Trend #1: Dance takes two steps forward

2014 will be the year mainstream audiences fully embrace the Singapore dance scene. Although long-time dance outfit ECNAD performed its swansong early this year, there were positive signs that the art form is on the rise. The two biggest groups — Singapore Dance Theatre and T.H.E. Dance Company — celebrated their anniversaries with gusto (their 25th and fifth, respectively). The former opened a spankin’ new space, while the latter went full throttle with its festival, Contact. This year also saw the official debut of Re:Dance Theatre, even as older groups like Maya Dance Theatre, Frontier Danceland and Arts Fission kept themselves busy. Innovative works continued to sprout from familiar faces like Ming Poon, Scarlet Yu, Daniel Kok and Choy Ka Fai, with younger choreographers like Christina Chan stepping from the wings, too. Plus, we hear there’s a new book on Singapore dance that’s slated to come out pretty soon — that has got to count for something, right? The rise of hip-hop and other popular forms among the youth, with competitions like Movement held left and right, will only serve to whet audience’s appetites for currently less-mainstream forms. If the organic momentum this year is sustained among the younger generation, we can well see everyone taking a step or two forward. And the public following their lead.

Trend #2: You can be a published author

All things indie will be big next year, but none will make a bigger impact than independent publishing. How do we know? Well, at this year’s extremely successful Singapore Writers Festival, for example, the sheer number of titles launched by Singapore authors — 56 — indicated a number of things: That commercial publishers were more than willing to support the literary scene; that there were enough writers out there; and that the public was actually buying these books. With avenues such as the Singapore Art Book Fair (which featured DIY books by artists, among others), we’re betting that more people will be encouraged to self-publish and promote their books or hook up with adventurous indie publishers, such as Math Paper Press, an imprint of BooksActually (no, they’re not just a bookstore), which is aiming to release around 30 to 35 titles next year. Take a number. Or maybe skip the queue and DIY.

Trend #3: Art will occupy the streets

If our recent preoccupation with street and urban art was driven more by curiosity (Sticker Lady, anyone?), 2014 will see the art form being embraced more voraciously by the mainstream. Thanks to the all-pervading presence of artists like SKL0, TraceOne and ZERO in “un-street-like” — but nonetheless high-traffic — venues and events such as the Singapore Zoo, Sentosa and the Affordable Art Fair, you can expect to see more such artists dipping their brush into the paint, as it were.

After all, they have been accepted by the establishment (ZERO, for example, received this year’s Young Artist Award; while the group RSCLS actually got studio space in the Aliwal Arts Centre), so the next step is pretty obvious. The writing — or painting — on the wall looks positive.

Trend that has to die in 2014: There’s one piece of drama we’d rather not see at all: Horror stories from underpaid, overworked, unprotected freelance artists across the entire scene. Let’s go for happy endings can?