by Bilqis Hijjas

Dreams in November
Hands Percussion
KLPac Pentas 1
19 November 2009

Hands Percussion has built a reputation for its high impact and high energy shows, with strong production values. In the uncertain environment of the arts in Malaysia, where expensive shows can be terrible and free shows excellent, Hands has consistently guaranteed a fun night out for all comers, whether connoisseurs or neophytes. This is what makes their most recent offering, Dreams in November, such a departure from the norm.

Last Thursday night, Pentas 1 at KLPac was packed with Hands fans. Groups of schoolchildren and gaggles of housewives waited eagerly for the lights to dim. But when the lights came up again during intermission and at the end of the night, the atmosphere was much more subdued.  It wasn’t that Hands Percussion failed to deliver, but that it delivered a different show than expected, and its mainstream audience was not altogether convinced.  Although Dreams included the usual high-energy large-group drum performances, these items were interspersed with quieter and, dare I say, more arty scenes.

There were extended periods of dancers moving in silence, during which the audience shifted impatiently, snored, and gossiped. A group of schoolgirls behind me burst into giggles over the appearance of dancers clad in briefs. Sometimes audience members provided their own sound effects where they felt they were lacking. Judging by the loss of focus in the audience around me, some musical scenes went on longer than the audience could tolerate, especially the solo drumming and the female percussionists on their platforms. Before intermission, when the audience generally needs to be pumped up and sent out into the foyer excited and chattering, an extended fan dance scene, lyrical and gentle, had the opposite effect. And at the end of the show, instead of going out with an enormous crash of drums, the lights faded slowly as a single dreamer sleepwalked slowly through the audience and out the back door of the stage, leaving the audience bemused and silent.

But for all its unorthodox dramatic choices, Dreams was full of well-crafted poetic images. In the opening scene, a silver Chinese lion lies snoozing in the middle of the stage, head tucked into its back feet like a cat, the scales on its side rippling like a fish. When it rouses to dance lightly on its feet, it seems to shrink and expand, now tall, now very small, on a stage covered with red cloth, bright as a Rothko colour field, which resonates green on your retina when you blink.

At the end of the first large drumming sequence, the drummers in white skirts whirl like dervishes, their drum sticks held out in both hands before them. They continue to turn long after we feel they should have collapsed to the ground with dizziness. The lights dim agonizingly slowly, and at the end, wondrously, they still and remain standing. Not reeling, not swaying – just standing.

A round platform slowly rotates onto the stage. On it sits a girl in a white spiky fur stole, surrounded by glass vessels which ring in different pitches when she taps them. Like a snow queen on a drifting iceberg, she plays her glass bowls like icicles, the shifting lights of the aurora moving around her. Later another platform enters, this one covered in brass gamelan units, with the player in their midst lit like a pinnacle in a lava flow.

A man lies on top of the big king drum, arms and legs outstretched. His shadow on the ground marks the limits of his pool of light like the Vitruvian Man. Two other men join him. Their slow movement gradually gains pace, until they are leaping on and off the drum, supported each other to reach greater height. Two men hang off the third in a weight-sharing hold. The lightness and control of their jumps is admirable – these men are gymnasts as well as drummers!

The drumming, unsurprisingly, is supreme. The variations in rhythm, the sense of humour and connection between the drummers, and the different methods of making sounds that are more than just gimmicks – sliding sticks flat across the skin of the drum in aggressive conversations, or whacking at the drums with long flexible rattans that give more power and leverage – all conspire to elicit a deep kinesthetic sympathy from the bodies of the audience. This is Hands’ real strength, and I cannot help wishing that there was more of this, and more attention paid to maintaining a conventional dramatic trajectory throughout the entire work.

Nevertheless, with Hands, you get the sense that they know what they are doing. They are so good at delivering crowd-pleasing commercial shows that their choices with this production suggest that this time they are deliberately trying to extend and educate, to stretch their mainstream audience’s viewing capacity. It’s an admirable intent, but it remains to be seen how much their audience will decide to accompany them on this journey.

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Images supplied by Hands Percussion.

Bilqis Hijjas’s dancerly reviews may also be found at KL Dance Watch.