NYC celebrates S’pore arts

SINGAPORE — Inspired by their love for their home country, a group of New York-based creatives from Singapore have come together to organise Something To Write Home About: Singapore Arts Festival In New York. This inaugural event celebrates the 50th year of Singapore’s independence and will run from Sept 12 to 22 at the world-renowned cultural institution La MaMa, in downtown Manhattan.

Run by a committee of volunteers, Something To Write Home About features more than 40 Singaporean artists from the fields of visual arts, dance, music, theatre, film, literary arts and culinary arts. The theme for the event is Home/Singapore and various programmes have been slated over the 11 days, from dance performances to storytelling sessions and short-film screenings. These, say organisers, aim to provide a “window into Singapore’s multi-ethnic, multilingual heritage and history”.

Some of the participants include author Amanda Lee Koe, artist Kok Boon Lim, film-makers Kirsten Tan and Boo Junfeng, actors Elizabeth Lazan and Siti Khalijah Zainal, musician Shun Ng, the Maya Dance Theatre, and Haresh Sharma and Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage, among others.

The festival’s producing artistic director, Hong-Ling Wee, said: “Singapore has made such tremendous progress in building an economic footprint. We’ve gone from being a Third World nation to being the third-wealthiest country in the world in the last 50 years. This is no small feat.

“But what has Singapore contributed to world culture? This festival is a great opportunity for us to begin creating an artistic footprint and to serve the role of cultural diplomacy.”

For more information, please visit http://www.somethingtowritehomeabout.nyc.

CORRECTION: We made an error on The Necessary Stage's Alvin Tan's surname in an earlier version of this story. We have corrected it and are sorry for the error.