Planet Wanderer, 2026
I’m pretty sure acts of public indecency are illegal in Singapore so why was this even allowed.
Planet Wanderer promised so much – a collaboration between renowned visual artist Kohei Nawa (guy famous for covering a taxidermied elk in crystal spheres) and choreographer Damien Jalet (guy who recently went social media viral for choreographing that Yunglean music video), came with huge prestige value and a sky’s the limit budget.
The ‘we’re shipping in custom dirt and sparkles for this production and every theatre who mounts this is just going to have to suck it up’ kind of prestige value.
Nothing could go wrong right? We were definitely in for a stunning marriage of visual art and dance right? Spoiler alert: NO.
We sat in half darkness watching glitter covered dancers half buried in dirt do body waves for 20 minutes to a tedious soundtrack. Then they got up and walked around in the dirt for 20 minutes. Then they shifted the dirt around. Then white goop fell on them. The end.
No really. That’s it.
A friend, swayed by my initial excitement when I heard about this production had agreed to watch this with me, and I leant over at least 5 times to apologise for subjecting her this, although we did agree that trauma-bonding is a surefire way to strengthen any relationship.
Nawa, in charge of set design and costuming does not stray from the stereotype of East Asians being model students, and made sure not to turn in sloppy homework – the visuals are stunning.
Jalet on the other hand, somehow managed to make choreography look like it was barely there. And surely it was, he had some very talented dancers who had clearly rehearsed the piece. But somehow, it looked like nothing.
It looked unclever, monotonous repetition. Sometimes it looked like improv. Not in the sense of being so cleverly choreographed to look deliberately free, but in the sense of go on girl, give us nothing.
This was a work that looked stunning in the advertising -sad everything there was to appreciate about the piece could be seen just from the trailers and marketing images alone.
And there is the problem – this seemed to be some kind of attempt at installation art. But this was not a museum or gallery where viewers could come and go as they pleased, or view a work from a closer distance, or take in a 15 minute performance at designated viewing times if they so choose.
This was a piece being shown in cavernous theaters to thousands of people, all of whom paid quite a bit of money to sit there for an hour (for reference, I paid over $70 to sit at the mid-back of the circle).
Art does not exist in a vacuum – it is a symbiotic relationship between creator and viewer. This is especially true in live performances when artists and audiences experience each other in real time, and creators have a meta view of how their work is performed and received.
Jalet appears to have forgotten that. He seemed to have choreographed something that he wanted to do, without much consideration as to whether it was appropriate for the space, the people, or the money they would be paying.
When viscous mucoids of white goo fell from the theater rafters onto the dancers at the end, it all felt so symbolic of this act of public masturbation that I did not consent to.
I’m pretty sure an OnlyFans subscription is cheaper.
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