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Singapore’s highly anticipated arts festival, the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA 2024), returns with a vibrant variety of artforms including puppetry, dance, film and theatre, technology and more.
With the festival theme of An Anatomy of Performance: They Declare, the festival explores the intertwining of voices, existences and geologies with its spectacular line-up.
Opening SIFA 2024 is the spectacular Moby Dick by French-Norwegian puppet theatre company Plexus Polaire. With 50 puppets, 7 actors and video projections, Plexus Polaire presents a dark and compelling tale of obsession and unexplained mysteries.
Making its debut at SIFA is festival commission SUARA / ORO RUA, a collaborative dance performance between local artist Safuan Johari and choreographer Eddie Elliott from Aotearoa New Zealand. Inspired by Māori culture, this never-before-seen spectacle will take you on a captivating journey through time, movement and sound in a post-Anthropocene future.
More intriguing performances lie ahead – including American choreographer Trajal Harrell’s The Romeo, a speculative style of dance that uncovers histories and the identity-exploring multimedia show Angela (a strange loop) by German artists Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg. Both international acts have received critical acclaim and are bound to impress when they take the stage in Singapore this May.
Concluding the festival is the award-winning production Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė & Lina Lapelytė, which provides a social commentary on the human response to global environmental threats – or alarming lack thereof. Not to be missed, this unique ecological opera features an indoor beach that spans the stage.
Little SIFA for kids
There will be arts for the little ones to enjoy too – American performance collective, design studio and video/film production company Manual Cinema’s Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster is a delightful puppet show about a not-so-scary monster and his quest to scare. Bold, vibrant and amusing, this puppetry performance is sure to charm the children! Another must-see, The Dancer’s Fair by Antigua i Barbuda from Spain, features old-school fairground attractions and a whimsical 5-metre-tall ballerina, offering an enchanting interactive experience to adults and children alike.
