Camy Tam
An event entitled “Curiouser and Curiouser – A Curious Race with Alice” (探索愛麗絲的爭奇鬥妍), organised by the Ieng Chi Dance Association (英姿舞園), curated by local artist Mel Cheong Hoi I (張凱儀) and held in conjunction with other local artists, is being shown at Macau Tower.
The event is co-organised by the Macau Tower Convention & Entertainment Centre and sponsored by Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC).
Cheong, the curator, told The Macau Post Daily yesterday that “Curiouser and Curiouser” (C&C)* is a collaborative annual event initiated by herself and local graffiti artist Pat Lam Ka Hou (林家豪 also known as PIBG) in 2017. Cheong said that the event is a continuous project based on the Alice in Wonderland story by Lewis Carroll, and this is the third year. “The event is for local artists to create a special gift in the form of an artistic creation for local children each year to let them have the opportunity to see more local diversified arts and plant a seed of dreams in their truest self,” Cheong said.
Cheong said that she and Lam bring everyone each year to a new chapter down the road of Alice’s Wonderland and this year it’s the 3rd chapter in which the Dodo takes the audience to the event “A Curious Race with Alice”. “The best way to explain it is to do it,” said the Dodo.
According to Wikipedia, the Dodo is a fictional character appearing in Chapters two and three of the 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). The Dodo is a caricature of the author. A popular but unsubstantiated belief is that Dodgson chose the particular animal to represent himself because of his stammer, and thus would accidentally introduce himself as “Do-do-dodgson”.
Historically, the Dodo was a non-flying bird that lived on the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It became extinct in the mid-17th century during the colonisation of the island by the Dutch.
Cheong said that a unique crossover between the installation by Lam and performance art by local performers, and the energies subsumed under this collaboration can be experienced through the lighting, costumes, music and the interactive aesthetics of the performances as well as the immersive exploration within the installation art pieces.
Cheong told The Macau Post Daily that the Ieng Chi Dance Association has prepared a dance performance called “Quantum Fantasy – A mind in consciousness is the matrix of all matter” choreographed by Chloe Lao Cho Wa (劉楚華) about the story for this Sunday (July 4), at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., as well as the Luminous Art Show by Tou Kuok Hong (杜國康) after the 4 p.m. performance for spectators to explore the topic in more depth. Cheong added that she and Lam plan to add different genres to their project next year.
The event also has C&C souvenirs, a special edition drink and cakes for sale at the venue.
The exhibition runs until July 18 on the lower ground floor of Macau Tower. It opens from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. Admission is free.
As part of the government’s COVID-19 epidemic prevention measures, all visitors entering the venue must wear a facemask, have their temperature checked and present their digital health code.
For enquiries, please visit https://www.facebook.com/macautower/posts/4213367802017180
*According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Alice was so surprised by the strange circumstances she found herself in that she (and Lewis Carroll) made up a word – “curiouser”. The expression is still used to mean that something is getting increasingly confounding.
Photos: Camy Tam
