What would it be like to meet your parent again for the first time, after knowing a version of them for over three decades?
to experience you meeting many ver- sions of your mum? Speaking from my own experience of my moth- er-daughter relationship, some of us don’t get to have that invitation to observe all that is present and all that is here in the passage of time. How beautiful it is to watch each other’s growth into community roles and then how that refracts back to each other—perhaps this is a meta- phor for watching a tea ball unfurl! Utilising performance as the medium to reflect upon this ever-changing relationship between mother and daughter is so so so beautiful! KAT: I find it really exciting to be part of this project with both Kim
“what-if”? Which brings me to the ref- erence of Everything Everywhere All at Once , a cinematic masterpiece that puts a surrealist landscape as the meet- ing place for creating new parent-child relationships. We observe the daughter becoming a mega villain and the mum starting to show up as her vulnerable self rather than villainous opponent. And for a portion of the film, the mum isn’t sure she will share a world with her daughter until we are met with a scene where they drop into a canyon and the mum and daughter are next to each other as rocks, perhaps agreeing to be in each other’s presence.
appreciate my being Chinese, being somebody loves to sing. Once I was singing a song, Melissa and her Chinese dance teacher, they were dancing. [to Melissa:] I think that was when you were, I don’t know, eight years old. Do you remember? MELISSA: Yeah. And in a way you could view this experience, this show, as just another version of that many, many years later. I feel excited to create the show and give you space to be very powerful and be very loud and really enjoy it. KIM: …and isn’t that what this is. A dance and storytelling perfor- mance where we as the audience get
really powerful to see her…I hadn’t experienced Joy as an incredibly powerful and captivating performer, or [to Joy:] I just hadn’t had an opportunity to see you in that way. That was really special. KAT: What would it be like to meet your parent again for the first time, after knowing a version of them for over three decades? KIM: Lowkey been obsessed with what-if allegories since 2019. I think it’s tied up with the whimsical, mysterious phenomena of letting yourself be vulnerable to the fantasy of what if… What if your relation- ship with your mum was living in the
for Palestine and recently finished col- laborating with Rebecca Fitton and Detour. Throughout her busy days she is as cool as a cucumber. About three weeks back I (Kim) shared cheesy grits with Melissa and just yesterday, she offered to spoon-feed me grits :) KAT: In this staged version of 花和霧 flowers and fog , Joy and Melissa share the stage, witnessing each other and asking the audience to witness them and their relationship.
For me, this is an invitation to cel- ebrate our multidimensionality and allow ourselves to be surprised by those who are closest to us. MELISSA: I think it’s an opportunity to meet each other in a new way and reimagine the connection…We did an open rehearsal showing at the Dresher residency in September. I remember feeling kind of like I saw my mom in a new way when she sang the Songhua River song. It was
JOY: The Chinese mother show up here and there and she [Melissa]
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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