At The Dance Centre's Open Stage, Punit Singh's SubHuman investigates self-perception

Fifth edition of uncurated program provides a welcoming space for artist’s first dance-theatre piece

By Isabelle Dina

Punit Singh. Photo by Carla Gómez Roel Alcántara

Punit Singh. Photo by Shawn Kim

Punit Singh performs an excerpt of SubHuman as part of Open Stage #5 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on May 12 at 7 pm; he will also perform the full-length piece at the Greenhouse on May 23 and 30, as part of the rEvolver Festival

AFTER A YEAR AND a half of movement research, choreography, and introspection, Vancouver’s Punit Singh created a 30-minute dance-theatre piece titled SubHuman, breaking free of a limiting mindset in the process. 

An excerpt from the full-length work will be presented in The Dance Centre’s Open Stage program, alongside other pieces by Amok Project, Kara Wiebe (La Picante), and Krystal Tsai.

This is the fifth edition of Open Stage, a space where dance artists at any stage in their career are free to share their work in a raw, welcoming, and uncurated setting. 

SubHuman, Singh’s first solo piece as a dance-theatre artist, investigates self-perception.

“I create these mental hierarchies where some people are above and some people are beneath, some people are on this equal playing field,” Singh says. “It’s a very distorted view that I used to, or still kind of, struggle to live in.”  

The work explores the concept of self-worth and how it is internally defined, reflecting on how insecurity can be projected outwards. Singh explains that SubHuman deals with notions of ranking oneself against others based on wealth, beauty standards, and socially imposed views of superiority.

The artist fuses movement and theatre in this solo show. Rather than putting on a performance, he says, “It feels more like reading a chapter from my own life out loud for the audience.” 

The piece itself is performed by Singh, who interweaves speech and dance.

“The movement, using techniques from dance, becomes an extension of that speaking, a way of continuing the story when words are no longer enough,” he says. “It fills in the emotional and physical spaces that language cannot fully hold.”

When it comes to dance, Singh finds that he, like many artists, ranks himself against others in the same field, and compares his works with those of other artists. Singh wants SubHuman’s audience to feel a sense of relatability when it comes to navigating this kind of unconscious comparison.

“I know I’m not the only one feeling this way,” he shares. “Just to say that it’s normal, you’re not alone.”

When it comes to his relationship with the piece and its exploration of self-assessment against others, Singh says, “I’ve moved on from that person. I don’t see the world that way. I don’t want to kind of dwell on it anymore because it just kind of makes me sink back into that space sometimes.” 

While working on SubHuman, he says, the creation process helped him shift his mindset. “Developing this piece really pushed me into a deeper level of self-awareness, especially around certain patterns I was caught in, like obsession, addiction, and self-rejection,” Singh says. “Through this work, I think I’ve grown a lot. I try to see everybody on an equal plane.”

His dance training began in India when he was around 15 years old, before he moved to Canada five years ago. Dance helped Singh gain confidence after having been an extremely shy child.

Beginning his dance adventures in street styles, Singh found himself drawn to contemporary dance after seeing one of his teachers perform. Following his move to Canada, he found community in the street-dance scene and attending dance battles. After that, he shifted towards the contemporary-dance sphere and was welcomed into a residency program through Dance West Network, which aided in the development of SubHuman. 

Along with working as a dance artist, Singh attended New Image College for acting, and he currently studies in a counselling program at UBC; he’s also a support worker for youth with mental-health and substance-abuse issues.

SubHuman draws on all his areas of expertise, combining movement (both street-dance styles and contemporary) and theatre, while exploring the complex space of the human mind.

Even though he feels he no longer roots his work in comparison with others’, Singh does hope to perform SubHuman more in the future. “I want to share it a lot for a little bit more, hopefully, because it also is my first piece ever as a dance-theatre artist, a solo dance-theatre artist,” he says, “and I just hold it with a little level of preciousness.”

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