Grace Leong Yit Ming

Grace Leong, a multi-disciplinary artist-educator, was trained as a dancer and later in contemporary performance practices. A post-colonial Chinese Malaysian based in Singapore, she is fascinated by issues of identity and multi-cultural art practices.

Her key projects focus on Southeast Asian themes, which include Spirit of Kelantan, a documentary launched on MediaCorp’s OKTO Channel in 2011 as well as Ramayana In Its Forms, Transcend Sbek Thom and Encounter Hun Lakorn Lek, which were public performances in 2011, 2012 and 2013, investigating collective memory and embodiment of the arts of traditional theatre.

Grace’s work Allegory of Wayang Kulit (2014), featured at the University of Royal Holloway Festival of New Works in London, won a place in the list of ‘Creative Responses to Modernity Competition’, hosted by the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College. It was also commended by judges Lisa Appignanesi, Alison Duthie, Juliet Gardiner, Jeremy Harding, Michael Holroyd, Stephen Romer, and Fiona Shaw, to have demonstrated “confidence in handling uncertainty and for taking the themes of modernism somewhere refreshingly new.” Her recent works include MacBeth in Nanyang Spirit and Duo Duo 3. The former received a Special Prize from The Shakespeare Association of Mongolia, while the latter had a sold-out performance at George Town Festival 2017 and was nominated for Best Director at 15^th ADA Drama Awards 2018. In 2023, she was commissioned by Noise Performance House to direct My Ugly Duckling, a production that received overwhelming support and sold out at the George Town Festival 2023.

As an artist-educator, she published and shared her pedagogical research in conferences and forums. Among her recent contributions, she presented ‘Synthesising Asian Movement Forms with Western Text in the creation of Character’ at Southeast Asian Arts Forum 2021. Additionally, her research titled ‘Articulating theatre students' conceptions of movement in body-time-space through video-based peer critique’ was published by Springer in Teaching and Learning the Arts in Higher Education with Technology (2022). It was subsequently presented at the SOTA Arts Education Forum 2022.

Grace has a wealth of professional experience working and collaborating with many performing companies as well as museums and art houses. Notable collaborators include Noise Performance House (2023), National Museum of Singapore (2017), and Paper Monkey Theatre (2021).