Welcome to SWCDC

SOUTH WEST DISTRICT ARTS FESTIVAL

Love dancing and the performing arts? Then you must check out the South West District Arts Festival

INTRODUCTION

To foster greater vibrancy and build a shared community spirit in the South West District, the South West Community Development Council (CDC) is organising the inaugural South West District Arts Festival in partnership with the National Arts Council. The month-long celebration from 23 June to 21 July 2007 will engage residents in dances originating from different eras and ethnic groups.

OBJECTIVES

2 The South West CDC aims to make arts more accessible to residents in the district, and create awareness and cultivate an appreciation of performing arts among these people. The main objectives are to:

(a) Create mutual understanding through showcasing songs and dances performed at important festivals in Singapore;

(b) Create inter-generational bonding through different highlights; and

(c) Engage residents in song and dance workshops of different eras.

PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS

3 The South West CDC will kick-start its month-long South West District Arts Festival on 23 June 2007 at the open field between JTC Summit and Jurong Entertainment Centre. Spectators can look forward to an exciting opening performance by German group antagon theatre AKTion, a contemporary theatre company. Entitled Time Out, the 70-minute action performance will be complete with pyrotechnics display, acrobatics, live music and stilt dancers.

The main highlight of the South West District Arts Festival is the launch of the 3-minute South West Fun Dance. The item will be performed by 60 youths from the Hong Kah North Division. 10,000 residents and students in the South West District are also expected to learn the dance. South West Fun Dance is a specially choreographed dance representative of the different races and genres. In preparation of the Festival, schools in the South West District, including kindergarten students from as young as five years old, will learn the energetic South West Fun Dance.

4 Other highlights of the month-long celebration include:

Lunch Time Concerts @ South West - happening during the lunch hour on weekdays at selected shopping malls. The concerts provide a platform for young budding talents to showcase performing arts, and at the same time, act as a mid-day reprieve for working professionals in the South West District.

             25 to 29 June 2007        :      Jurong East Interchange
             3 to 8 July 2007              :      Westmall
             9 to 13 July 2007            :      Jurong Entertainment Centre
             16 to 20 July 2007         :      Boon Lay Bus Interchange

Saturday! @ Series on weekends provide a platform to showcase local arts talents, ranging from performing arts to visual arts, and handicrafts to fashion.

             Saturday! @ Boon Lay - Cultural Dance
             Saturday, 7 July 2007, 6.00 pm
             Open space in front of Blk 215 Boon Lay Place

             Saturday! @ Bukit Batok East – Youth Concert
             Saturday, 7 July 2007, 2.00 pm
             Hardcourt next to Blk 280 Bukit Batok East Ave 3

             Saturday! @ Nanyang – Para Para
             Saturday, 14 July 2007, 6.00 pm
             Hardcourt next to Blk 953 Jurong West St 91

             Saturday! @ Keat Hong – Folk Dance
             Saturday, 14 July 2007, 6.00 pm
             Hardcourt next to Lot One Shoppers’ Mall

Arts & Dance Camp - specially designed for 100 able-bodied and intellectually-disabled youths to learn different genres of dance and the meanings behind them from 21 to 23 June 2007. These youths will also be performing at the opening ceremony of the South West District Arts Festival. This programme targets at the disadvantaged in the South West District.

5 South West District Dance Challenge 2007 - A Dance Journey. A dance competition launched to source for the best of dance talent in the South West District. Finalists of this competition will get to perform their preferred dance in a dance musical entitled A Dance Journey, choreographed by Mr Bill Calhoun, one of the judges for The Dance Floor. He will also judge the competition. A Dance Journey, which will conclude the South West Arts Festival, will be Singapore’s first specially choreographed staged dance production. It will include different types of movie-inspired dances all woven into one performance and be held on Saturday, 21 July 2007 at West Coast Park.

CONCLUSION

6 The inaugural South West District Arts Festival aims to reach out to 42,000 people with more than 30 performing groups featured in the month-long activities. Residents of the South West District can look forward to their very own arts festival in the heartlands.

Full programme listing

South West District Arts Festival 07 @ A Glance

South West Fun Dance
A 3-minute dance specially choreographed for the festival, the South West Fun Dance will engage both students and residents of the South West District. About 20,000 residents & students are expected to learn the dance.

Catch the South West Fun Dance at the opening and closing events of the festival! Click here to learn the dance steps!

South West Arts Festival brochure

South West District Arts Festival in the May/Jun 2007 issue of BRIDGE

Looking for more arts activities in the South West District? Check out "The NUS Centre For The Arts


Opening of the South West District Arts Festival on June 23, Saturday

�brings a raw, elementary energy to being alive: The metal gnashes, the pavement burns and the performers whirl on yard-high stilts over the platform, so that spectators can't avoid sitting spellbound."

How do we react to the ever-ticking clock?

Come find out at Time Out, a 70- minute action performance by German troupe, Antagon Theatre AKTion. Time Out expresses the themes of our yearning Dreams with body-theatre, self-composed live music, projections, stilts, elements from the Japanese Butho dance, spectacular pyrotechnics, and a fiery finale. The performance melds reality with illusion, bringing the audience on a fantastic journey into space and time. Antagon presents a new division, searching and hunting for a lasting happiness.

Date : 23 June 2007
Time : 7.30 pm
Venue : Open field next to Jurong East MRT

About Antagon theatreAKTion
Founded as the Theater on Wheels, Antagon is a theater of modern times. Time Out was a huge success in many International Festivals in places including Frankfurt, Berlin, Romania, Poland, Denmark, Spain and Portugal. It works with performers from all over the world, activating the audiences’ senses with their voices and bodies, through music, acrobatics and improvisation, and by dancing on stilts.

Time Outkicks off the South West District Arts Festival, a month-long celebration aimed at engaging residents through dances from different eras and ethnic groups. To achieve this, the South West CDC is partnerning with the National Arts Council, Grassroots Organisations (GROs), community partners and schools in the South West District for the festival from 23 June to 21 July 2007.