Brief & Bio

CAVE CAVERN CAVERNOUS

a site-specific work devised by Yin John and Christina Jensen

Concept Brief [6nov2009]

The upcoming performance will showcase the creative duo’s first commission together, they will also employ the talents of Brown Note Collective’s Adam Leung and Heidi Chan as well as 3 HK based dancers, to form what will be a new dynamic team. The work will be made specially for the exciting and spacious ArtisTree, a dedicated cultural space amongst the nine interconnected office towers of TaiKoo Place. Surroundings of a primarily commercial nature (host to a range of IT and advertising companies), necessitates creative fantasy and other expressive indulgences: a balancing act of sorts.

ArtisTree is a vast black box theatre, a transformative and versatile space, a King chameleon of rooms. This performance will try to explore this room as an individual entity, a place with its own personality, responding to its architecture and its isolation from natural light, out door sound and smell. The team will be going on an 11 days treasure hunt of the venue to make an interdisciplinary, immersive experience for an audience to inhabit not simply sit and watch.

A CAVE: a Journey into and out of Darkness

An interest in the darkness and lack of color in a black box theatre had immediate associations to darkness and night-time existence, large caves inhabited by bats and moths, and other nocturnal creatures. This human space for creativity in Tai Koo Place, without any natural light becomes a world outside time. The artists are playing with the space as a modern, man-made cave that inhabits the above-ground world and how it can inspire movement and stories to emerge. The characteristics and narratives already exist in the space: the group hope to ‘draw the curtain’ and allow the audience to experience this cave expedition. The dance will serve to heighten these visuals as bodies crawl and flutter, embodying these previously unseen nocturnal creatures of the black box.

THE MOTH: a Taste of Impermanence

This promenade performance is also inspired by the life cycle of the moth. This visualization of the insect’s metamorphosis stems from a conversation with a wise Taichi master whom referenced a verse from a poem:

Spring silkworms produce silk until the last minute of their lives and candles send out light until they are completely burned out.

The 4 stage cycle will be explored in the room using multi media, paper, sand, cloth and other objects and materials; it creates marker points that give the performance its rhythm and structure. The moths attraction to light is the basis for how the group will try to bring the audience in and out of darkness.

SOUND: a Timetable of Exultation

Brown Note Collective is not only performing as musicians in this project, they will be visible as active performers in the space and will lead the audience from one space to another, ushers of sound. They bring to the dance their talent for creating atmospheric and textured sound scores, an essential element to exploration of the senses.

Biographies

Christina Jensen grew up in Hong Kong but is now primarily based in London. She lives and works as a freelance performer, choreographer and teacher; engaging in diverse independent projects and collaborating with various international artists. She received her BA in Dance Theatre (2005) from Laban and her MA in Choreography (2008) from Dartington College of Arts. Currently she is preparing and managing (with fellow dancer Ylva Henrikson) a community dance project in Cebu with 15 out of school street teenagers in January 2010. Christina is also looking forward to the soon to be launched web art project ‘202distortions’. Christina last choreographed for YAF in 100% RED and is excited to return and explore new ground with a great team in this upcoming performance!

Yin John mainly works as an art assistant for individual artists across a variety of forms such as music, painting, moving image, fashion, and art education. She received her BA in Visual Communication from HK Polytechnic University and is currently completing her MFA in Creative Media at HK City University. Yin’s music training took place at her early teens where she began to develop her improvisation skills whilst earning money as a busker in Copenhagen. In recent years she has been working to put her different forms together under name of ‘Temp Temps’.

Christina and Yin met early this year through performing with Adam Leung as Brown Note Collective. Both Christina and Yin have a great passion for Taichi and in bringing their enthusiasms together; dance, music, video, costume, photography, visual art and installation.

Brown Note Collective is a constantly changing group of multi-instrumentalists who play music without any specific musical genre, blending traditional and experimental forms with a mixture of composition and a lot of improvisation. The main objectives of the collective have always been to explore the experimental side of music, maintain a creative environment for all the members involved, and to expose Hong Kong audiences to less conventional approaches to music.

Adam Leung is many things; a self taught multi-instrumentalist, a tinker, a scientist, amongst many others, initially a self-taught drummer, later merging his drumming techniques with guitar playing resulting in his unconventional methods of playing guitar and various stringed instruments. With knowledge from several fields of science, he is constantly exploring methods to play with existing musical instruments and sometimes creating his own. Adam is the founder of what is now the highly respected Brown Note Collective, he also runs a small-scale DIY record label Brown Note Records.

Heidi Chan is a composer and musician from Toronto, currently living in Hong Kong. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto (Religious Studies & Philosophy) and York University’s Music program. From 2000 to 2007, Heidi was a core member of Canada's preeminent Japanese taiko drum ensemble, Nagata Shachu. She was the original drummer for the rock band The Cliks, and also contributed to Ten Ten, an innovative Japanese folk trio founded by Shamisen player/vocalist Aki Takahashi. Since moving to Hong Kong, from 2007 to 2009, she worked as a film sound editor and foley artist for directors Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, Dante Lam, and others. Currently she is composing, performing, and teaching taiko across the city.

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