photos here & here

The troops rallied on 6th June, and it was a good, fine day at the esplanade doing KYTV:P.O.P nonsense. Our singing more or less sucked, our dancing – some, at least – drew inspiration from the Great Singapore Workout (so you can imagine how that went), but the making of it was INCREDIBLY fun.

It was a ball of a time prancing around in weird-ass costumes and lip-syncing to the recording. I laughed so hard during the whole process I think I developed abs.

How it worked:

1. Choose your POPstar name
2. Pick the original song for your solo/duet/group: Angry Song, Love Duet, Obscure Song, Happy Song…
3. Learn your song via the separate tellies & headphones set up for each song (we never really made it..heh)
4. Record your song in the studio.
5. Head over to the makeup/dress up station to muck around with the nice people
6. Wait for your turn to shoot your MTV against a green screen
7. Say “thank you”!
8. Sober up over the next few days and cringe over your video when it appears

So thanks to shal, nab, erfen, jonny, chris g, juliane, su & jie for coming down.. not to mention the bishy-bashy and bowling session that happened later. Oh yes, and the NOBODY by wonder girls impromptu cover we did.

(L-R) erfen, me, shal, jonny, nab, juliane

And here are the videos:

J. the Wicked-Witch-from-the East-who-had-to -settle-for-purple-sequins-because-it’s-the-recession-and-black-cloth-was-expensive & the Great Singapore Workout back-up dancers

Angsty boys : Ch(Tr)is G. & E.Dilly Daddy

Still angsty: schoolmates indra, terrix & helen

schoolmates: raphael & mike

Weird rooster-disco girl S. & SuperPinkBather N.

Happy Spankers, Lime-light Grabbers

]]> http://adoorinthewall.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/videos-kytv-p-o-p-singapore/feed/ 1 sherms IMG_7395 http://adoorinthewall.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/keeping-track/ http://adoorinthewall.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/keeping-track/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:20:48 +0000 sherms http://adoorinthewall.wordpress.com/?p=94 ]]>

It appears I attended a lot more exhibitions/plays/concerts than I realized in the past 3 months. Ah, money-money, so that’s where you went.

ARTS FEST
Yuri Bashmet & the Moscow Chamber Choir
Jeremy Monterio, T’ang Quartet & friends
Visible Cities (S’pore/Italy co-production)
Etiquette (Rotozaza)
Red (Stalker Theatre Co.)

ESPLANADE’S FLIPSIDE
Ole: The Latin Music Comedy Explosion
KYTV: P.O.P

THEATRE
CATS
The Importance of Being Earnest (Wild Rice)
Much Ado About Nothing (SRT)

EXHIBITIONS: museums
Christian Lacroix the Costumier (NMS)
Verner Panton (NMS)
The Kangxi Emperor: Treasures from the Forbidden City (ACM)

EXHIBITIONS: photography:: Month of Photography
The Unguarded Moment by Steve McCurry (ACM)
Don’t Move by Francoise Huguier
Life before death: Journeys by Deanna Ng
InsideOut II

EXHIBITIONS: misc
URBAN Playground: SSQ Artist-in-Residence 2009 (sculpture square)
There are No New Messages Today (Popok Tri Wahyudi)

Zul  – our audio instructor – passed us the flyer for KYTV P.O.P’s Station Tour: Singapore 2009 the other day and said all of us had to attend one of the days. Heh. Now that’s why I like school. You get to do all these fun and embarrasing things in the name of  “homework”. Good excuse, yes? So besides my classmates, I’m going to drag as many friends I can with me.

They’ll dress you up, record your voice, play it over the system for you to lip-sync to while you dance like a mad chicken against a fantasy backdrop (honestly, isn’t it a mass desire to dance like a mad chicken?), and then upload your video of fame/lame to YouTube. Your very own MTV parody.

KYTV (Kill Your Television) has been around a number of cities for this tour: London, Thailand, Berlin, Jakarta, Yogyakarta… which makes up the range of videos on their YouTube channel.

I’ll definitely freeze for a bit on the day itself because as my good friends know, I’m shhhyyyy….. (sorry, inside joke. but I really am.), but I still think we’ll have a good time poking fun at this ironic take on the entertainment industry and, as the poster puts it “(the) process of ‘manufacturing’ celebrities, by ‘packaging’ and individual or a group into a product for mass consumption”. Plus dressing up with wigs & friends always means a ++++++++ rocking good time.

Hmm… maybe it’s time to tell Jonny & Nab to put their Nobody,Nobody but you/chu moves to good use. I know for sure that Jonny has been practising.

DETAILS

05 – 07 June 2009 (Fri – Sun)
2 – 6pm
7 – 10pm

Jendela (Visual Arts Space)
Level 2, Esplanade Mall

Was on my way to the History&Living gallery at the National Museum for community service when I thought I’d take some pictures of Titarubi (Indonesian artist)’s batik-covered David.

As I was about to snap, this Japanese little girl toddled over and gently lay her hand at the base of the fibre-glass sculpture before her mother tugged her away.

For a brief second, it was a lovely picture of innocence solemnly greeting a giant.

I’m not a fantastic photographer by any means, but for me, it was a perfect Kodak moment.

Larger image here

Went for the first GRINDER-MAN workshop in late May. Tons of laughs and aching muscles, but with a interesting batch of people who all seem to have theatre experience ( I think). Met the new teacher of TSD too – Brian. He’s working with Jireh now. It’s so odd that she should be teaching. Didn’t seem too long ago when we were still crewing for her Emily of Emerald Hill monologue.

What made me raise an eyebrown was that the 2 GRINDER-MAN instructors, Hitoshi and Maki didn’t speak fluent English. They had to conduct the entire workshop through Pauline, an esplanade translator.

I know it’s probably a usual thing, but it just made me think how far globalization has reached.

_____________________________

One of the exercises we did had the main aim of posessing the black head cube.

If you ever saw anyone chasing after another person to get the black cube on the latter person’s head , trust me, the first instinct is to giggle – whether it’s nervous laughter or amused one. However, according to Hitoshi (the troupe leader), it’s a serious, solemn affair for the performer doing it.

He never laughs, he never cries and he never gives up till he dies.  

So while the back-and-forth competition is initially funny, it gets increasingly more serious and sinister, as the number of black head cubes dwindle and desperation to possess the cube (sort of symbolic of a life-force) gives rise to chaos.

_______________________________

I’m not sure whether that’s going to be part of the performance because after the first one, I had to withdraw because I couldn’t commit to all the rehearsal dates. Did so reluctantly, but had to. Damn, because they look like they’re having a lot of fun if the pictures on the GRINDER-MAN blog is anything to go by. Ah well,  wish them all the luck! Going to watch the performance tomorrow.

If you’re curious about it, you can visit the official GRINDER-MAN website, but might not be much help since it’s all in Japanese, so take a look at the information on Facebook too.

Details of performace:

GRINDER-MAN
MUSTANG SINGAPORE
20 – 22 Jun (Fri – Sun)
esplanade waterfront
FREE

FRI
6.30 – 7pm
9.30pm – 10pm

SAT
6.30 – 7pm
9.15 – 9.45pm

SUN
6.30 – 7pm
8.15 – 8.45pm

image: flipside / esplanade