Roots
APAF Lab
Beyond borders, beyond the body,
towards a new future for
Asian performing arts
APAF Lab is an art camp where those involved in the performing arts from across Asia, selected through an open call, gather to transcend the boundaries of culture and nationality, and spread their “roots” through the cultivation of new values. Rather than working towards a final product, such as realizing an artwork, Lab participants are encouraged to broaden their perspective through lectures, discussions, and the exchanging of their practices and approaches, while also taking on individual research projects. Over the two-month camp (late August – late October), the participants are accompanied by three Lab facilitators. The final output will take the form of public presentations by the Lab participants as well as a feedback session.
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Lab Facilitators
JK Anicoche (The Philippines), Arsita Iswardhani (Indonesia), Riki Takeda (Japan)
>> Profiles
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Lab Participants
Nia Agustina (Indonesia), Shawn Chua (Singapore), Alexis Kam (China), Boreum Kang (South Korea), Jun Yi Mah (Malaysia), Sunayana Premchander (India), Ness Roque (The Philippines), Keiko Yamaguchi (Japan) *in alphabetical order by last name.
>> Profiles
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Public Event
>> Booklet
1. Final Presentations
■ Online streaming (No reservation required)
>> APAF YouTube
[Part1] Friday, October 23, 3 – 4 PM (JST)
1. Alexis Kam (China)
A Performance that can never be performed “LIVE”
2. Sunayana Premchander (India)
we – disobey, remember, inhabit – revolt
3. Ness Roque (The Philippines)
( 1 : 1 )
4. Keiko Yamaguchi (Japan)
Re: I So Late
[Part2] Saturday, October 24, 3 – 4 PM (JST)
1. Nia Agustina (Indonesia)
The Spectators: A Virtual Spectatorship Studies Based on Behavioral Trends Using Social Media (Case Study: Instastory)
2. Shawn Chua (Singapore)
Safe Exit
3. Jun Yi Mah (Malaysia)
Prayer : Unseen : Seen : Unseen : Seen : Unseen …
4. Boreum Kang (South Korea)
To be Anger-free
■ Screening (No reservation required)
Friday, October 23, 5 – 9 PM (JST) / October 24, 11 AM – 9 PM (JST) / October 25, 11 AM – 4 PM (JST)
Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Atelier East
*The presentations will be played on loop.
2. Feedback Session
■ Online streaming (Reservation required)
Sunday, October 25, 4 – 6:30 PM (JST)
*Please watch the APAF Lab Final Presentations before attending.
>> More (Peatix)
[Speakers]
APAF Director: Junnosuke Tada (Japan)
>> Profiles
Guest Speakers: River Lin (Taiwan), Daisuke Muto (Japan)
>> Profiles (Peatix)
Lab Facilitators:
JK Anicoche (The Philippines), Arsita Iswardhani (Indonesia), Riki Takeda (Japan)
>> Profiles
Lab Participants:
Nia Agustina (Indonesia), Shawn Chua (Singapore), Alexis Kam (China), Boreum Kang (South Korea), Jun Yi Mah (Malaysia), Sunayana Premchander (India), Ness Roque (The Philippines), Keiko Yamaguchi (Japan) *in alphabetical order by last name.
>> Profiles
Lab Facilitators
JK Anicoche
The Philippines
JK Anicoche is a Manila-based performance maker working at the intersection of art, culture, and development. His practice ranges from developing performances in a black box to devising works with/in various communities. He is the Artistic Director of contemporary cultural laboratory Sipat Lawin Inc., a founding member of anti-disciplinary collective Komunidad X, and Festival Director of Karnabal: Performance and Social Innovation. His recent engagements have taken him to New York, Taiwan, Shanghai, and Japan, where he presented the Sand (a)isles project at Festival/Tokyo 2019.
Arsita Iswardhani
Indonesia
Photo by Rita
Arsita Iswardhani is an actor and performance maker, who explores performance-making methods through various intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches. She studies martial arts, Javanese dance, the Suzuki Method, and ethnography as a means of performance making. Iswardhani has presented solo performances at festivals, both national and international, as well as participating in the inter-Asian theater collaboration project Multitude of Peer Gynts (2018 –), in which she has participated since 2019. She is a member of Teater Garasi/Garasi Performance Institute, a multi-disciplinary performance collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that explores and devises possibilities in the performing arts as a way to approach both personal and social issues. Iswardhani was an APAF2019 Lab participant.
