Singapore International Festival of Arts 2024: SUARA / Oro Rua

A work inspired by the power of the voice, and what voices and our breath can bring into being, with 'suara' meaning 'voice/sound' in Malay, and 'oro rua' in Māori, meaning 'to resonate'.

SUARA / Oro Rua imagines a distant, post-anthropocentric future long after the world has gone silent...until the day our fossilised voices once again emerge, their aural energies breaking through the ground like geothermal force. What worlds would those voices call into being? What might those voices declare, lament, or confess?

The work brings the Māori concept of Te Kore, the ‘void’ that exists beyond the world of everyday experience, together with the sonic history of the Earth — which tells us how hundreds of millions of years of evolution and communication happened in silence before living creatures found their voices.

Featuring original music composed and directed by Safuan Johari and performed by Singaporean musicians and vocalists, with dance/movement choreographed by Eddie Elliott and performed by dancers from Aotearoa.

SUARA / Oro Rua is commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts, and supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and Asia New Zealand Foundation.