Sharing gems of moments

Has anyone seen the recent BBC World TV ads of the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative ? Boy, this is one unbelievably generous arts programme! I was in New York in early Dec to cover the closing of the 2004/05 cycle and the launch of the ongoing third cycle, and I came back with a renewed sense of awe and urgency at what needs to and can be done for arts patronage.

Filmaker Mira Nair and protege Aditya Assarat gave me a 20-minute one-to-one interview that translated to a fantastic three-page spread (!) in StarMag in January this year.

In early March, StarMag published a two-page spread that came from my interview with the bubbly and gifted mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, and my few but treasured moments with her mentor Jessye Norman at the launch dinner at New York’s Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.

And last Sunday, StarMag had my story on the dance workshop choreographer Saburo Teshigawara and dancer Junaid Jemal Sendi gave at Barnard College, Columbia University.

I hope I've managed to translate most of the experience of seeing, listening, meeting and speaking to these artists into stories for the paper and readers. Some part of me feels that I will never be able to share all of what I felt.

Throw in bumping into and chatting with playwright Ariel Dorfman (whose play Death and The Maiden was one of the first stage dramas I saw; it was staged by Dramalab with Jo Kukathas as the "maiden" Paulina Salas in a small auditorium in RHB (?) Jalan Tun Razak), watching the premiere of Tshepang by South African playwright Lara Foot Newton at Columbia University's Miller Theatre, being in a rusty lift with painter David Hockney and dining next to Mira Nair, and author Toni Morrison, and what can one do except be stuck in a starstruck state?

What I do know is that I've got enough inspiration to last me a few years without another overseas work trip!

As an arts writer in Malaysia, I don't travel as often as journos from the entertainment or fashion fields. More than anything else, it's part of the deal. If I travel to write about stuff outside, I inevitably miss out on or can't give my time to what's happening inside.

Arts isn't on the top of a newspaper's priority list, understandably so in a developing country. The Star, the paper I work for, does make a real effort though and has possibly the most number of pages and hacks to cover the arts.

Whatever limited page space is first given to artists, events and issues in Malaysia as a way of encouraging local arts. So, even if I got invited to cover an international arts event, my write-up of it would normally be published after considering page space allocated to Malaysian arts.

The Rolex thing, however, has been something I've truly enjoyed writing about. Feel really blessed to have been even a tiny part of it.