Ballet choreographer Goh Choo San to be honoured at Kennedy Center ballet festival gala in July
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Goh Choo San was known for bringing Asian influences into his ballet choreography.
PHOTOS: NAN MELVILLE, ST FILE
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SINGAPORE – The late Singaporean ballet choreographer Goh Choo San will be honoured with a dedicated gala night on June 21 as part of 10,000 Dreams: A Celebration Of Asian Choreography.
From June 18 to 23, the six-day festival held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, will recognise the works of Asian creatives in ballet, with a focus on Goh, the first Asian choreographer to gain international recognition. The event is curated by the Kennedy Center and arts advisory group Final Bow For Yellowface co-founder Phil Chan.
Over a Zoom call, Singapore Ballet artistic director Janek Schergen, 73, says: “The Kennedy Center said, ‘If we’re going to have an evening celebrating Asian choreographers, we can’t not have Goh Choo San. We feel that since he was a part of The Washington Ballet and was the first Asian choreographer, it needs to be in honour of him.’ So they approached me, and we’ll be doing Momentum at the gala night.”
Principal dancers Kwok Min Yi and Satoru Agetsuma will dance the leading roles for Momentum, choreographed by Goh.
Two other ballets by Goh will be performed on the gala night – Fives, performed by The Washington Ballet, and Ballade, performed by Vancouver’s Goh Ballet, with dancers from the National Ballet of China.
Singapore Ballet principal dancers Kwok Min Yi and Satoru Agetsuma will dance in Momentum, choreographed by the late Goh Choo San.
PHOTO: BERNIE NG
Schergen says: “I’m happy about going, but most of all about celebrating Choo San. He alone broke the racial barrier and opened up a place in the world for other Asian choreographers to walk through.”
Born in 1948, Goh, the youngest of nine children, fell in love with ballet through the influence of his older sisters Goh Soo Nee and Goh Soo Khim and older brother Goh Choo Chiat.
In 1970, he joined the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, where he began choreographing small ballets in a workshop environment. This attracted the attention of American dance pioneer Mary Day, who offered him a position at her newly founded Washington Ballet in 1976.
Goh Choo San was the first Asian ballet choreographer to gain international recognition.
PHOTO: ST FILE
He was its resident choreographer for 11 years and later became associate director. He also choreographed for the Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and Royal Swedish Ballet, among others.
Goh received the Cultural Medallion in 1986. He died on Nov 27, 1987 from viral colitis.
