Night Festival 2008 Opening Ceremony

Singapore National Museum launched the Night Festival by having The Dancing Sky by Studio Festi, a performing troop from Italy. The show was on 18-19 July 2008, and they had two shows each night.

There was a delay because there were people standing at the traffic area and the poor emcee made numerous appeals for them to move over to the SMU Green but either the crowd there didn't understand simple English, or they were just too stubborn to MOVE and thanks to them, the rest of us had to wait 30 minutes. It's a good lesson for the organisers cuz if they didn't want people to stand at certain areas, cordon it off or make better use of the security officers to get the people moving. Saw a lot of security officers standing around when they could have actually gone to help the emcee to move the people around.

So at 9.30pm, the show finally started and it was awesome as the crowd oohed and ahhhed. We saw a huge ship 'flying' in mid air moving smoothly while an acrobat was dancing as she floated about. If you look close enough, you can spot how there are cables attached to the acrobat as well as the props and there are runners who are constantly pulling and making sure that the different parts didn't crash into each other, while making everything look so smooth and effortless. From the second picture on top, you can see water spray to give that effort of the ship being out at sea and caught in a storm. Nice!

Yes, that's an actual piano floating mid-air with a pianist playing while a dancer performed, dancing on the piano while moving from one end to another. Was just amazing lah..

What is interesting about this is that there were two acrobat dancers at either end with the sphere in the centre. For all three to remain horizontal, the two ladies have to be of equal weight to balance the whole thing. It all looked so simple but the work that goes behind each act must be real huge.

Instead of zooming, I took a picture with the whole Museum at the background and you can see how it provided a magnificient backdrop to The Dancing Sky. And unfortunately the moon wasn't out cuz it would have been even more awesome. Slawek was there during the rehearsal the night before and he had a great picture with the moon around. Will have to see if I can borrow that picture.

This was the hightlight of the first part of The Dancing Sky when two HUGE spheres came out with two acrobat dancers and they moved about, even coming close to the audience at one point.

The spheres were constantly moving and it's a shame but I didn't managed to get a clear picture of the reddish sphere. It looked really gorgeous up in the sky and these pictures aren't doing the whole show any justice. You just had to be there and enjoy the whole experience :o)

The second part was a display on SMU Green which used the different elements - fire, water and air. The two pictures (above and below) show different images which were reflected on the water sprays and it was fun trying to figure them out as they came on.

And below, there was an acrobat who used water as part of her act and she was splashing water at the audience while she dived in and out of her bowl. And have to say that I am totally impressed how she looked good even when drenched wet!

And here's a picture of her and her splashes. Very clever way of playing with water to give a cool effect. Yes, we the audience were impressed.

And the glass on the bowl helped to magnify her too. What we noticed during our two hour wait, one of the crew member had to monitor the water temperature. Guess had to make sure that it was just right and comfortable enough for the acrobat.

And another shot of the water lady in her bowl. The word FISH BOWL kept popping my mind as I watched her swim about...

The last two pictures show the fire display where you can dancers performing with props that were lit up. First one did an 'umbrella' dance where the spokes were flaming and looked nice when she spun that around.

Thankfully, it only started to drizzle some after the first set was over. Am not sure if they could carry on with the second show which started at 11.30pm and was suppose to go on till about 2am. I sure hope they managed to cuz there would have been people disappointed if they had to cancel the show.

I would definitely love to see Studio Festi perform again but hopefully in a different setting where we didn't have to fight for good views, wait two hours before just to get a spot or wait 30 minutes for people who didn't know how to follow given instructions....