Sowing The Seeds Of Dance

BUILDING AN ARTS AUDIENCE is never easy. But it's a task that dancer-choreographer Kuik Swee Boon takes on with his typically beatific Buddha-like smile.

As festival director of the annual M1 CONTACT Contemporary Dance Festival, the 45-year-old has once again created a programme that lays bare a broad trajectory of choreography - from the young works-in-progress that rely on audience responses to help make them better, to the well-polished products fit for the world stage.

In doing so, Kuik believes he's helping not just the artists through their various stages of development, but also the audience as they grow in appreciation and understanding of the creative process.

He says: "We have free events called Dance At Dusk at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre meant to target people who are not interested in dance, and to whom we normally won't have a chance to pitch our art form at all. But it's important to keep building new audiences, so we have these free shows that are a…