Contemporary Performing Arts Research Residency

Guy Cools is a Belgian dance dramaturg, who has also worked as a dance critic and dance curator. From 1990 – 2022, he curated the dance programme of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium. As a production dramaturg, he has worked with the likes of Jean Abreu (UK), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Akram Khan (UK), amongst many others. As a dramaturgical mentor, he has been mentoring Anghiari Dance Hub, the project Danse et Dramaturgie in Switzerland, the Biennale Dance College in Venice and the Atlas program of Impulstanz in Vienna. Cools has also lectured and taught at different universities and arts colleges in Europe and Canada, and was until recently a postdoctoral research fellow at S:PAM Research Center, University of Ghent, where he completed his practice-based PhD. He is currently a full-time professor in the dance department of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada. His most recent publications include Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art (2021), The Choreopolitics of Alain Platel’s les ballets C de la B, co-edited with Christel Stalpaert and Hildegard De Vuyst (2019) and Imaginative Bodies, Dialogues in Performance Practices (2016).

Shubigi Rao is a multidisciplinary Singaporean artist whose fields of study include histories and lies, literature and violence, libraries and archival systems, ecologies and natural history. Her films, art, books, and photographs look at current and historical flashpoints as perspectival shifts, and examine contemporary crises of displacement, whether of people, languages, cultures, or knowledge bodies. Since 2014, she has been working on Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, her decade-long film, book and visual art project about the ideologies behind censorship and book destruction. Rao's works have been exhibited in international biennales and institutions, most recently the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2021-22), with upcoming solo shows in 2023 at Rossi and Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong, and Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China. In 2022 she represented Singapore at the 59th International Venice Biennale, Italy. She has won numerous accolades for her visual art practice and literary works. Rao is currently the Artistic Director for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022.

Shzr Ee Tan is Reader and ethnomusicologist—with a specialism in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds—at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). She is committed to decolonial and EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) work in music and the performing arts, with interests in how race discourses intersect problematically with class, gender and recent debates on posthuman digitalities, climate change and multispecies thinking. Her writings have appeared in imprints by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge, among other publishers. Her scholarly works include Digital Inequality and Global Sounds, Cambridge University Press (2019) and the monograph, Beyond 'Innocence': Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem, Routledge (2012). Tan is also an active musician with a background in classical piano, Korean percussion, tango/Balkan accordion, Chinese and Okinawan lutes (sanxian and sanshin), and the Chinese fiddle (erhu). Venues in which she has performed include the South Bank and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as The Arts House, Singapore.

Faith Tan has over 19 years of programming, producing, management and international networking experience in the performing arts. She was Head of Programme Development at Dance House Helsinki, Finland in 2020, where she co-initiated a commission programme for new dance productions by Finnish dancemakers. She is currently the Head of Dance and International Development, in Singapore’s national arts centre, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Under her direction, Esplanade’s da:ns festival and series in Singapore co-produced productions by world renowned artists, commissioned and championed new work from significant Asian dancemakers, supported the practice of dramaturgs for dance, presented a large public participatory programme, as well as an artist lab and seminar workshops. Tan’s work at Esplanade included overseeing the Theatre department between 2017 – 2019, and programming music for the Mosaic Music Festival from 2005 – 2012. She is a founding member of the Asian Network for Dance (AND+) and serves on panels for grants from the National Arts Council in Singapore. Tan holds a Masters degree in Arts and Cultural Management.

Jia Jia Hoon joined the National Arts Council in 2005. Over the years, her portfolio included policymaking and implementing programmes for the music and traditional arts sectors. She had also worked on various initiatives to strengthen the capabilities of the arts sector, including a fundraising training programme (in partnership with LASALLE College of the Arts), the Singapore Regional Fellowship (in partnership with ISPA) and the Arts Resource Hub. In 2014, she obtained a MA in Culture, Policy and Management from City, University of London, graduating with the Head of Department Prize for the highest overall mark.