Managed to catch two back-to-back performances at this year’s NUS Arts Festival, which kicked off today. Nothing much to tie them together, unless you, ahem, count the titles of spell#7’s And Then There Was One and THE Dance Company’s Solo/Duet.

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The former is the group’s latest audio tour done in collaboration with NUS students. Like last year’s #157, you’re back at the Baba House at Neil Road, this time following a murder mystery story.

The first of two whodunit shows this month (Sing’Theatre’s doing 8 Women later on) and inspired by an actual crime in Neil Road in the 1920s, you listen in on a certain Detective Dixon’s investigation of a murder that took place at the shophouse.

You’re armed with an info-laden “detective’s notebook” and an MP3 player with 12 tracks, each one written by a student and introducing you to the different characters of this noir-ish tale that reminded me slightly of the group’s previous audio tour Ghostwalking. (There is a bit of a direct connection as Ghostwalking collaborator Ben Slater was briefly involved in shaping this piece with a talk on film noir.)

I like this better than #157 in that it simultaneously situates Baba House within the larger context of its neighbourhood — you don’t just step back in time, but step out and walk through the back alleys while nearby landmarks (church, hospital, train station) are integrated into the narrative. (Although it has to be said that the pacing and directions, particularly when you’re outside and open to distractions, needs getting used to.)

And while #157 felt like it had to deal with the whole Peranakan angle, the house here is treated more as the site of a generic murder. It’s a drama that could’ve easily been elsewhere, even as it touches on class and cultural issues tied to the house’s fictional residents and uses the more unique aspects of the Baba House (such as the peepholes on the second floor) to push the story forward.

So who pulled the trigger? The maid? The burglar? The doctor? Here’s a clue: It definitely wasn’t the butler.

Because there’s no butler. Chang-jang-jang!

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If And Then There Was One had a big(gish) reveal, Solo/Duet also offered an amazing climax.

The three-in-one showcase kicked off with Mui Cheuk-Yin’s untitled piece featuring Yarra Ileto doing a lovely solo employing a huge piece of cloth, expertly manipulated so that the billowing fabric simultaneously becomes a metaphor for restriction, as it wraps around her, and yet offers the freedom of shapes. It was also nice to see the athletic, vigorous Ileto in a gentler and more delicate role.

While it could’ve done with a bit more “editing”, Kuik Swee Boon’s Un-form was the most interesting conceptually, for me. A kind of mash up of three solo pieces by dancers Lee Mun Wai, Sherry Tay and Jessica Christina that acknowledge individuality within the collective.

Starting off with Lee’s start-stop performance to the start-stop drum and bass of Lamb, he then proceeds to describe Tay, who comes on with her own solo. On one hand you’re given a personality and biographical profile of Tay, on the other, Tay is dancing. Is there a connection? Are you urged to make one? Yumz.

The same happens when Christina comes in — and this time, Lee asserts his own thoughts, spurred by a discussion with the former on why they dance at all.

In Un-form, you see three styles, all completely different, at times syncing into choreographyed movements — and one is encouraged to make the connections.

But the best of the lot has to be Present by Kim Jae Duk, who’s now apparently THE’s resident choreographer. With Adrian Tan’s excellent lighting and done to the tune of Ravel’s Bolero that triumphantly builds up, we have this humour-tinged duet between Zhuo Zihao and Mu Wi.

The image of them sitting down at the start could just as well refer to Kim and Kuik’s own sitting-down segment in Re: Ok… But Their quirky percussive tics with their backs to the audience, before switching to face us, elbows on table, shivering — here is Zhuo and Mu as a kind of Statler and Waldorf or Laurel and Hardy duo sans slapstick or sarcasm, a deadpan pairing so potent that, heck, they just take off their shoes in glee near the end of this hypnotic piece.

(And Then There Was One is on from March 13 to 17 and 20 to 22, various times from 5pm, NUS Baba House, 157 Neil Road. Solo/Duet has one more show tomorrow, March 10, 8pm, at UCC Theatre. All tickets from Sistic. For more information on the festival, which runs until March 23, visit http://nus.edu.sg/cfa/NAF_2013/index.html.)