The solo form, in the context of contemporary dance in Asia, persists as a phenomenon.
Independent dance-makers – determined not to compromise on their individuality through commodification or re-locating their practice via migration – have tended to turn solo. A strategy taken out of necessity and pragmatism because of the difficult economy they have chosen to work within: weak policies, funding, and presentation structures.
While partly circumstantial, the condition has also allowed these undaunted artists to create and speak in a different and strong tenor. From my mapping of exceptional individuals, I platform in Exodos Festival 2013 a suite of solo dance artists with a distinct singularity and articulation, different from their peers.
This is a generation of well-educated and globally-mobile choreographers from Asia, in their 20s and 30s, each working in marked self-reflexivity, approaching their subjects and materials with a conceptual bent, at the same eliciting pleasure from the act of dancing, moving or presenting bodies on stage. Their notion of ‘virtuosity’ departs from the stereotype of the solo form in traditional dance genres as a vessel for technique display and diva presence, moving us instead into viewpoints on self-making and embodiment itself, by various means of irony, ambivalence and reversal.
Such a tendency resists idealizing the “solo” as an emancipation from the collective and/or the absolutism of selfhood. In the single body is the condensation of multiple selves constructed by a process of “hauntings”. 
By “hauntings”, I refer to the way that Sujata Goel (Dancing Girl) picks up her past residues as a ghost doll enfleshed and animating a smorgasbord of bharatanatyam-bollywood-ballet. Geumhyung Jeong (Oil Pressure Vibrator), in a deceptively “flat” lecture-performance, splices her past archive of works into a bio-mockumentary on sexual hunger which peaks at the imagined destruction of her “real” self. Through Daniel Kok (Death of a Dancing Girl and The Gay Romeo), we see an “ethnographer” on a sex date exposing his field data and finally himself as a (re)collective object of desire - a pole dancer. In similar vein, Eisa Jocson (The Macho Dancer) is possessed in the lexicon and politics of seduction through two Filipino labour icons: the pole dancer and the macho dancer.
The “everyday” vernacular is re-written from free-verse haiku by Zan Yamashita (It’s Just Me Coughing) who selects words related to corporeality and repeats them as a ritual of banal actions, a memory of fragile existence. In his films, Moe Satt (Face ′n′ Fingers and Hands around in Yangon), enacts both abstract and concrete realities of the social body: first as fingers forming phantasmagoric gestures that besiege his face, then as a docu-record of his people’s free-wheeling hands in the daily public. All that is remembered can be restored, however random, spin-doctor Choy Ka Fai (Notion: Dance Fiction) proposes as he transplants movement archives of dance greats, dead or alive, via electricity nodes onto the body of a live sample dancer. In co-authorship with choreographer Arco Renz, dance maestro Eko Supriyanto wrestles with temporal and spatial principles that are foreign to the Javanese cultural equilibrium that has conditioned his body, while Melanie Lane, of half-Javanese descent, seeks a stable world of terpsichorean principles and architectures, as the ground below her literally trembles.
Bouquets to Natasa Zavolovšek and Katja Stušek, and the entire team of Exodos Festival 2013! Many thanks for making this platform happen. Enjoy, everyone!
Tang Fu Kuen, Curator of Asian Dance Platform

DANCING GIRL
WHO: Sujata Goel / India /
WHEN: 18. 04. /19:00 / 35 min / ŠB
Dancing Girl depicts a performer who seeks to step outside of her body and confront the image of herself. In clinical fashion, she maps out her physical and psychological behaviours, by documenting her qualities, moods, gestures, habits, training forms and daily movement patterns. She could then experience herself as ‘data’, as information that can be manipulated and re-organised in order to take on new meanings. How does a performer understand her sense of self as she becomes more conscious of it?
Sujata Goel trained in Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance. After she graduated Goel worked with Chennai-based choreographer Padmini Chettur and continued her training in contemporary dance at P.A.R.T.S in Brussels. As an artist-in-residence at WP Zimmer she produced 3 works: Lady, Disco Dancer and Nightlife. Dancing Girl is the result of the grant support and of a research and production residency she had in Adishakti.
choreography, performance: Sujata Goel; music: Andrew Chalk - Over the Edges 2 & 3; lighting design: Seok Hui Yap; costume design: Tabasheer Zutshi

