Major year for Singapore's cultural attractions

With Singapore celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year, the island nation’s arts calendar is packed with retrospectives while also including a considerable heavier emphasis on local content.

According to a report in Asia One, arts organisations and artists in Singapore have lined up major cultural events on the international stage.

Major events will include a commemoration of the nation's 50th birthday on The Esplanade with a raft of events, including a theatre retrospective in April and May presenting excerpts and full-length productions of 50 iconic Singapore plays.

Production company Dream Academy will begin the Great World Cabaret in February, a nostalgia-soaked variety show at Resorts World Sentosa that looks at Singapore's nightlife legends of the swinging 60s and 70s. The show runs until March

The Singapore International Festival of Arts, due to take place in the second half of the year, is also looking homeward after last year's international spread, with at least a dozen new commissions from local groups and practitioners.

Project 50/100, with the tagline Alternative Narratives, New Perspectives, Other Truths, seeks input from civil society groups, artists and arts groups, academics and other members of the public to put together a diverse program of events.

Theatre company Wild Rice, with its programming based on the Singapore flag's five stars - democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality - is also set to offer performances viewed by establishment figures as contrarian but refreshingly so, given its edgy track record.

Singapore has always tried to vie for its share of the international spotlight, and this year will see its return to the prestigious Venice Biennale exhibition, featuring multimedia artist Charles Lim and curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa.

Singapore has taken part in every edition of the biennale since 2001 but it was absent from the 2013 show because its participation was under review by the National Arts Council.

A contingent of visual and performing artists and arts groups are also headed to the Singapore Festival In France, which is taking place from March to May.

The event will be hosted by various cultural institutions across the country, including the Palais de Tokyo, Theatre des Bouffes du Nord and Cinematheque Francaise.

Those going include theatre director Ong Keng Sen, mime artist and theatre performer Ramesh Meyyappan, classical music conductor Darrell Ang, dance group Frontier Danceland and traditional Chinese music group Siong Leng Musical Association.

A bit of France will also come to Singapore by way of the Singapore Pinacotheque de Paris, a 5,480 metre² offshoot of Paris' largest private art museum, set to open at Fort Canning Hill in May.

It will have an art academy and a heritage gallery, and will be helmed by art historian Marc Restellini, founder of the renowned French institution. About 40 to 50 works from the museum's collection will be on display in the ground-floor permanent gallery.

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