The celebrities who will be speaking at the ‘H’ Factor workshop.

Harnessing celebrities to mentor creative talents among our youth. Sounds like a great idea, writes HANNAH TAN.

THE creative entertainment industry is often perceived with much negativity. Rock stars, movie stars, supermodels, musicians and performers in general are often associated with drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals.
It is therefore understandable that parents, especially in this part of the globe, aren’t too keen on their kids developing their creative skills and talents.
While it is generally true that most celebrities make poor role models, yet like everything else there are exceptions. The trick is to highlight these positive exceptions and harness their influence on the society.
There is no denying the supreme influencing power of the creative entertainment industry. In the United Kingdom, the music industry alone contributes ΰ5 billion per annum to the country’s GDP. Imagine if that were to happen in Malaysia!
Does Malaysia have what it takes to do the same? Do we even have the creative talents in the first place?
I strongly believe we do, except that many of these talents are, as of yet, undiscovered. They are buried under the emphasis on academic excellence. They are discouraged by the so-called ‘reality’ of not being able to make a living as a creative individual.
How do we change that?
With a new level of commitment towards nurturing a positive cause. It’s time we infect our youths with the positivity bug. Spread the fever for all things good.
By harnessing the influence of recognisable faces from the industry, we can invest in the lives of the young to help them discover and nurture their talents for a good cause.
But in building this generation of creative, skillful and positive individuals, and changing the mindset of the society in general towards the creative entertainment industry, we need everyone’s support, from the government and ministries to the corporate players and the entertainers themselves.
This is where the ‘H’ Factor steps in. The ‘H’ Factor Nationwide Creative Youth Workshop is a series of full-day workshops aimed at cultivating a sense of positivity among the pop-culture community.
Designed for youths aged between 16 to 25, the workshops will be conducted by various celebrities who will be investing their time and sharing their experience with the workshop participants
pro bono. They are:

1. Film and Acting (Hans Isaac)
2. Comedy & Theater (Harith Iskander)
3. Music (Reymee Hussein of Innuendo)
4. Radio (Serena C & Pietro Felix of Mix FM)
5. Dance & Movement (Fellest Yan of Wild Stream Productions)
6. TV Hosting (Hannah Tan)
7. Motion graphics & Animation (Joey Khor of Hue Visualab)
8. Mentalism & Magic (Mentalist & Magician David Lai)

Our vision is to turn this campaign into a mentorship programme and eventually an academy where talents can be groomed for the local and international creative content arena.
The workshops, to be conducted in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Johor Baru and Kota Kinabalu this month, will not only be a clean and fun-filled extravaganza for the youth but also an avenue for them to identify their creative interests and subsequently plan for a career in the fields of of their choice.
We hope that by giving them a head start in their creative endeavours, we can encourage them to spend their leisure time wisely without compromising their integrity and moral values.
I would like to end with a quote from Thurgood Marshall: “None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got here because somebody bent down and helped us.”
The first of the ‘H’ Factor Nationwide Creative Youth Workshops will kick off in Penang on Oct 12. To register, visit www.h-factor.info.

New Straits Times

Indian dance to go the yoga way
 
By Suchitra Chakravarti Shekary

Dancer, activist, choreographer, actress, writer - the roles are infinite and so is Mallika Sarabhai’s charm.

In Bengaluru recently for her dance theatre performance on Parsis, Mallika was quite excited about the venture with Avesthagen. “Any community that thinks differently, has been hugely enterprising and has enriched a culture not deprived it, is worth studying. Villoo (of Avesthagen) and my social commitment to this country overlapped and that’s how this project came about,” she says. She also believes respect for the environment and the need to give back to society was what brought them together.

This is exactly why she feels India is going the wrong way with the globalisation craze. “From a country which could take the lead in humanness, ethics and spirituality, we are soon going to lose our uniqueness. How many villagers even understand the concept India shining?”

