ramah tamah
By Alecia Neo part of Singapore Heritage Festival 2020 at ACM * 19 June 2020 - 5 July 2020
A collaboration with visual artist Alecia Neo (https://alecianeo.myportfolio.com/)
dance and choreography by Sandhya Suresh and Kyongsu Kathy Han
cinematography by Khairul Amin
music and sound design by Li-Chuan Chong (https://soundcloud.com/li-chuan-chong)
-----
* About Singapore Heritage Festival at ACM — In conjunction with Singapore Heritage Festival 2020, Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) presents Home, and Away, to showcase histories and personal stories of people who have crossed borders and relocated from one home to another. Explore exchanges of ideas and cultures via trade and migration as Singapore grew and developed as a multicultural society. Discover and share stories of home, and away.
Read more: https://www.nhb.gov.sg/acm/whats-on/events/2020-shf---ramah-tamah
Preface
Take a closer look at the unassuming betel box. You or your grandparents may have one at home. Nowadays it serves mostly as a decorative item. Only a few might know that it harbours countless customs of comfort and conviviality. Artist Alecia Neo traces the evolution of regional hospitality rituals, performed by women, centred around the betel leaf (an evergreen creeper vine), revealing how the ancient act of chewing on a betel quid reverberates through our past, present, and future.
Rites and symbols associated with betel leaf practised across South and Southeast Asia are evoked by two performers who engage in an unspoken dialogue of bodily correspondences, hand gestures, encounters and partings. The voiceover weaves together pantuns, written and recited by octogenarian Peranakan Baba GT Lye, and women's stories that speak of rites of passage, acts of kinship, and the labour of caregiving. Pulsing with different tempos, ramah-tamah enacts a cross-generational dialogue about legacy and ageing, autonomy and women’s neverending quest for aliveness.
