Singapore arts festival offers diverse artists in dynamic collaborations
Natalie Hennedige is the festival director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2022-2025. She is also the artistic director of Cake, a contemporary performance company presenting progressive works at the intersection of theatre and a range of disciplines.
As a performance director, Hennedige explores contemporary issues through highly constructed heightened worlds with collaborators from diverse artistic disciplines and cultural backgrounds.
Hennedige is a recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award (2007) and the JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Award (2010).
Ahead of this year’s Singapore festival, which opens on Friday, The Post news director Sharron Pardoe – who will attend the opening weekend – put some key questions to Hennedige.
How did you choose the theme for this year's festival , The Anatomy of Performance – They Declare?
SIFA 2024’s guiding thought – They Declare – sets the stage for multiple voices and perspectives to be expressed in the kaleidoscopic language of performance.
This notion of listening also gives light to other voices, existences and geologies. It’s a call to recognise our co-existence with the natural environment and to make space for different ways of being.
Stepping into the role of festival director of SIFA in 2022 I defined a three-year arc with the recurring title, The Anatomy of Performance, to embrace nuanced narratives and contemporary issues being explored by diverse artists often in dynamic collaboration with each other.
One of your commissions is SUARA / ORO RUA, which includes Kiwi choreographer Eddie Elliott. What is the process in commissioning these original works?
SUARA / ORO RUA is one of five newly commissioned works at SIFA 2024. Our commissions support Singapore and International artists, often in collaboration, as they spearhead the development of original works that express contemporary complexities and explore the possibilities of performance.
Eddie and Safuan Johari discovered resonance in their artistic identities – a certain spark that would ignite something refreshing and unexpected in the performance space. That’s what we truly embrace at the festival – works that take us somewhere special and make us see the world in new ways.
How do you balance showcasing Singapore’s local talent with the need to bring international acts to SIFA?
SIFA platforms and propels artists and performance creation coming from Singapore while imagining what a meaningful international dynamic looks like within each festival edition. Inviting international expression alongside local expression, bringing artistic perspectives to our audiences, embracing diversity, connecting across cultural borders and remaining rooted in our unique identity is foundational.
What is your vision for SIFA during your tenure as festival director?
The festival offers a space where people can come together and allow the performing arts to shift them – a space where composite narratives touching on the ancestral, ecological, mythical, historical, fantastical, and wondrous come alive on multiple stages, exploring stories, past, present and future. I believe that when we gather to witness artistic creation what will spark in heart, mind and soul will be intangible but immeasurable and deep lasting.
How do you engage and attract diverse audiences, especially younger generations, to SIFA?
Two significant veins – contemporary technology and critical writing – have run through the course of these three festival editions.
Technological advancement has informed the exploration with digital tools and AI modes across performing arts genres and stages.
In SIFA 2022 a digital venue was introduced to host digital commissions and creation.
Featured on the same site were contributors offering critical responses to the festival offerings, thereby connecting the thoughts and ideas emanating from the festival productions to the cultural conversations of the day.
With a newly conceived platform, Little SIFA, this year, we announce that the festival is for young audiences and their families too. Little SIFA’s line-up introduces to the young the innovative possibilities of performance and the fun and wonder of it all.
What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities you face in curating a festival of this scale in Singapore?
The festival presents an opportunity to offer a way of looking at the world that both echoes and transcends the actual programming.
People exist along the tension of things that unify and split them apart.
The themes across three festival years 2022 – Ritual, 2023 – Some People and 2024 – They Declare were named to reflect this notion of sameness and difference between us.
Ritual encompasses the ceremonies that people observe: matrimonial, religious, coming of age and end of life, each imbued with acts and objects of significance. Ritual reflects our commonality.
Some People alludes to the fact that people experience the world differently. Your social, economic, physical, mental and political context sets you on a unique life journey.
They Declare is about listening to one another in a world of clashing beliefs.
The festival offers a space where people can come together and allow the performing arts to shift them. It’s a space for communion and connection, to expand our personal worldview by taking in another’s.
The Singapore International Festival of Arts runs from May 17-June 2. More info: sifa.sg