Melyn Chow

Maker

Works by interdisciplinary performance-maker Melyn Chow (SG, she/her) are physical, intimate and provocative. 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.

Together with Kim Zeevalk, early in 2023 Melyn presented the 'mime porn' video installation I happen to be doing this for you (2023) for Frascati Producties. This is followed by her latest Frascati production, Shaking shame, scheduled for the beginning of the 2023-2024 season.

Biography

Melyn Chow grew up in Singapore and is currently working within the Dutch mime, physical theatre, contemporary dance and performance scene. She has studied at both Lasalle College of the Arts (SG) and the Mime School at AHK Amsterdam University of the Arts (2022). As a performer, Melyn’s credits include two and a half years with the RAW Movement dance company (SG) as well as with makers including Nicole Beutler, Davy Pieters, Zara Bracht, Dries Verhoeven and Floor van Leeuwen.

Melyn’s own work can be characterised as intimate, physical, visual, deeply rooted and provocative, as she constantly goes in search of the intersection of unease and desire. Frequently, her artistic explorations take as their starting point the body in relation to movement, space and image. Her most recent work investigates the ‘female gaze’, sensuality, shame and the erotic as a source of power.

Melyn graduated from the AHK’s Mime School with I happen to be doing this for you, a ‘mime porn’ video installation she created with Kim Zeevalk. Featuring fifteen mime performers in the lead role, the installation reveals new ways of depicting eroticism and sensuality. Following on from the success of this graduation project, Melyn and Kim spent the early part of 2023 developing the installation further and are now presenting it with Frascati Producties, transforming Frascati 4 into an immense installation space. 

In the autumn of 2023, Melyn will be presenting new work as a Frascati Producties maker: Shaking shame, an intimate performance in which she goes in search of the connections between feelings of shame, pleasure and liberation. Both I happen to be doing this for you and Shaking shame were inspired by Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978). Shaking shame is a continuation of Melyn’s performance of the same title, made at AHK in 2022.