Choy Ka Fai , SoftMachine: The Return

Artist, choreographer, and speculative designer Choy Ka Fai returns to tanzhaus nrw with SoftMachine: The long-term research on Asian contemporary dance, begun in 2012, condenses field research, interviews, and encounters with more than 80 artists into a living archive. More than a decade later, it will be questioned anew: Solo performances by Rianto and Surjit Nongmeikapam shift the focus onto biographies and artistic practice. Between performance, lecture and documentation, a thinking through bodies unfolds that opens possible futures through back referencing.

With SoftMachine: The Return, Choy Ka Fai again takes up central project matters: How does artistic practice change over time? Which traces are left in dance artists’ bodies by political, social, and personal upheaval? And how can the diverse realities of Asian contemporary dance practices be made visible beyond cultural ascriptions?

Two performative solo works are at the centre: Rianto (Banyumas, Indonesia/Japan) draws an intimate self-portrait that retraces his quest for love and belonging between dance, gender, and cultural tradition. Based on his experiences as a Lengger dancer, the performance negotiates questions of identity, desire, and social expectation. Surjit Nongmeikapam (Imphal, Manipur, India) tells a tale about his path from the social margins into the political centre. On the backdrop of the conflicts in his home region, the work negotiates ostracism, resistance, and self-assertion. Dance, in this, appears as physically inscribed knowledge that connects individual experience with historical and political context.

Both solos are part of a larger project that perceives bodies as carriers of memory and knowledge. Choy Ka Fai returns to artists he accompanied for many years and opens a dialogue on continuity, fractures, and changes. From their stories rises a polyphonic image of contemporary dance practices in Asia that refuses exoticizing perspectives and lends visibility to the complexity of artistic realities.

SoftMachine began in 2012 as research into the choreographic landscape in Asia. Its starting point was the observation that contemporary dance in Asia was often perceived via exoticizing ascriptions in international dance and performance contexts. Therefore, the focus lay on the working realities of independent dance artists as well as on the question of how they could be made visible beyond cultural stereotyping. The research led to a first stage version for the festival on the Esplanade in Singapore in 2015. With SoftMachine: The Return, this longstanding research will be read anew. The recurring encounters with the artists involved directs its gaze onto the passing of time, onto shared experiences and onto the conditions of artistic community. So, from the reflection of the past, a thinking about possible futures for contemporary dance in Asia rises.

On commission from Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and with the world premiere in Singapore, this production was presented in September 2025 at da:ns focus – Connect Asia Now (CAN) during a weekend that put works by and in collaboration with Asian artists into the spotlight wherein the focus lay on the regionally diverse voices and creative impulses.

Languages: English and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), with English surtitles.