As a Bharatnatyam dancer Mallika did face some creative conflict with her mother the legendary Mrinalini Sarabhai. She rejected overtly patriarchal themes and preferred to use Bharatnatyam to portray social causes. “Though initially we did have creative conflict, it’s my mother who has given me values and ethics and I have made sure my children are surrounded by this too. My daughter will resort to social activism; my son is much less anti-establishment. But we are all fulfilled in what we are doing at the end of the day.”

She also goes on to say that she doesn’t like mixing dance styles. “I like to juxtapose to show how similarly the body moves but I prefer keeping Bharatnatyam within its structure. I create contemporary work with masks, puppets and what I use depends on what I want to say.”

Mallika is very optimistic about the future of classical Indian dances. She feels as long as dance schools Kalakshetra and her own Darpana are around, these dances will find strength. “I am sure it will go the yoga way where once it reaches the West it will become more attractive to us.”

She also believes these dances were always meant for the erudite viewer, for mingling the atma and parmatma. “I don’t know why we have turned elite into a dirty word. Why does everything have to be at the lowest public denominator?” she muses.

Most art forms have come out of deep introspection and personal experience and Mallika’s is a constant research on how to communicate social causes to villagers and the uneducated. She’s onto Unicef’s tenth project where 55 young people will be trained as actor activists.

Performances on nutrition, pre- and ante-natal health, hygiene, HIV are some areas where these actors will spread the message.

Darpana, meanwhile, has students trained in all creative exercises and they are given complete artistic freedom. Even technicians get to take part in voice training and are prepared to take to the stage when needed. “The basic idea was to get rid of the mentality that something was ashuddh. You should not be afraid of change.”

She still insists on one hour of Bharatnatyam for her students “so you never get loose on basics”.

The dancer has so many interesting projects on hand you wonder how she finds the time for all of this. She is promoting eco-friendly khadi, handloom weavers, street theatre with foreign collaboration, a film on a Mangaliyar woman breaking a 1,000 year old tradition and a film on textiles. So what inspires her to explore new subjects and themes? “Though music doesn’t socially motivate me, it celebrates my excitement in dance.”

Mallika is gung-ho about the youth of the country and she feels she is perfectly suited to influence the thought process of youngsters. She has managed to create a volunteer core of 7,000 young people who take up specific projects.

Dancers strike an acrobatic pose
 

Although the truest essences of dance lie in rhythm and three-dimensional space, the art is so naturally picturesque and photogenic that any exhibition in which one photographer devotes himself to the subject should be interesting for the different aspects it reveals. Frank Capri has just opened such a show at the World Financial Center’s Courtyard Gallery called “Capri’s Camera on Dance.”

The subjects of Mr. Capri’s 29 photographs include dancers from ballet, modern dance and acrobatics. He shows them in the classroom, in performance and in garden and urban open-air settings. Though most of his studies depict dancers in color and full length, there are two black-and-white pictures and one facial close-up (Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Its emphasis is on the sensational, and generally on the acrobatic. Four women are seen, each with one hand clutching a foot or calf behind her head; three are seen in 180-degree splits of various kinds; and 10 are shown in major backbends, usually with both arms and head thrown back, often while on point. Mr Capri seems to have little feeling for the less flashy moments that give dance much of its contrast and flavor.One quartet of Joffrey Ballet School female students at the barre, obviously modelled on Degas’s studies, is so unspontaneous as to be irksomely cute. (Degas’s spell is that his working women seem unaware that they’re being recorded.) A photograph of American Ballet Theater’s Julie Kent and Mr Capri bowing to each other, has a coy emphasis (”Me and this famous star who dances at the Met!”), just as the close-up of Mr Baryshnikov is notable solely for the subject’s celebrity status.

One work, “Ayo Jackson and Shaneeka Harrell,” showing two dancers from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company, has a quality of honest dance energy unlike anything else here. True, Ms Jackson is seen in yet another acrobatic position, gymnastically stretching up from the floor, but one leg is vertically extended with a linear force that transcends flash.

