Since returning to Singapore after graduating with a BA in Arts Management from Goldsmiths, University of London, Deanna Dzulkifli has been steadily building her presence in the local arts scene. She is currently a part-time Program Coordinator at Dance Nucleus whilst managing multiple freelance projects, including her work with electronic music artist, Mervin Wong.

Q: Graduating from School of the Arts (SOTA) Dance, what compelled you to change your direction to producing/managing? And why did you head to Goldsmiths instead of studying at Lasalle?

I think whilst I was studying in SOTA, especially in the first four years, I was quite determined to be a dancer because I didn't know anything else. I was almost tunnel vision on being a dancer that I wasn't aware that the whole art space is an ecosystem of connected nodes and parts.

When I was 16, I had to go for a full spinal surgery for scoliosis, which altered my body. I had to learn how to breathe and walk again. I remember it was a Tuesday that I was in class in SOTA and Wednesday that I was in surgery. And then Thursday, I was recovering, so I couldn't move on my own. And because it's your spine and your spinal cord, the rehabilitation was quite intense. That drastic shift made me realise that dance couldn’t be  an identity and that maybe anything that I do is not my whole identity. Things that I do change, and things that happen to you can be unexpected. From there, my thinking shifted more into the backstage sort of stuff.  

In SOTA, you get exposed to the whole theater ecosystem, from tech to dressing, so we were aware of roles. With the surgery, my priorities were realigned and it made me ask what else is out there. 

I was interested in an arts management degree, or rather the idea of arts management. At 17/18, it sounds like a great deal because I have the arts and now I have the practical skills of a business admin. So that's what attracted me to arts management as a course. To put it bluntly and simply, I did it at Goldsmiths because I had the opportunity to. I have massively supportive parents and come from a background where I've been privileged enough to be able to take that on.  

At some points, it was also like how do you deal with this guilt but the way that I rationalised it is, I was given an opportunity and I took it, and perhaps I can continue to create opportunities and hold spaces for people around me who might need it too. Being in the arts, you kinda have to network and really involve yourself fully. So I tried to approach it as I'm studying arts management, and my supplementary education is through freelancing opportunities when I was in London.

Q: Quite a few practitioners around also went to London and came back to apply what they learnt in London in their practice here. how has it been for you personally and how did it influence your producing practices when you came back?

Rewinding a little bit, past SOTA, I was connected with some of the members of the Producers SG organising team, mainly Shai, who is my longtime mentor. I met Shai whilst I was in London, and that was the first time I knew of him and met him. It was because one of my seniors from SOTA, Sabrina Dzulkifli, who was doing a show with Bhumi Collective. They needed someone to perform at Bunker Theatre. I'm not an actor, I'm not going to claim that at all. But they just needed someone who was down to perform and I'm always down to do anything. So I met Shai and it was for Sabrina’s play and that was how I also met Nabilah Said. 

From there, Shai and I connected in Singapore when I was back during summer break. He took me under his wing when he was doing a Producers Clinic session that was for about a month at Centre 42. He would let me drop in and out of that. He also let me be a Production Assistant on a few Bhumi shows at that time, one of which was dead was the body till i taught it how to move by Dominic Nah, written by Edward Eng, with stage direction by Adeeb Fazah and dramaturgy and movement direction by Michael Ng. We spent the whole summer having conversations about what creative producing is and where I sort of got introduced to this practice of being like a producer, and what the creative part of it meant. 

After those conversations, I went on to be a part of the team that produced Nabilah Said’s play Inside Voices at VAULT Festival in London. And that was the first time I was thrown into the deep end. Fortunately, in this early career, I have come across so much graciousness from people who are willing to teach you and share with you. In this specific experience, I learned a lot about producing from Nabilah (Instagram: @nabbycat) and Khai (Instagram: @nkhai), as well as the whole Inside Voices team. It’s so different from other professions or the corporate side of things where you are given clear expectations and milestones to give you a measure of if you are good enough. In the arts, you have to set these milestones  for yourself and you have to overcome your insecurities as a young professional.

For myself, it's learning through action, and that was what Inside Voices was for me. Nabilah asked if I would come onboard to produce but obviously, I have no experience. So Khai, who was doing her masters in creative producing at Royal Central, stepped in and I learnt so much from her, and from that experience, it kind of cemented my interest in creative producing as a practice. 

In London, I intentionally took on a lot of freelancing gigs that were more tech-based. For my placement in university, I was a Gallery Technician Assistant at Block 336, this basement gallery in Brixton.  Learning the language of a production manager and a stage manager and being able to communicate with venues was important to me. I really enjoy doing the hands-on work as well. 

I think from my experience in London, taking on more project management or producing roles in Singapore, I have a better understanding of what the experience is for people who are involved because I have done those roles as well. I feel like I can be a better manager because I better understand how to communicate with the team, or to  the venue and to the artists if it is possible to not compromise the artists’ requirements while working with the venue constraints.

