The Evil Within: Phoebe Chu

Next up in our The Evil Within series, we have choreographer Phoebe Chu.

Who is your favourite Shakespeare female villainous character?
Lady Macbeth. Her sinister instincts are impressive. Her powerful personality, ambitions and strength is far beyond that of a man. I like how this dramatic character journeys on a path that begins with pursing power, to madness, hopelessness, weakness, which ultimately leads to her death. 
 
Which themes are you exploring?
Macbeth and the 3 witches. I was actually not familiar with these characters prior to this project.  When I read the script Lindsey gave me, lots of visualized images immediately appeared in my mind. Wicked!  Fierce! Emotional! Ambitious!  Trapped!! It was an interesting experiment exploring the emotions of these characters. 

What did you enjoy the most about this experience?
Definitely the time spent with my 3 talented dancers! Although we haven’t worked together on dance before… during each rehearsal, they were very patient and tried their very best to experiment on different things with me.  The dancers gave me lots of inspiration and encouragement during the process!

I also liked to experiment using the different qualities of the three dancers. They dug into their inner souls and expressed that externally via their movements. I was really inspired by the three dancers who had very different styles! Interesting!

What were your greatest challenges?
Time management...it's really challenging to switch between the creative mode and the intensive office tasks.... skills learned about multitasking!

Which do you think is Shakespeare’s greatest play and why?
For me, there is no doubt that Hamlet is the greatest Shakespeare's play of all time!! The way Shakespeare carefully placed in dramatic scenes and cunning plots intrigued me the most, as the whole story was full of surprises!! I also enjoyed how the play ended, where Claudius' plan fails... It was so intense!
 
How did you choose the music?
After reading the script of The Three Witches, tons of keywords popped into my mind. Using those keywords, I browsed through my music collection and the Internet (I picked YouTube this time) to find songs that I think are ‘attractive'. In the end, not only did I find the absolute perfect piece of music, I also found an undiscovered gem, a Swiss composer -  his music TOTALLY expresses my images of The Three Witches!! I knew that his music was  'the one' once I heard it.