by Ayu Permata Sari and Hasyimah Harith, plays the Esplanade Theatre Studio at 8pm from 16 to 18 October. Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre performs Sounding Light at the Esplanade Theatre on 16 and 17 October, and leads free Tai Chi Dao Yin sessions for beginners on both days.
