SINGAPORE – How does one explore gender through movement and expression?

American choreographer J’Sun Howard, 40, and French choreographer Karine Ponties, 57, take different approaches in their respective pieces, aMoratorium and Same Same. The works are on at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival from Jan 17 to 21.

It is the first time the duo are visiting Singapore, marking the Asian debut for Same Same and Singapore debut for aMoratorium.

Chicago-based Howard began thinking about masculinity in 2013 after his father died at only 50 years of age. He wondered how to grieve his father while simultaneously reckoning with the growing discussions around institutionalised brutality against black and brown men.

The result is aMoratorium, which unpacks ideas about black masculinity.

Over a Zoom call from Japan, he says: “I started thinking about how I wanted to see black men. For me, they’ve been hyper-masculine in a certain way – you can’t do this, have to do that, you can’t cry, you can’t do anything except be a strong black man. That’s not how we are. We’re soft, we cry, we are unhappy a lot of the time, we want to succeed.”

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Howard began dancing as a child, learning choreography from hip-hop and R&B music videos. He earned an undergraduate degree in dance from Columbia College Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, and completed a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography at University of Michigan.

He says: “Growing up, I felt like I had to play a sport, that I had to be good at (American) football, basketball or baseball. But I didn’t want to do any of that stuff. I wanted to do gymnastics, martial arts and play an instrument. When I told my mum that after (high school) graduation, she asked why I never said anything, and I said it felt like there was immense pressure to be an athlete.”

The process of creating aMoratorium led him to reflect on the differing versions of masculinity he saw in his father’s authoritative and distanced approach, versus his grandfather’s softer, more caring demeanour.

“Figuring out how to portray all that movement in dance without the same old hyper-masculine character was a lot of the process. It’s about the total capacity of a black man as a human, not just one idea of how they should be,” Howard says.

For Ponties, gender was the starting point for Same Same, a performance piece inspired by the deadpan and highly physical comedy of American silent movie star Buster Keaton.

Performing the intense but comedic routine are Czech dancer Tereza Ondrova and theatre director Petra Tejnorova.

Over a Zoom call from her home in Brussels, Belgium, Ponties says: “At first, they wanted to be two men, something like Laurel and Hardy. But that was not my vision. I realised they were really feminine women who didn’t want to be feminine, so I decided to use costumes and from there, we arrived at the absurd world of work.”

Same Same explores what happens when the daily routines of two women are disrupted, causing them to lose their direction.

Ponties says: “With the costume for work came themes like burnout and boredom. When you’re exhausted from the work and the work itself might not make sense, or you’re too overqualified for it. We’re familiar with these things.”

Born in Castres, France, she trained in Barcelona at the Juan Tena and Ramon Soler dance schools and graduated from influential French choreographer Maurice Bejart’s dance school Mudra, now known as the Bejart Ballet Lausanne in Switzerland.

The influence of Bejart, famed for modernising ballet with intercultural influences and abstract themes, can be seen in Same Same with its adventurous approach to creating work and choice of performers. Ondrova is a trained dancer, whereas director Tejnorova had to catch up performance-wise.

Ponties recalls: “It was quite difficult in the beginning. Tereza proposed a lot of things that led Petra to suffer a bit. Tereza lowered the intensity for Petra and was giving her a lot of massages daily because she was sore all over. But she is strong, and we explored that. Little by little, we found the balance.”

Aware that comedy is subjective and rooted in cultural context, Ponties adds that she hopes audiences will approach the work with an open mind. “I hope they enjoy it. It’s a lighter way to talk about things.”

Book it/aMoratorium

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Jan 17 and 18, 8pm
Admission: From $35
Info: 2024.singaporefringe.com/amoratorium

Book it/Same Same

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Jan 20, 8pm; Jan 21, 3pm
Admission: From $35
Info: 2024.singaporefringe.com/SAME-SAME