Ong Keng Sen

THE CONTINUUM - Beyond the killing fields

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30 NOV e 1 DEC 8.30 pm - 2 DEC 5.00 pm

PALLADIUM

National Premiere
How fragile is the tree and how deep its roots: The Continuum is a passionate account of traditional dance that becomes the symbol of the suffering of the Cambodian people under the dictatorship of the Khmer Rouges. In order to achieve the “proletarian” state, Pol Pot ordered the deportation and elimination of the entire intellectual class: technicians, professors, engineers, simple university graduates and even those who spoke English or French.
And artists as well were suppressed: the Royal court dance ensemble was exiled with many of its members either murdered or imprisoned in labour camps. Daughter of a dancer, and she herself a dancer, Em Theay is among the very few to have survived.
Today, she is the embodiment as well as the living encyclopaedia of the ancient Cambodian art of dancing, which is being revived through her in Cambodia.
Her presence on stage and her personal experience, are a counterpoint to other testimonies, and also the energy that drives The Continuum through stories, videos, dances, traditional puppetry and contemporary music.
Conceived and directed by Ong Keng Sen, who achieves his trademark antirealist style articulated over different narrative planes by alternating the use of technology, video and traditional forms primarily from Asia. Keng Sen has also developed “docu-performance”, the definition he gives to a highly evocative and spectacular civic theatre such as The Continuum or his previous works Broken Birds and Workhorse Afloat, which respectively deal with the conditions of prostitutes in Japan and immigrant workers in Singapore.

Born in 1963 in Singapore, Ong Keng Sen is the artistic director of Theatre Works in his city. As a member of Asia-Europe Network, he actively contributes to the evolution of contemporary identities and aesthetics within Asia and beyond.

A show presented within the European Festival TEMPS D’IMAGES 2007.

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