OIL PRESSURE VIBRATOR
WHO: Geumhyung Jeong / South Korea /
WHEN: 18. 04. / 20:00 / 60 min / ŠB
Geumhyung Jeong tells us of the pursuit of the subject of her desire in the form of an extremely unique lecture that becomes a metaperformance of her existing work. While explaining her affair with an excavator, she talks about her past, and things become ambiguous whether the artist is introducing her piece or if we are hearing the confessions of the character inside the story. 
A fuzzy, puzzling and interesting performance unfolds on stage.
Geumhyung Jeong is a Korean artist who is (re-)negotiating the relationship between the human body and the things that surround it. She works with ordinary objects bringing them to uncanny life in a highly charged and disturbing interaction with her own body. Jeong has transformed her training as a dancer and choreographer into a unique and riveting performance practice. She fuses puppetry, dance and stagecraft to create a captivating choreography of mind and body.
http://geumhyungjeong.tistory.com

DEATH OF A POLE DANCER 
MACHO DANCER
WHO: Eisa Jocson / Philippines /
WHEN: 18. 04. / 21:30 / 50 min / ŠB /
19. 04. / 18:00 / 50 min / ŠB /
Death of the Pole Dancer interrogates the way we look at what we think we look at. The audience is brought to reflect on what they witness: a woman during the act of pole dancing. The performance renegotiates notions such as voyeurism and restrain,vulnerability and violence, sexuality and power. 
concept, choreography, performance: Eisa Jocson; coach, dramaturgical advice: Rasa Alksnyte; music: Dusty Springfield - I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself; commissioned by: In Transit 2011, HKW Berlin; supported by: Nadine, Brussels 

Macho dancing is performed by young men in night clubs for male as well as female clients. Macho Dancing with its specific movement vocabulary and physicality seems to be a Philippine phenomenon. It is an economically motivated language of seduction, using notions of masculinity as body capital. 
Macho Dancer is a solo piece of a woman performing a macho dance. Her becoming a macho dancer challenges our perception of sexuality and questions gender as a tool for social mobility.
concept, choreography, performance: Eisa Jocson; coach: Rasa Alksnyte; dramaturgical advice: Arco Renz; music: Lina Lapelyte; lighting design: Jan Maertens; co-producer: Workspacebrussels Beursschouwburg; supported by: Wpzimmer

Eisa Jocson is a pole dancer and visual artist from the Philippines. Her solo artistic work merges both backgrounds, investigating notions of gender, body politics and power relationships. In her work, sexuality and strength, voyeurism and restraint, and vulnerability and violation all collide.
http://eisajocson.posterous.com

IT'S JUST ME COUGHING
WHO: Zan Yamashita / Japan /
WHEN: 19. 04. ob AT 19:00 / 50 min / ŠB
“One day as I stood alone in the rehearsal space, I noticed that my body was breathing, repeatedly inhaling and exhaling. Being in the throes of creating a theatrical version of dance at the time, it occurred to me that I could write a dialogue between Mr. Inhale and Mr. Exhale, and that it could be a play about the human body.”
Symbols for breaths and words from Hosai Ozaki’s free-verse haiku fill a screen while being simultaneously physically expressed by Zan. Poignant with moments of humour, the piece expresses the sense of solitude characteristic of the lives of modern city dwellers.
Zan Yamashita studied modern dance and classical dance before joining Monochrome Circus in Kyoto. He started choreographing in 1993 with Music at the ALTY Buyoh Festival. Since then, he has developed his practice through projects and performances such as the trilogy It Is Written There; Invisible Man; It’s just Me, coughing; Daikouzui … Yamashita was the recipient of the Kyoto Theatre Award in 2004 and Senior Fellow Grant from the Saison Foundation for 2011 and 2012. He lives and works in Osaka.
www.zanyamashita.com

