Goh Lay Kuan

Career

At the age of 15, Goh began learning ballet dance from Goh Soo Nee, the sister of ballet dancers Goh Choo San and Goh Soo Khim. In a 2014 interview, Goh recalled that she was the last remaining student from an initial class of fifteen, and that she "went hungry" in order to afford the classes. After graduating high school, Goh worked as a teacher and tutor before moving to Australia to continue her ballet education at Melbourne's Victoria Ballet Guild. She graduated from the program with honors, and went on to be member of several groups including the Ballet Victoria, where she was the principal dancer.

In 1964, Goh moved back to Singapore. Her motivations to return included racial discrimination, a sense that her people did not have a cultural identity to call their own, and the 1963 openings of the Singapore National Theatre and an arts-focused television station. Upon her return, she worked as a choreographer on that television station. The station was ill prepared in the beginning, and Singaporean performing arts in general was poorly organized at the time. Goh's vision for the school was to be able to train enough professional dancers to form a company. Goh began to choreograph dances for the students, and her first work of ballet choreography was completed the same year that the school was founded. In 1975 the government, under the authority of the Internal Security Act, began a campaign of mass arrests of suspected communists and communist-sympathizers, and in 1976 both Goh and Kuo were arrested and held without trial. Goh was branded "The Red Ballerina" and was forced to give a televised confession; shortly after the confession Goh was released, however Kuo spent over four years in prison.

Honors

In 1995, Goh was awarded the Cultural Medallion, Singapore's highest award for artistic excellence.

Selected works

The Fishing Village (1969) Nu Wa – Mender of the Heavens (1988) Rites of Life (1994) Homing (1994) Returning (2015)