Q: Beyond taking on the more technical roles, do you take into consideration the type of production maybe, like campaigning a certain idea that aligns with you, how do you decide what kind of work to produce as well?

I think that's a good question and I mean to be very frank, Shai always talks to me about this. I have trouble branding myself or claiming the title of a producer because I feel like anyone can be a producer. Borrowing from a workshop conducted by Cui under Dance Nucleus (COEFFICIENT; Writing, Planning and Budgeting for Artists), producing is a skill. And with that, it’s about being able to practice and train this muscle to make it stronger.

I've only been back in Singapore since September 2020, so I'm fresh into this career. I grab any opportunity that comes my way and reason with it however I need to. Obviously there are some jobs here and there that are purely work, which I think is important to realize being in the arts, because there's this pretense that you're doing it solely because you love it. This is so I can have a longer runway to choose gigs that maybe won't pay as much, but it's better for my career or my portfolio, or just something that excites me in general. 

Short answer is, I don't have a way to yet. I think it's also because I've been working on very artist-led projects. It hasn't been super producer-led where it's my production and I reach out to people. It has been more so artists say that they have this thing that they want to do and ask if I am able to soundboard, then we discuss a strategy.  That is the kind of role that I've taken on and because of that, it is just whatever comes my way. 

Usually, after the initial soundboarding session the artist and I will know whether or not we are a good fit for each other. I will have made it very clear that I am new into this but this is the type of support you will get. Whereas if their project needs someone who is more established or has better connections, I will redirect them. I think it's an okay thing for now, but I definitely have to have more direction at some point. 

Q: Have you ever considered joining a company full-time or do you want to continue as an independent producer?

For some context, I’m with an arts intermediary called Dance Nucleus but the whole team is part-time and we're all still considered independent. Aside from that, I also produce and production manage in the NAC-funded space, but also work with other artists outside of the NAC funding structures.

For me it’s not so much considering full time employment or independent work, but actually reflecting on what it is I actually want to achieve through whatever it is I do. I find so far my space in the arts as a profession, I have been afforded a lot of room to really think through our different states of being, doing things in this lifetime and just in general being in control of the frequency at which I want to vibrate energy wise. And for me, sometimes these reflections don’t always fully thrive in a 100% “art” context, but maybe intersects with other areas of interest like reading about black holes and the physics of parallel universes, the shifting industry gearing up for web3, imagining what a venture capitalist funding model looks like for non-profits and this itch that TikTok is genius in some ways. 

I guess with considering full time employment, it is about balancing capacity and bandwidth, maybe having more capital to play with but less energy to do something about it? I’m not sure. One thing I am for certain is that I am not too precious about the things that I do having to fall within an artmaking context. Maybe it is because I am early in my career, but I am genuinely excited at the different epiphanies I have been led to through artmaking, and am also curious to find these spaces in other contexts. I instinctively feel like I need other avenues to feed into one another, and that they’re not necessarily art/non-art binaries. 

Q: What can we look forward to from you in the future? 

As a dancer and evolving from dance and movement-based practice, I am so attracted to sound and being in the music side of things has been so amazing. Personally, I find great joy working with electronic musician, Mervin Wong (Instagram: @mervinwong00, Spotify: @planeswalker) just as producer/production manager/ soundboarding enthusiast/ friend. I love how our conversations fall within the intersections of music and the audio-visual-sensorial pleasure it brings us, as well as how all of these excitements manifest as real world doings, sustaining ourselves in this profession. Currently, we are working towards putting out a dance-film as well as a full length album.

This year I’ve also been fortunate enough to be working quite closely within the traditional Malay Dance side of things, specifically DIAN Dancers.  As a young dancer growing up, I was never really involved in the Malay Dance community, and had tried in different ways after graduating from SOTA to educate myself. So I feel especially grateful to Amin Farid and Bhumi Collective, for giving me the opportunity to produce DIAN Dancers quadrennial end of year festival, Ekspresi.  The community surrounding Ekspresi was so different in comparison to my other work contexts, so producing it really enriched and shifted my perspective on the different roles we inhabit as producers.. 

Lastly, most recently I was part of a working group under Dance Nucleus’ ELEMENT#10 research project, titled “Ill-Disciplined Research-Creation-Something” with Shawn Chua, Corrie Tan and Chong Gua Khee (More here). The working group looked at deconstructing, imagining and prototyping new paradigms and infrastructures for knowledge-production, artistic practice and their contingent entanglements. I wanted to mention this because being a part of this working group has shifted my perspective on… to be very honest so many things, I can’t fully articulate at the moment. But the gist of it is, it is a new excitement that I am excited about, continuing on this line of thought with my 3 other collaborators. 

Shoutout

I don't have a specific person, I just wanna shout out to everyone in my circle, I feel so grateful because there is such reciprocity to hold space and give care in whatever way is needed, it’s very humbling. .  Also, shout out to people who are just making it work on their own, self-producing artists etc. Lastly, shout out to anyone who has recently felt genuinely excited about something they are doing, work or not. 

Interview by: Jasmine See and Pearlyn Tay