Silences We Are Familiar With—An Ode To Love by Kuik Swee Boon, Bani Haykal and THE Dance Company. Photo courtesy of The Esplanade. Silences We Are Familiar With—An Ode To Love. It’s a mouthful of a title, and a rather sappy one, too, methinks. And yet…. and yet… This time around, The Human Expression sets its sights on that complicated yet oft expounded subject of love. Prior to tonight, I was wary of the group taking it on so blatantly. I mean, when did they get so, well, romantic? Did they all start reading Shakespeare sonnets this year? Silly me. It was haunting. A collaboration between artistic director Kuik Swee Boon and sound artist/B-Quartet and The Observatory member/spoken word poet Bani Haykal, Silences (not to be confused with an early work titled Silence) veers away from the vigorous sensibilities of some of their more recent works and wanders inside somber sanctum to witness the “unfamiliar yet visible,” as Bani says. It’s an interesting reversal when you consider that many exhortations about the notion of love has been phrased exactly the opposite—that which seems familiar and that which we cannot see. But Silences’ views on love is far from clichéd and its honesty is derived from its admission (by way of, again, Bani’s line) that it is “the unfamiliarity that excites”. And so the piece explores Love’s different facets by way of what’s arguably the two art forms most closely related to it and yet, paradoxically, that which has always had a limited vocabulary in grasping it—music and dance. And this very groping for meaning, this rambling sense-making that somehow also feels somewhat cynical, is a sensation that runs wonderfully throughout the work. Yearning, passion, helplessness, anguish, wistfulness—all unfold on the bare white stage, heightened by stark lighting (It’s a set-up that’s so effective that when, during the latter part, they decided to pull out red strings that crisscrossed the stage, it struck me as unnecessary and even gimmicky.) And in essence, that’s the entire structure of Silences—a series of moments utilising most of THE’s familiar arsenal of movements (the breathless running around, the jerky nervous gestures, a quirk here and there) and framed by Bani’s live soundscapes. There are moments that don’t work for me, but there are those that drew me in completely. Sometimes in the most subtle of moments, as in that first part where the dancers rush back and forth the stage in contrast to the odd one who pauses in the middle, creating the uncanny, almost cinematic, sensation of life slowing down in the midst of a frenetic present. As in his previous collaboration with The Necessary Stage, Bani shares the stage with the performers. But whereas he seemed to play a more supporting role in Crossings, his presence is completely essential in the success of Silences. Like a wizard crafting his sonic spells, Bani hunches over the mic whispering lines (I prefer my recited poetry a bit more “solid” but hey) while gesticulating emphatically; he screams (as in really screams) and loops it to provide the chaotic background noise that unveils the darker, more primal side of love as the dancers are released from their even synchronicity and start to fragment into their respective motions as if trapped in a nightmare. Elsewhere, Bani puts his amazing voice to more melodic means, and you hear traces of Jeff Buckley and that dude from Beirut. And of course, there are his astoundingly crafted looped sounds. We heard it in Crossings, but he just ups the ante here, building layers of harmonies with his guitars, voice and other thingees, some of which approached Kid A territory. This melding of Bani’s music and THE’s dance, sometimes approached something close to the sublime. There’s one where Bani employs the bow on his guitar to create a droning sound that builds and builds and wraps itself around an extended duet by Lee Mun Wai and Jessica Christina, as Zhuo Zihao crawls away dejectedly, dressed spiffily in a jacket but without his trousers—a complete scene that’s heartrending and gave me goosebumps. In a piece with lots of things to pick from, it’s this image of Zhuo (who recently received that well-deserved Young Artist Award) slinking away that pinned it down for me—a moment of, literally, getting caught with your pants down. For me, this image of vulnerability encapsulates the whole piece. There’s not much bravado in Silences, it seems quieter and more fragile than their other works, but that’s what I like about it. What Kuik, Bani and gang have tapped into here is impressive, their so-called ode to love is tragically frayed at the seams. (There might still be tickets for Saturday's matinee. Details here.)