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Choo San leaps to new heights
By Richard Lim
(Photo: Dance magazine with Choo San on cover ... Magazine from American Library Resource Centre)
One of Singapore’s prodigies has made it to the cover of a prestigious international dance magazine.
On the cover of last month’s edition of Dance magazine, the New York-based monthly, is dancer/choreographer Goh Choo San, who is pictured seated with his long hands folded over his raised knees.
With his long, dark hair and intense eyes looking pensively out at the reader, Goh looks every inch the star who belongs to glossy magazine covers.
Underneath the picture is the caption, Go! Go! Choo San Goh.
And is he going places. In a five-page article inside the magazine, author David Cleveland traces the leaps - soaring flights? - Goh has made since he left the country 10 years ago, and speaks to him on his life and work, which really are one and the same.
Goh, now the assistant artistic director of the Washington Ballet Company and hailed by The (New York) Times as “the most sought after new choreographer,” has some harsh words to say of Singapore though.
“I hated Singapore, I hated it,” he was quoted as saying. “It was so stifling artistically. I couldn’t have done anything there, no one could have. There’s no time for the arts, no subsidies for the arts, no time for anything but work and business... and to be a dancer... there is little respect for dancers in Singapore.”
Bitter though they may be, his words hold some irrefutable truth. And those who once denied him would now probably clamour to acclaim him, now that he is recognised overseas. How sad indeed.
Goh spoke of his leaving the country as a release, the kind of release all artists need.
He said: "Finally, I was me. I could establish myself. I became me because I was doing what I really wanted to do. In Singapore, my life was a total facade; when I got to Europe I could dance, I could be myself.”
Goh first Joined a Swiss company, then moved on in 1971 tc the Dutch National Ballet, where he remained for five years.
Those five years were years of tremendous growth for Goh as a dancer and an artist, the author says.
“His knowledge of modern dance technique was easily absorbed through the spectrum of the contemporary works he danced with the Dutch National Ballet.”
In Jan 1976, Goh went to the US choreograph three of his ballets for the Washington Ballet, and immediately won acclaim, both in the company and among the critics.
Mary Day, founder and artistic director of the company, invited him back the following year to join as full-time choreographer-in-residence.
Day said of her decision: “It was a hunch, a feeling, he obviously was very talented and so we wanted to give him the opportunity to develop as a choreographer. We gave him the dancers and the performing time, and just never looked back. He gave us the contemporary look and feel which stirred both our dancers and our audiences.”
Of Goh’s success as a teacher, Day said: “The dancers and the students love to work with him because he really is an artist of today. His style is dynamic and he constantly challenges and stimulates his dancers to achieve more.”
According to the article, Goh’s teaching and choreography have stimulated the dancers to grow and achieve technically and artistically to a degree no one would have dreamed possible two years ago.
The choreographer in turn grew too; last year he created three outstanding ballets: Fives, Synonyms and Double Contrasts.
The article sums up his art as one of feeling. “It describes a nature that is ordered organically rather than intellectually; it is a world of relationships, masculine and feminine, positive and negative, which are not opposites as much as being fundamentally relational and harmonious,” the article says.
This, if anything, is basically eastern.
Of his promising future, Goh said pragmatically (how like a Singaporean still!): "I have no pipe dreams. I don’t believe life is fair. I let what I do take me; I let it dictate where I go. I don’t think about tomorrow.
“It is the moment that matters most and I am pleased with my work. I get pleasure from my work, not because it is mine, but because it is exciting, because it is good, and it moves me.”
In Singapore, Goh's sister, Soo Khim, who is the principal of the Ballet Academy, said: “Naturally, we’re proud of him. It’s really not easy, you know...”
We are proud of you too, Choo San. Come back when we’re ready.
See also[]
- Goh Choo San
- Earliest cases of HIV/AIDS in Singapore
- Archive of "Choreographer Goh Choo San dies in New York", The Straits Times, 1 December 1987
References[]
- Richard Lim, "Choo San leaps to new heights", New Nation, 15 August 1980[1].
Acknowledgements[]
This article was archived by Roy Tan.