And Ms Harrell is simply jumping, arm extended sideways, making a shape that neatly, wittily echoes Ms Jackson’s.

In the theatre Jones/Zane choreography has invariably been devoid of interest to me; in context of the exhibition, however, this image came as a relief. Several of these photographs show dancers before famous New York settings: the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and others. Among these, “In Memory 9/11″ is opportunistically horrid.

Against a view of the downtown skyline laden with fatal smoke, two ballerinas in tutus fill the foreground, one waving the American flag (it seems to be turning into smoke itself), the other stretched in yet another of Mr. Capri’s backbends, her hand flamboyantly pressed to her brow. At least there is some larkiness to “Leslie Cardona.”

This dancer here poses on point in black tights and tutu on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway and flamboyantly stretches one leg high before her. But it is “Nataly Ibagimov, Times Square” that, alas, best sums up Mr Capri’s work. Dressed in yellow, she stands on one leg between two yellow cabs, holding - Mr. Capri’s favorite trick - her other leg proudly behind her head.

Deccan Chronicle

SINGAPORE: The idea of a township for foreign workers had taken off in places like the Middle East, where dormitories for foreign workers, which are sustainable and self-contained, are said to house more than 100,000 people.

In Singapore, dormitory operators said this idea could take off, given the acute shortage of foreign workers’ housing.

There are 756,000 foreign workers in Singapore in 2006, with a higher number during the construction boom. Most of the workers live in 36 permanent commercially-run dormitories and 18 industrial or warehouse developments.

To meet the shortage in dormitories, the government has said it will be releasing 65,000 more bed spaces in 11 new dormitory sites by 2010.

The concept of foreign worker townships is new in Singapore, but self-contained dormitories had sprung up, like the one at Penjuru Place in the Western part of Singapore which houses 6,000 foreign workers.

The Penjuru Dorm has a canteen, a minimart and even a wet market. For recreation, there is an exercise corner and a space for the workers to play a game of sepak takraw. Cable TV is also available in the flats.

Each unit is the size of a 2-room HDB flat and comes with a bedroom, a living area, a kitchen and toilets. Housing is paid for by the workers’ employers and can cost about S$180 per person per month.

Dormitory operators said townships will be similar to this, but on a much larger scale.

Director of Mini Environment Services Pte Ltd, Mohd Jinna, said: “We will be able to handle 18 to 20 thousand workers in one location, with segments of maybe four dormitories.

“There will be a cinema theater, shopping centre, minimarts. We (will) have a beer garden for these workers to consume their liquor in-house rather than going out to disturb the residents.” But with such a big township, security may be an issue.

At the Penjuru Dorm, foreign workers are housed in 2 sections of 3,000 units each for better crowd control. Workers are also given biometric passes to move in and out of their quarters.

A group of these workers has even partnered government agencies like the Singapore Police Force and the National Environment Agency, as well as the nearby Teban Garden estate’s Residents’ Committee, to form a patrol group.

The group of 10 foreign workers call themselves the “Kampong Spirit”. They conduct walkabouts on weekends around nearby housing estates every fortnight.

One such foreign worker, Nathan Neduzcheliyan, said: “When we go for the patrolling, we advise the workers. (If) they (are) sitting under the block, talking loudly, drinking, we go advise the people - ‘don’t do this’. All try to cooperate with everybody. Don’t disturb other people.”

Property manager of Mini Environment Services Pte Ltd, Jimmy Wee, said: “Workers are involved because sometimes Singaporeans do not talk the foreign workers’ lingo.”

The company said residents’ complaints against the foreign workers had dropped since the patrol initiative was introduced a year ago.

But even with such progressive management practices, the question still boils down to whether Singaporeans are comfortable with living in close proximity to townships housing these workers.

-CNA/yt

Channel News Asia