2016/ December-- performance, Boxing Day Dinner, Langgeng Art Foundation, Yogyakarta.
My assistant Erson Padapiran is full of info about food, so I decided to research Colonial Javanese recipe. We were also collecting oral stories about people in Yogyakarta at the time of Raffle's looting of the palace. Many gossipy tales of princess-warriors and the flight of the sultan led me to want to tell the tales through a dinner party, I have devised a 10-course meal in which each dish corresponds to a Javan story. A film-maker friend from George Town Festival was visiting over Christmas so I decided to put this test performance out. A script for the stories of Raffles in Java is written after this event. The performance proved to be a large production, and is stalled and related to gallery in Singapore as a "performance in your mouth" event. In retrospect, this would be perfect to carry out over the Corvid lockdown...alas the BLM reminded me how easily it can become an Empire Ball in a Singapore setting.
more photo of this test- performance at https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B10Jr1PPdJ1tskp
