Malaysian artist Tony Yap mid-dance at a 24-hour performance in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2003.

An unconventional artist is infusing local performers with new ideas about the power of communicating physically.

In the three-week course, Yap says he tries to impart knowledge through mutual body conversations between the teacher and students. He says virtually all information is communicated physically, not orally.

Tien, a student who recently attended Yap’s class in HCMC, says the method has helped him realize the strengths of body language, which he had never known before.

“It’s more meaningful than I ever thought,” he says.

After 32 years of dancing, directing, choreographing and creating visual art, Yap taught the course for a year at the Professional Training and International Theater Exchange Center, run by experimental theater director Le Quy Duong in Ho Chi Minh City.

Yap has previously collaborated with several dance companies and individual artists in Australia, Austria, Italy, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Cambodia, Singapore and Japan.

The 52-year old Malaysian who lives in Australia says his Vietnamese students are very talented.

“They can feel the movements and know how to let their body speak and how to express themselves when dancing. This is very important. This is the sense of art, of change, of loss, of everything you want to show to the audience. It helps you understand the philosophy of life through your own body and mind,” Yap says.

“Tony’s practical lessons stimulate my imagination, give me the ability to control my body movements, my feelings and my influence on the audience,” says Yap’s student Tien.

“Through Tony’s exercises, w combination of dance y M body becomes both lighter and more powerful. His course is very useful in developing our independent performance skills.”

Yap left Vietnam last Friday for performances in Indonesia and South Korea last week. He will return to Vietnam to participate in the experimental play Nguoi nam 2222 (People in the Year 2222) directed by Le Quy Duong in December.

This play is about a future in which science and technology become even more influential over human life, and people in turn become more depressed.

According to Duong, Tony uses traditional Malaysian chants, yoga, piano art, Japanese Butoh dance, European modern music, electronica and Vietnamese folk songs in the play.

“I believe in Tony’s aesthetics and I trust in our common artistic sense,” says Duong.

Over the last five years, Yap has performed in 22 national and international collaborations, performances, 8 international festivals, worked through 7 residencies and led several workshops…Vietnam is only one stop on his long journey. “I want to be a bridge between the art of the West and the East,” he says.

An eclectic repertoire

Tony initially became a visual artist in Australia after studying there but he soon hit the theater scene, in which he has trained, choreographed and devised new material for over two decades.

He was one of the principal performers at the IRAA (International Registry of Artists and Artwork) Theater of Australia.

Asian arts are now his main focus, he says.

Yap established the Melbourne-based Mixed Company, now known as the Tony Yap Company, in 1993 to widen collaborative connections throughout Asia and establish an international artistic network between Asia and the rest of the world.

The company’s aim is to bring contemporary Asian Arts to audiences from all multicultural backgrounds. Aside from performing, the company offers training as well, ranging from Asian shamanistic dancing to modern European styles.

Yap’s group is currently made up of several independent Asian, Australian and European artists.

Yap says he’s committed to exploring and creating an individual dance-theater language derived from his research into Asian dance forms, particularly traditional Malaysian folk styles, yoga, and Butoh, an obscure and virtually indefinable art from Japan.

Butoh is less a dance and more a performance art that originated in Post World-War II Japan and began gaining some international recognition in the late 50s-early-60s. Butoh artists follow few conventions but often have their faces painted white.

The style has little to due with either traditional Japanese dances or most western forms of dance, although it does borrow elements from each.

Yap is just one of a growing number of contemporary artists devoting more time to Butoh both inside and outside Asia.

Credit where it’s due

Yap won the 2000 Green Room Award in Melbourne for best male dancer for his solo work “The Decay of the Angel.”

Each of his performances is a new experience and the result of many people’s effort, he says.

Sonia Humprey from The Australian wrote: “Tony Yap,… giving us a centered and grave presence… he can give weight without noise, slowness without tedium, remoteness without indifference…: it is always towards him that the eye turns in a quest for emotional interest or meaning.”

Jonathan Marshal of Impress said: “Tony’s style is incredible; a mesmerizing series of soft-as-water twists, bends and pirouettes drawn from various Asian influences, producing a remarkable, idiosyncratic form.”

Reported by Kim