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© Bianca Pilet

becoming god

Melyn Chow / Frascati Producties
Tue 13 Jan ’26 - Sat 24 Jan ’26
What happens when you return to a forbidden place from your own history?
Tue 13 Jan ’26
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Sat 24 Jan ’26

How do we reclaim the mystical and the unexplainable from our history that has tried to erase or sanitise it? In becoming god, Melyn Chow seeks contact with the sacred other that was once kept from her. 

Melyn grew up in a first-generation Christian family in Singapore. She was taught to fear her father's family temple in Malaysia, seen as unclean, spiritually dangerous, a place to be avoided. Any gods beyond the Christian ones were viewed with suspicion and treated as taboo.

becoming god emerges from a desire to explore precisely the space she was raised to reject: an inquiry that pulses with risk, tenderness, contradiction, and a longing to meet the divine on uncertain terms. In a society that has largely lost its sense of the sacred, the performance opens a compelling space for ritual, transcendence, and transformation.

Through live music, movement, and a performative score, composer Lưu Thoại Linh (Animistic Beliefs) and performers Sjaid Foncé and Nazar Rakhmanov join Melyn in a playful, devotional and unpredictable exploration of a forbidden, mystical other.

A key inspiration is Melyn’s uncle, Chow Tek Sen, a Chinese spirit medium (tang ki) who lends his body to the gods. This possession practice, known as 跳童, literally “divining youth” or “danced child”, functions as a crucial framework through which Melyn investigates identity and embodiment. 

  • Première: Thu 15 Jan 20:00
Part of

Credits

concept & direction Melyn Chow in collaboration with performers Nazar Rakhmanov, Sjaid Foncé and sound designer Lưu Thoại Linh guest presence 邹德盛, 济公 advisor & end direction Floor van Leeuwen campaign image Bianca Pilet special thanks Ruth Borg, Jon Silber, Hidde Aans-Verkade, Loes Schakenbos, ImPulsTanz ATLAS 2025 (Guy Cools) and Club Raum



          

VSCD Mime

Winner VSCD Mime/Performance Prize 2025 for Shaking shame. From the jury report: "The visible pleasure and freedom with which the performers move is contagious, but also sharpens the tension between shame and pleasure. A liberating exercise in vulnerability."

Previous media exposure

“Chow calles Shaking shame a performance exercise, and it turns out to be an absolutely fascinating exercise.” Theaterkrant

About Melyn Chow

Melyn Chow (she/her) was born and raised in Singapore and works in the field of mime, physical theatre, contemporary dance and performance. She received her BA in mime at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (NL) and holds a diploma in dance at the LASALLE College of the Arts (SG). 

Melyn works within mime, contemporary dance and performance, carrying out research into the ‘female gaze’, sensuality versus shame and the erotic as a source of power. Her research often begins from the body in relation to movement, space and image.

Melyn has been affiliated with Frascati Productions since 2023. Together with Kim Zeevalk, she presented the “mime porn” video installation I happen to be doing this for you (2023) and Shaking shame (2023-2025) here in early 2023.

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