Theatre Dance Visual Arts Music Young People's Theatre

Much of the dance work in Five Arts Centre is based on the trailblazing work of Marion D’Cruz and Dancers, the resident dance company founded in 1983 by artistic director and “dance terrorist” Marion D’Cruz. Staging big shows in and out of Kuala Lumpur in the 1980s when there was little concept of contemporary dance, Marion D’Cruz and Dancers opened up new choreographic spaces and new ideas with iconic pieces such as Urn Piece and Swan Song. This radical work continued through the 1990s in major productions such as Alter Art, Let Me Speak, Dance Tonpu II and Playground.

The dance practice aims to continuously find and work at a dynamic vocabulary for contemporary Malaysian dance. The work draws strongly from Asian dance traditions and Martial Arts - like classical Malay dance, Indonesian dance, Silat, Tai Chi – and reconstructs these into new forms combining tradition and modernity, east and west, old and new. The themes and issues explored centre on the Malaysian experience, often making social commentary. The final style is very much dance theatre – with movement, text, voice, music and often multi-media sensations.

Marion D’Cruz and Dancers also broke boundaries across arts genres, working with non-dancers as well as visual and performance artists such as Wong Hoy Cheong, Liew Kungyu, Raja Shahriman, Chee Sek Thim and John Lai. Other members of Marion D’Cruz and Dancers over the years have included Anne James, Ivy N. Josiah, Foo May Lyn, Lee Su Feh, Carolyn Lau and Anne George.

Five Arts Centre has also provided a space for many choreographers in dance and theatre productions over the past 20 years, working with new generations of exciting choreographers such as Judimar Monfils, Aida Redza, Lena Ang and Mohd. Arifwaran. International choreographers such as Boi Sakti of Indonesia, Deborah Barnard of the UK, Keiko Takeya and Hiroshi Koike of Japan have also choreographed and collaborated for Five Arts Centre productions.