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SINGAPORE: The National Museum is celebrating its reopening with a month-long festival starting on 2nd December.
To kick off the Opening Festival, the National Museum will get a shower of blessing by UK group Avanti Display.
The group is known for its street theatre which mixes water and light to create a living fountain.
This is just one of over 40 events lined up for the opening month.
170 artists will be involved, about 110 of whom are from Singapore and 40 from the Asian region.
Tan Boon Hui, the Opening Festival Programmer for the National Museum of Singapore, said: "The artists that are featured in the Opening Festival are basically contemporary artists who have been invited to present their contemporary take on heritage and history because we have a lot to learn from our neighbours about how history can be modernised without trivialising it, without just turning it to merely a tourist commodity.
"The point we are really trying to make is that history is about the now, it is not something that happened and you go and see a static object in a showcase."
Many of the works are modern interpretations of traditional art forms.
Classical masked dancers from Thailand and Cambodia will abandon their costumes for contemporary attire in a moving dance called Revitalising Monkeys and Giants, while Singapore's oldest Hokkien Opera Troupe will be telling their story using songs on film.
This film, named after the opera troupe Sin Sai Hong, was specially commissioned by the National Museum.
Royston Tan, filmmaker of Sin Sai Hong, said: "Within the history of Singapore, street opera has never been archived and this is the very first time they have been archived. And also the concept for using this opera, and how we present it on screen is based on what they do backstage and not front stage, which is something very different."
He added that this was one of the most challenging films he had ever made, because in order to know the people he was documenting, he had to play foot soldier in Sin Sai Hong's performances for one year.
The museum hopes to attract more than 50,000 visitors for the entire festival.
The National Museum says its role is not only to present history – it also wants to be a lifestyle destination.
Hence the events showcased during the Opening Festival are a preview of the activities that will be staged at the museum in the years to come. - CNA/so
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