Archive of "The Gohs get together for two concerts", The Straits Times, 22 June 1987

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The Gohs get together for two concerts

Dance fans will get to see more of the talented Goh ballet family when they pool resources for two performances this week. CHRISTINE KHOR reports.

MEMBERS of the Goh family, remarkable for producing four professional dancers in one generation, are pooling their resources for a concert on Wednesday and Thursday at the Kallang Theatre.

On a tour of the region, the Vancouver-based Goh Ballet Company, founded by elder brother Goh Choo Chiat, is making its second visit to Singapore. Their first Asian tour was in 1982.

Singapore is the birthplace of the four dancers in the Goh family.

• Artistic director Choo Chiat, whose 23-member company is currently touring China.

• Choo San, associate artistic director and choreographer of the Washington Ballet in the United Slates’ capital. For his brother's company, Choo San choreographed Ballade, which will be performed on both nights.

• Singapore Ballet Academy founder Soonee, who now runs the dance department at the Vancouver Academy of Music. She is the company's ballet mistress when they're on tour here.

• Soo Khim, principal of the Singapore Ballet Academy, whose students will dance in Dream Of Red The Chamber, which will also be performed on both nights.

Choo San, in town last month to judge the Miss Universe contest, and Soo Khim have been in the dance limelight here as Singapore's Cultural Medallion winners in the field of dance.

With the Goh Ballet company’s return, the audience will rediscover that branch of the family tree flourishing in Canada.

The company jewel is indisputably Choo Chiat's 17-year old daughter, Goh Chan Hon, the female lead dancer.

A Prix de Lausanne prizewinner in 1985, she’s acclaimed by critics as "world-class material in the making" and the company's "best classical technician”.

“Goh’s best advertisement,” raved another Canadian dance critic of the teenager.

"Goh's training has given her a distinctive look - she'll never be just another swan in the corps."

The "look" apparently comes from the mix of Choo Chiat's own training, his openness to influences as diverse as traditional Chinese dance and Graham techniques, and his own personality.

Though Chan Hon had scholarship offers to Europe, she decided to stay in Vancouver and dance in her father's company.

This decision is understandable in the light of Choo Chiat's struggle to start a school of excellence in Vancouver a dozen years ago.

When he moved to Vancouver from China in 1976, few people knew who he was. He spoke little English.

He had been a principal dancer and ballet master with the Central Ballet in Beijing.

But the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution had cut the company off from the international mainstream for so long that most people only knew its reputation for committee-made propagandist ballets such as The Red Detachment Of Women.

So at the age of 38, he joined his elder sister, Soonee and her pianist husband, Lee Kum-Sing (who was also in town to judge the Sixth National Music Competition which ended yesterday), in Canada.

With Choo Chiat was his wife, Lin Yee, a former principal dancer and instructor with the Central Ballet in Beijing.

She's the company's associate artistic director and principal of Choo Chiat's academy, which started in 1978 and led to the formation of the dance company.

At the beginning, it was really difficult, Choo Chiat recalled, in a recent interview with the Canadian press.

"I had a language problem and I had a social problem. I'd lived in a communist country for nearly 20 years where the government takes care of you. Now I was responsible for myself,” he said.

"Who knows me? Who knows that I’m a principal dancer and a great teacher?"

Today, the Goh Ballet Company has been acclaimed as a high-quality, promising chamber ballet ensemble.

It's been described as a "beautifully-schooled company", showcased in a fresh repertoire of classics and contemporary works.

An item to be performed here is Dream Of The Red Chamber, choreographed by Li Cheng Xiang, artistic director of the Central Ballet of China.

Mr Li, who arrived on Thursday, wanted to introduce famous Chinese classics to the West after seeing Chinese dancers perform Western classics.

Two principal soloists of the Central Ballet of China, Mr Zhang Wei Qiang and Miss Feng Ying, will dance the lead roles in the Dream Of The Red Chamber and the Black Swan pas de deux. They came with Mr Li.

Another ballet, for two soloists and five girls, Tears Of Hiroshima, was choreographed by Choo Chiat. Described as an elegiac adagio of death, it has overtones of Martha Graham and is set to traditional Japanese folk tunes.

Yet another item is Choo San’s Ballade, danced to the music of Gabriel Faure. The Company premiered it last year in Vancouver.

The concerts are in aid of the Singapore Cultural Foundation and the Alumni Associations of Hwa Chong and Nanyang Girls High School.

• Tickets at $30, $20, $10 and $5 for the concert at Kallang Theatre at 8 pm on Wednesday and Thursday are available at the Central Booking Office, Tangs Superstore and Cold Storage Centrepoint.

(Photo: Goh Ballet Company dancers, Wei Dong Sheng (left) and Goh Chan Hon, in a movement from Sleeping Beauty)

=See also=
 * Earliest cases of HIV/AIDS in Singapore
 * Archive of "Choo San leaps to new heights", New Nation, 15 August 1980
 * Archive of "The ascent of Goh Choo San", The Singapore Monitor, 5 June 1984
 * Archive of "Choreographer Goh Choo San dies in New York", The Straits Times, 1 December 1987
 * Archive of "The dance is over", The Straits Times, 1 December 1987
 * Archive of "Choo San’s million-dollar gift to young dancers and choreographers", The Straits Times, 17 January 1988

=References=
 * Christine Khor, "The Gohs get together for two concerts", The Straits Times, 22 June 1987.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was archived by Roy Tan.