1964

NOMAD represents a continually evolving tradition of the arts in Ang Mo Kio Secondary School.

Its first incarnation was as the Night of Music and Dance back in 2001. Back then, it served as a showcase of the school’s submissions for the Singapore Youth Festival (SYF)

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the SYF represents a bi-annual celebration of youth talent in Singapore, in which arts groups from different schools gather to compete in a “Central Judging” in which excellence in the performing arts is acknowledged and celebrated at the National Level.

With such a genealogy, the first NOMADs were largely variety-show affairs with little connection in theme or purpose between performances put up by performing arts groups in the school.

2003, saw the exciting development of PROJECT HANUMAN together with the Singaporean dance company Arts Fission. Using Hanuman, the monkey god as a starting point, students created Face Masks and utilised them in movement and dance performances.

2005, saw the NOMAD tradition taking a definite step towards its present incarnation. Eschewing the tendency of school productions towards the “variety show”, NOMAD evolved to break new ground in several ways. The director then, Ng Tian Hui, saw no point in creating an arts production, that duplicated performances already shown to at least half of the student production during the school’s assembly programme series, which they then had to pay for separately.

The focus was shifted onto the artistic integrity of such a production. A central theme, (”Travelling” was chosen in 2005) to tightly bind the different performances and art works for the festival. The nature of the performances also shifted in the direction of student work, with students generating scripts, story-lines, choreography, paintings, animations etc

The decision was also made to re-interpret the concert/theatre-going experience by bringing the arts experience into the school and hence the neighbourhood. This conscious attempt to move away from the proscenium stage allowed all collaborators to view the immediate environment of the school with renewed perspective and glimpse the performance potential of the school itself.

To this, was added the invaluable contributions of directors such as Jeremiah Choy, Noorlinah Mohammed, Jean Ng, Julius Foo, choreographers such as Gani Abdul Karim, Low Kok Wai, Mohd Fared Jainal, artists, Ng Siew Kuan, Ng Siok Hoon, Ulrich Lau, Justin Lee, Joshua Tan, Khiew etc, musicians, Angelina Choo, Brando Tan, Bernie Chia etc

The result was one that many staff and students found deeply memorable.

NOMAD 2008 aims to do nothing less, and dreams of continuing to break new ground in the field of the arts in education and community.