Improvisation nurtures presence, creativity, and responsiveness in performers. It strengthens bodily awareness, builds confidence, deepens ensemble connection, and empowers dancers to make choices in the moment keeping performance alive, adaptable, and authentic.
Since the mid 1990s, these practices have been explored in Penang whenever possible, often emerging organically within creative processes and project development. When visiting artists arrive, or when Penang-based practitioners return from abroad, opportunities occasionally arise to share these practices through workshops for the local performing arts community, across 20-25 years.
However, today there are no studios or performing arts institutions in Penang that offer regular training in practices such as dance improvisation, contact improvisation, or Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Learning has largely taken place through short-term workshops such as those presented by Euphoria, Studio Pentas, SOTA USM, or PEARL, during festivals like GTF, or through independent initiatives led by local or visiting artists and groups from outside Penang.
As a result, whenever opportunities arise for younger practitioners to learn from visiting artists, we eagerly step in to learn, exchange, and work alongside them.
It's not something new in dance practise, but for the new learners it's vital as improvisation provide rare access to embodied knowledge, creative exchange, and professional growth that is otherwise not regularly available in Penang.
And for experienced artists improvisation keeps practice alive and evolving, sharpening listening and adaptability, renewing creative curiosity, and opening space to unlearn habits while deepening artistic maturity and freedom.
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This presentation concludes a two-day dance workshop led by Penang dance artists Paula Pau and Lee Kok Liang, who have been living and working in Europe for many years. Through shared practices, improvisation, and exchange with local dancers, the workshop opened a space for collective exploration and experimentation. Together, the artists and participants explored rhythm, space, connection, and imagination.