SIFA 2024: Smart, daring, eclectic works take centrestage

WHEN Sun & Sea was staged at the 58th Venice Biennale, the queues were so long that many people gave up all hope of seeing it, settling instead for the rave reviews they heard from friends or read in the papers. The climate change-themed opera, sung by sun-tanning beach-goers on a fake beach, went on to win the biennale’s top prize, intensifying that FOMO (“fear of missing out”) sensation for those unable to witness it themselves.

Well, good news for Singapore-based art lovers – and anyone else willing to travel to Singapore in May. Sun & Sea is one of the headlining shows at the upcoming Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) 2024, alongside other spellbinding performances that defy easy categorisation.

They include a multimedia performance by Singapore’s experimental band The Observatory, which had spent months in the caves of Malaysia to seek inspiration in subterranean surrounds. There’s also iconoclastic African-American choreographer Trajal Harrell, who only last year had his body of work celebrated in a Paris retrospective, staging a vogue-dance-theatre piece titled The Romeo. Then there’s Susanne Kennedy, a widely-acclaimed German director, bringing a pandemic-inspired work delving into our psyche in sickness or health.