Bernice Lee is an artist and dance practitioner from and in Singapore. Her current research zooms in on Mother as a malleable archetype. She sees art-making as a form of social activism and roots her labours in improvisation and playing. Sensing time as material, she delves into the entanglements between making art and living life, with the living body transforming and reconstituting into new wholes. Grounded in the everyday pleasures of embodiment, the work is driven by playing and performing - unfixing how people and not-people and not-not-people might relate. She thinks of the Female Gaze not as one way of seeing but as many ways of seeing. Bernice constantly seeks languages for transformation.
Bernice began to dance domestically as part of her online movement practice #ghosting. It was her way of remaking her roles as “wife” and “working artist”. As a new mother, she recast herself as MAMAMILKMACHINE™. Now she is not really exactly a new mother, but the hashtag sticks.
Bernice cares about expanding our imagination of and for the future. She plays shapeshifting roles when working in teams and projects with fellow arts and cultural practitioners. Her activities include improvising, choreographing, directing, performing, teaching, facilitating and writing. She is co-director of Rolypoly Family with Faye Lim. She has a joint practice with theatre practitioner Chong Gua Khee; their work as Tactility Studies grows on.
Part of Maya Dance Theatre’s main creative team from 2014-2017, she traveled widely, performed and collaborated in dance theatre works, while training intensively in Bharathanatyam, Taichi and Indonesian dance forms. She performed and choreographed for Frontier Danceland from 2012-2014, ideating plans with the team and dancing in repertoire by local and guest choreographers.
She is featured in Reality Lost, a different documentary about quantum mechanics, by filmmaker Karol Jalochowski, who also created this record of Strangeweather Movement Group's Spooky Action (at a distance). She can also be found playing multiple roles in Singapore Minstrel, a fantasy-documentary painting the magical universe of Singapore's wildest busker. Directed by Xi Jie Ng, the film features Roy Payamal, also known as the "Silver Man". A restless and prolific performer, Bernice has performed in such diverse works including Baby Space by Dalija Thelander, Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy, Indulgence by Eng Kai Er (with Jereh Leung and herself), and One Show Only by Byron Perry.
An associate member at Dance Nucleus (2018-2021), and a part-time lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts, she has performed dramaturgy for works by Shahar Binyamini (PARADISO, 2018) and The Necessary Stage (Gitanjali - I feel the earth move, 2014). She has contributed to online publications ArtsEquator and FiveLines (2015?), enjoying the kinetic rhythms of writing and the impact of words.
Bernice holds a BFA from The Ohio State University (2010). She was supported by National Arts Council and the International Buckeye Scholarship. She was also supported by her family, now-spouse, and friends. Bernice holds an MA in Fine Arts from Lasalle College of the Arts (2021), supported by her family, friends, and young child.
Bernice began to dance domestically as part of her online movement practice #ghosting. It was her way of remaking her roles as “wife” and “working artist”. As a new mother, she recast herself as MAMAMILKMACHINE™. Now she is not really exactly a new mother, but the hashtag sticks.
Bernice cares about expanding our imagination of and for the future. She plays shapeshifting roles when working in teams and projects with fellow arts and cultural practitioners. Her activities include improvising, choreographing, directing, performing, teaching, facilitating and writing. She is co-director of Rolypoly Family with Faye Lim. She has a joint practice with theatre practitioner Chong Gua Khee; their work as Tactility Studies grows on.
Part of Maya Dance Theatre’s main creative team from 2014-2017, she traveled widely, performed and collaborated in dance theatre works, while training intensively in Bharathanatyam, Taichi and Indonesian dance forms. She performed and choreographed for Frontier Danceland from 2012-2014, ideating plans with the team and dancing in repertoire by local and guest choreographers.
She is featured in Reality Lost, a different documentary about quantum mechanics, by filmmaker Karol Jalochowski, who also created this record of Strangeweather Movement Group's Spooky Action (at a distance). She can also be found playing multiple roles in Singapore Minstrel, a fantasy-documentary painting the magical universe of Singapore's wildest busker. Directed by Xi Jie Ng, the film features Roy Payamal, also known as the "Silver Man". A restless and prolific performer, Bernice has performed in such diverse works including Baby Space by Dalija Thelander, Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy, Indulgence by Eng Kai Er (with Jereh Leung and herself), and One Show Only by Byron Perry.
An associate member at Dance Nucleus (2018-2021), and a part-time lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts, she has performed dramaturgy for works by Shahar Binyamini (PARADISO, 2018) and The Necessary Stage (Gitanjali - I feel the earth move, 2014). She has contributed to online publications ArtsEquator and FiveLines (2015?), enjoying the kinetic rhythms of writing and the impact of words.
Bernice holds a BFA from The Ohio State University (2010). She was supported by National Arts Council and the International Buckeye Scholarship. She was also supported by her family, now-spouse, and friends. Bernice holds an MA in Fine Arts from Lasalle College of the Arts (2021), supported by her family, friends, and young child.