Rhapsody In Yellow by Ming Wong. Rhapsody In Yellow Ming Wong Singtel Waterfront Theatre Aug 16, 8pm Watching historical clips of the United States and China’s ping-pong diplomacy in 1971 and 1972 in Rhapsody In Yellow, it is difficult not to conjure up more recent memories of the just-concluded Paris Olympics, at which politics and culture wars continue to prove part and parcel of sport. Quite apart from the gender debates surrounding women boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting, the US and China’s gold medal battle went down to the wire, the US finally gaining daylight on the very last day.
Its women’s basketball team beat France by just a point in a tensely contested final – the victory allowing it to equal China’s gold medal haul and pull ahead on overall medal count. Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s lecture performance takes this tug of war in the supposedly non-political arena of sport all the back to the first hints of rapprochement during the Cold War, when the Sino-Soviet rift encouraged US President Nixon to break with diplomatic tradition in the 1970s. The documentary clips Wong begins this one-hour affair with shows the fanfare surrounding the US table tennis team’s visit to Beijing – one of the first contacts of the two nations since China turned red in 1949 – eventually paving the way for Nixon to visit China.
The videos dwell not on the politics, despite its omnipresence: the scores are never shown, and most plays are cut before points are secured..