Night at the museum

Night Festival @ The National Museum of Singapore

In my previous post, I “cut and pasted” details of this event, Night Festival, which featured The Dancing Sky, a spectacular sky performance brought to us from Italy by Studio Festi. The event was jointly organized and held at the National Museum of Singapore and SMU Campus Green.

LONG & IMAGE HEAVY POST WARNING!

David

I was really interested to go watch the event and managed to bring along 2 of my ji muis, Paro and Choi Harn to go watch the 11.30pm show with me. (It’s been a long time since we’ve gone for an outing! A late night outing… ) We went for the later show coz yours truly here had to go for another concert earlier that evening. (I’ll blog about this one later when I feel like it.) Yeah, so back to the festival… We reached quite early before the show started. We saw swarms of people walking towards the entrance of the museum and so we thought we had to go in or something. Apparently not. We went in and we were greeted with this 8.5m tall statue of David. It’s a replica of the famous Michaelangelo statue by and Indonesian artist Titirubi. David is wrapped in this kebaya print like fabric. Hmmm.. I wonder if there’s a meaning to it. Anyway, it was the only remaining thing left of the Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre exhibition held sometime last March (which I kinda regret not going to…).

National Museum of Singapore

We really didn’t know where to go so we decided to go ask the info counter personnel for some directions. She told us it was just outside the museum grounds. Best spot to view the whole thing would by the roadside along SMU Campus Green. So, the three of us made our way back there and found a good spot to stand. We were kinda bored so we just snapped pics of the beautifully lighted museum building.

Finally, it started with the opening act, two dancers on the stage, dancing to the song Hijo De La Luna. I simply love this song. So much that I actually went to look for the piano score and listened to all the different versions I could get my hands from YouTube. I recorded a short clip of the dance, though it’s rather blurry. (This is where I would like to take the opportunity to ask if anyone would like to donate a nice semi pro cam/dslr for me to play. :P)

Enjoyed it? I thought it was beautiful. Anyway, that’s just the beginning. More to come.

We also saw this huge ship flying in the air and an acrobat dancing around it. Common sense tells us these things can’t fly. They are actually supported by cables attached to them and steered by people on the ground. It was rather amusing to watch them running about, up and down to make sure the props and the acrobats did not crash. There was even a water sprinkler which sprayed down on the ship and dancer halfway through the performance. Gave it this very nice misty effect. It’s like the ship is being caught in a storm.

Flying ship

Then, we saw this amazing sight! A piano floating in the air, with a ballerina dancing around it and on it. The music was crystal like… I just wonder how the cables can support a grand piano up there. I’m pretty sure it’s hollow.

Flying Piano (Photo credit: http://spoiltforchoice.blogspot.com/)

After this was another act, by two dancers and the moon. It’s interesting how the two dancers can balance themselves around the sphere. Gracefully done.

Like the moon (Photo credit: http://spoiltforchoice.blogspot.com/)

More spheres floating about in the sky. This time, there were two spheres, each had a dancer attached to it. This was really nice as they actually came down low enough for us to touch. I simply love the orange sphere. With the museum and sky as the backdrop, it really looks like a planet.

Orange sphere

Harmony of Spheres

The sky wasn’t the limit. The road was actually blocked up because some of the performances were held there. One of them was this giant blue sphere with a dancer floating inside it. The other street performance was this giant ladies parading down the road. It was really quite cool as we were standing right in front of them.

Queen of the Tides

The Progeny of Dreams

That was the end of the first segment of the show. The second segment was continued on the SMU Campus Green. I shall continue that in my next post I think. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this clip made as a video response to the previous video I posted on YouTube. It’s has short clips of most of the performances that night. Enjoy!