SINGAPORE — And so The OPEN begins — with a man in drag “photobombing” his audience, waving golden branches and brandishing a keris in the name of Martha Graham.

With his Singapore International Festival Of Arts (SIFA) performance Martha@...1963 Interview a couple of months away, dancer-choreographer Richard Move was kind enough to give us a glimpse of what to expect with the site-specific performance Martha@ACM at the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Glimpse being the operative word for the most part, unfortunately, as audiences crammed into a corridor while Move-in-Martha (sounds like one of those new MRT courtesy characters eh?) moved between two sections of a gallery, shifting between performances of some of the iconic choreographer’s pieces: Episodes, Night Journey and Clytemnestra, which I can’t really comment much about since there was a statue of a monk right in front of me for the most part.

Still, it was a curious, if slightly frustrating, way of presenting — as I peered through glass, not seeing the entire thing but merely (sometimes prolonged) glimpses of a man channeling a late dance legend surrounded by artefacts.

In fact, I also wondered why in the world they chose the ACM as the venue (and it did initially feel a bit hardsell), until I read in the programme booklet how much Graham liked Asia.

Loved the final piece, though. The 1930 solo Lamentation where Move-in-Martha, wrapped in purple stretch fabric, twisted and pulled and wrestled with it, desiring to both extricate and embrace his/her constraints. Inside one of the Indian galleries, it finally felt like a special, intimate moment.

So yes, my OPEN experience begins and right now I’m intrigued by it. Is it a prolonged, 17-day SIFA teaser? A pop-up arts academy like they say? Only one way to find out — and that’s to set, ahem, camp at The OPEN’s main HQ 72-13 (aka TheatreWorks’ space) for the entire first weekend. If I’m in the mood, I’ll be live tweeting from there (@mayomartin).

The OPEN runs until July 12. For more information, visit http://theopen.sifa.sg/. There’s another Martha@ACM performance this Saturday, June 28, at 8pm. You can also check out TODAY’s art microsite #artlanders (http://www.todayonline.com/artlanders) to follow or participate in The OPEN social media buzz. Tag your tweets and Instagram pictures with any of these hashtags: #artlanders, #theopensg and #sifa2014.