Arts Fest Reviews at TFI:

The ouroboros is the image of the snake swallowing its own tail - ostensibly, a symbol of the eternity of time. It is borrowed here in UROBOS: PROJECT TIME (note the clever double-entendre in the word "project") as the launching point for a "music-theatre piece exploring the notion of time as perceived and projected by different cultures and how these relate and coexist in and outside the constructed and collective time perception of a society." Duh.

Above/Left: Ouroboros symbol from the TV series Millennium. It's a modern obssession.

The brainchild of the Austrian experimental group ARBOS, UROBOS is just about four segments, each from one continent, of visuals, music and dance, interwoven into five "Timetunnels" which presumably connects them all. UROBOS comes as the conclusion of a tryptich of experimental theatre pieces, with this "story of voyages" intended as a mosaic of different tales unified into a whole. In the previous projects, the themes and symbolisms of water and air were explored.

Conceptually, there was nothing new about the entire presentation: four groups of performers collaborating on a unifying theme - in this case, each group's respective interpretations of time. Putting aside the point that art - dance and music here - in itself already represents something about the time from which they originate, it does also make one wonder about the lofty symbolisms and whether the performance could, in fact, make some sort of commentary about societal perception of time (if even in an abstracted form).

Well, in view of this objective, there are hits and misses. The apparent "Timetunnels" which served as prelude, epilogue and transitional segments between each group was conceptualized and composed by Werner Raditschnig. In the programme book he explains, "The principle of pulsation exists when the tempi of the music are not synchronized. Each temporal line may last for 30 seconds. Interaction of different tempi would result in the polarization of the pulsation."

In the execution, this simply consisted of the performers walking clockwise around the stage speaking or playing in staccato beats in an ad libbitum fashion, aided by some groovy magenta lighting, as the stage was being set for the next group. In some ways, it ended up quite contrived, if visually provoking.

Segment Europe was performed by ARBOS themselves, the fons et origin of the entire show. Not helped by the excessively dry acoustics which made the woodwind instruments sound rather shrill, the players performed a seven-part medley of short pieces by four composers: Herbert Lauermann (Austria), Lukas Haselböck (Austria), Arsen Dedic (Croatia) and Petr Pokorny (Czech Republic).

These newly-commissioned pieces were supposedly representative of the three dominant European cultures - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - or perhaps they should have said "religions" instead ? There were ethnic elements in the motivic content of the music, heavily atonal and dissonant, plus the interesting inclusion of an accordion. From the accordionist in Tyrolean hat and suspenders to the ladies in Islamic headscarves, the musicians acted out the scenes in florid movements (not to mention on-stage change-of-costumes).

Segment America was performed by the Argentinian company Equipo de Trabajo: six florescent lights, two guitars, one viola and one dancer - with "time as being suspended through the concept of symmetry." Whatever. Dancer-choreographer Miguel Robels gyrated his way smartly through an abstract soundscape of minimalist Pampas music, written by Martin Bauer. The interaction between lighting, dance and music was most gratifying to watch indeed.

Segment Australia was subtitled "Fire and Rain" - another indicator of the mix-and-match nature of the show - with musical material based on Tiwi Aboriginal culture. The notes allude to the Aboriginal seasons of "times of fire" and "times of rain", interpreted, as with Segment America, through music and dance - the latter comprising a pas de deux against a sonic backdrop of acoustic instruments overlaid with synth samples of rainfall and humming.

The last section of the performance, Segment Asia, featured the work of composer Joyce Koh. With three performers and herself, she explored the contemporaneous trajectory of time against the sociological progress of Singapore, through a selection of spoken texts with samples of music and percussion, and clever lighting design (a ten-minute technical breakdown notwithstanding).

The dialogue included satirical allusions and pithy comments that, on the face of it, were intended to provoke humour and thought, although one senses that the not-too-proletarian audience were not readily amused. If it was not because the jokes were simply too contrived, then it would have been that, more so than the preceding segments, this particular music theatre was conceptually tougher to digest and failed to engage the audience.

Running much longer (one hour forty-five minutes) than the Festival Guide indicated (one hour) and without a break, this was modern experimental theatre - and quite challenging it was, as well. Thankfully, the performance itself was not entirely incomprehensible, and indeed, quite enjoyable at some points. But the divide between the lofty, academic-sounding manifesto about symbolism of time in the programme book and the physical interpretations on stage could have been narrower.

BENJAMIN CHEE has only ever watched one complete episode of Millennium, and that was a German-dubbed version in Vienna.

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