HANDS AROUND IN YANGON
F 'N' F (FACE AND FINGERS)
WHO: Moe Satt / Myanmar /
WHEN: 19. 04. ob AT 20:00 / 20 min / ŠB
The video Hands around Yangon emphasizes the almost autonomous character of the ingrained movements it follows. The hands are shown as if independent of their owner’s mind and rather integral to the activity they are pursuing.
But could hand movements ever be a key to revealing the inner workings of any given culture? It seems they might, seeing as how the hand movements are – at least to a degree – determined by the things they touch and leave.
F 'n' F (Face and Fingers) a performance piece of Satt explores the potential for expression and ambiguity in his self-made hand gestures, and eight of his favorite hand gestures are also provided. He peers silently out and uses body language to explain what it's like being unable to express yourself freely. Moe says he found 108 different ways to express himself using face and fingers alone.
Moe Satt is a visual and performance artist as well as the founder and organizer of the Beyond Pressure international performance art festival in Yangon. He has participated in several performance art festivals in Burma, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillipines, South Korea, Japan, India, Combodia, Vietnam, London (Artevict), Poland (Interakcje), Liechtenstein (Multilog) & Canada (LIVE Biennial). His works of performance art use hands as the main element of expression.

THE GAY ROMEO
KDO: Daniel Kok / Singapore /
WHEN: 19. 04. / 21:00 / 60 min / CD-DDP
20. 04. / 19:00 / 60 min / CD-DDP
“What if when I say I am working on my relationship with the audience I meant it literally? What if when I look back at the audience from the stage, I can look at each of you in the eye and recognise you? What if we have already had an intimate relationship by the time you come into the theatre to watch me? Through the online portal, gayromeo.com, I went on 50 dates in 75 days in Berlin, Tokyo and Ljubljana. During the encounters, I ask each one for a gift in response to our relationship. In exchange, I invite my gayromeos back to the performance where I return my gift in the form of a dance.”
Daniel Kok creates his debut performance Q&A in 2009. It was commissioned by Singapore Arts Festival in 2009 and has performed in Edinburgh, Lisbon, Hong Kong, Berlin, Vienna, Bangkok and Yokohama. The Gay Romeo performed at Festival/Tokyo 2012 and was top 3 shows by jury nomination at the Emerging Artist platform. His productions Hokkaido (2010) and The Cheerleader (2012) were commissioned by the Esplanade in Singapore.
concept, choreography, performance: Daniel Kok; dramaturgy: Jorge Gonçalves; production stage manager, lighting design: Yap Seok Hui;  music: Yellow Sky (1995), Ellen Allien; photo: Sven Hagolani
www.diskodanny.com

NOTION: DANCE FICTION
WHO: Ka Fai Choy / Singapore /
WHEN: 20. 04. ob AT 20:30 / 50 min / CD-K /
Performance digitizes the movements of icons of the dance world, like Pina Bausch and Tatsumi Hijikata, and re-creates the dance movement on stage. It is a collaboration between innovative technology and the physical language of dance, both in co-existence and opposition, moving towards a new creative expression. The video and forms appearing on the monitor digitally stimulate the physical dancer on stage, and unfold into something thrilling.
Choy Ka Fai is an artist, performance maker and speculative designer. He is inspired by the stories of history and speculations of the future, and his research often stems from a desire to understand the conditions of the human body; its memories, influences and conceptual fantasy. These conceptions would coalesce into intricate narratives at the intersection of art, design and technology. His works was presented at many international art institution. He has also participated in various art festivals
worldwide.
www.ka5.info

SOLID.STATES
WHO: Arco Renz + Kobalt Works / Belgium (Java)
WHEN: 20. 04. ob AT 21:00 / 60 min / KŠ
Integrating two solos the performance investigates the induction of “otherness” into Javanese culture, their mutual impact and eventual interlacing. “Otherness” here refers to any influence from outside traditional Javanese culture. 
A particular focus is given to the influences of global pop culture, strategies of “entertainment and pleasure” as well as the space-time concepts that they impose. The performance translates these influences into and “abstract dramaturgy”, based on the essential parameters of dance: time, space and physical energy.
In 2000 Arco Renz founded the Brussels based company Kobalt Works and developed a body of work around the central concept of Abstract Dramaturgy, frequently in collaboration with Asian artists and performers. Arco Renz’ performances are an interplay of movement, light and sound. They go beyond pure, formal dance, and display a graceful expressionism that can be situated somewhere between the German expressionist films of the 1920s and traditional Eastern dance- and theatre forms.
artistic direction: Arco Renz; choreography: Arco Renz; in collaboration with: Eko Supriyanto, Melanie Lane; dance: Eko Supriyanto, Melanie Lane; set design: Lawrence Malstaff; music: Marc Appart; lighting design: Jan Maertens; artistic collaborator: Melanie Lane
www.kobaltworks.be