Riki Takeda
Japan
© Kenji Seo
Riki Takeda is a theater director and folk arts archiver. He joined theater company chelfitsch as an actor and performed extensively in Europe and the US with the company. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, he began his career as a director. Takeda invites the audience to consider our contemporary time in a playful manner: everyday matters form the material for his works, such as being reprimanded by a police officer, the Japanese street food takoyaki (octopus balls), and elementary education textbooks. He is also involved in the revival and preservation of folk art in depopulated rural villages in Japan. Recent activities include creating and presenting work in Metro Manila and Shanghai, as well as running an art space in Wuhan, China. Takeda was a Yokohama Arts Foundation Creative Children Fellow in 2016 and 2017, as well as a Japan Foundation Asia Center’s Asia Fellow in 2019.
Lab Participants
Over the month-long application window (June 3 – July 4) we received 105 applications from some 17 countries. The following eight participants were chosen by the APAF Director and facilitators after document screening and interviews.
Nia Agustina
Indonesia
Nia Agustina (b. 1989) was born in Central Java and is currently based in Yogyakarta. She founded the Paradance Platform in 2015, and is the co-curator of Indonesian Dance Festival (2016 – present). Her activities revolve around nurturing young Indonesian dance practitioners. Since 2017, she has been running gelaran.id, a website for performance art and performing arts critics with her husband Ahmad Jalidu. Agustina was selected for the Japan Foundation Asia Center’s Asia Fellowship Program (February – March 2020), in which she researched platforms for young dance practitioners in Japan.
Shawn Chua
Singapore
Shawn Chua (b. 1989) is a researcher and artist engaged with embodied archives, uncanny personhoods, and the participatory frameworks of play. He is a recipient of the National Arts Council Scholarship and holds an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is also a founding member of Bras Basah Open: School of Theory and Philosophy and is part of the group that runs soft/WALL/studs.
Photo by Mish’aal
Alexis Kam
China
Photo by Wang Yuanqing
Alexis Kam (b. 1992) is a contemporary dancer and performer. She was born in Hong Kong and raised in Macau. Kam joined dance company BeijingDance/LDTX in 2014, before leaving in 2020 to pursue her career as an independent artist. She has been invited to the 13th Macau City Fringe Festival for the “Solos/Duets Showcase” in 2013, Macau CDE Springboard 2017, and the 31st Macao Arts Festival (due to be held in 2021) to create and present new work. With an interest in working with different art genres, Kam is looking to take part in multidisciplinary collaborations and artistic endeavors.
Boreum Kang
South Korea
ⓒSang Hoon Ok
Boreum Kang (b. 1991) is a Seoul-based theater director whose interest lies in developing a theatrical approach that reveals the voices easily silenced in Korean society. Her recent work focuses on African immigrants and female laborers. In light of the #MeToo movement in Korea, she is currently exploring ways to establish a safe environment for creating theater. Kang’s work attempts to incorporate various methods of documentary theater as a means to find the connections between personal and social issues. She was selected as an Arts Council Korea Creative Academy fellow for 2020.
Jun Yi Mah
Malaysia
Trained as an architect, Mah Jun Yi (b. 1991) has always been fascinated by how people use space, and how space affects people. She now manages KongsiKL, a 10,000-square-foot art space run by a small team, where she is involved in producing various events and projects, including the ongoing multidisciplinary collaborative performance series, Seni Tiga. She has also participated in various urban intervention projects, and occasionally conducted research projects in Kuala Lumpur.
Photo by Low Pey Sien
Sunayana Premchander
India
Sunayana Premchander (b. 1993) is a director, creator, and curator. Her work often focuses on community engagements, and falls at the intersections of gender and socio-political debates, taking on a feminist voice. Following a degree in economics, Sunayana studied playwriting and direction. She worked as the Programme Coordinator of theater institution Ranga Shankara, is a Gender Bender 2019 grantee, and Curator of Exploring Exciting Texts, an online discussion and performance series. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of KathaSiyah Trust in Bangalore.
Ness Roque
The Philippines
Photo by Geloy Concepcion
Ness Roque (b. 1991), is a theater and film actor, dramaturg, and educator. She was a member of the Manila-based contemporary performance company Sipat Lawin Ensemble (2009 – 2018). Roque is currently a graduate student at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She is currently exploring performative gestures as site-specific interventions in urban spaces. Recent performances include Alfian Sa’at’s The Optic Trilogy: A Play Reading (BIPAM 2019) and visual artist Ralph Lumbres’ video project Sa Pagitan 1: Mekong River (2020).
Keiko Yamaguchi
Japan
Keiko Yamaguchi (b. 1986) is an actor based in Kyoto, who is drawn to the innately human aspects of migration. She has performed in stage productions by Yukichi Matsumoto, Marebito Theater Company, Shitatame, and others. As an actor and assistant director, she was involved in numerous international joint productions organized by ricca ricca*festa (Okinawa). After founding theater group BRDG in 2011, she began creating performances developed from interviews and fieldwork. In 2020, she was part of a joint production with the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) that involved youth from both countries.