Touch Me Hold Me Let Me Go: a lecture performance by Lee Su-Feh

Touch Me Hold Me Let Me Go is

an algorithm for dancing with the planet

an algorithm for dancing with your beloved

an algorithm for dancing from enough-ness

It is a lecture, a poem, a sing-along.

A workshop, a recital, a dance-party.

In this multi-media lecture-performance, Lee Su-Feh talks about this algorithm, teaches it, performs it. Along the way, the audience is invited (but not coerced!) into an immersive ritual of breathing, listening, moving, singing together.

Audiences in Kuala Lumpur may remember seeing an early draft of the work in early-2023. That collaboration with sound artist, composer, and award-winning music designer Kent Lee and lighting/multimedia designer Syamsul Azhar was the catalyst of a work that has developed into this iteration of Touch Me Hold Me Let Me Go.

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"I use the word algorithm as a way to provide an alternative to the more opaque algorithms in our devices and on the internet; algorithms that increasingly mediate our relationships to one another. I offer TMHMLMG as a reminder of the older technologies and wisdoms in our bodies. I offer it as an invitation towards relating to one another and to non-humans in ways that are gentler and hopefully, more sustainable than the ways of the current world." - Lee Su-Feh 

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about Lee Su-Feh (she/they)

Lee Su-Feh is a performance maker, educator and writer who has spent the last 40 years exploring the human body as a site of intersecting habits and histories. Born and raised in Malaysia, her early training began in Teater Kanak-kanak with Janet Pillai, followed by dance and dancing with Marion D’Cruz and endless conversations with Krishen Jit.

Since leaving Malaysia in 1985 for Paris, France; and then later Canada, she has been influenced by teachers such as Lari Leong, Peter Bingham, Linda Putnam, Amelia Itcush and Catherine Fitzmaurice; and by artistic encounters and collaborations with David McIntosh, Benoît Lachambre, Zab Maboungou, Justine A Chambers among others. Alongside this trajectory in performance-making, she has pursued a lifelong study and practice of Chinese martial arts, Qigong and Daoism. She has studied Yang Taiji, Wu Taiji, Chen Taiji, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan with Xu Gong Wei; and Baguazhang with Yang Guo Tai. Since 2010, she has been a student and practitioner of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and is currently a certified Lead Trainer of the work. She is a member of the Advisory Group of the Fitzmaurice Institute and participates actively in the international community of Fitzmaurice Voicework teachers.

Lee Su-Feh is grateful to be based on Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-waututh Territories, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada. She is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, The Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver through the non-profit structure of battery opera performing arts society, of which she is Artistic Director.