Bernice Lee is an artist and dance practitioner from and in Singapore. She sees art-making as a form of social activism and roots her labours in improvisation, driven by spontaneity and eccentricity, vulnerability and grace. Sensing time as material, she delves into the entanglements between making art and living life. Her practice looks at the centrality of the living body. Grounded in the everyday pleasures of embodiment, the work is driven by playing and performing - unfixing how the seer and the seen, and the lens and the screen, 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. With a digital presence in dialogue with the live work, her current research zooms in on Mother as a malleable archetype.
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”. Now a new mother, she has recast herself as MAMAMILKMACHINE™.
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/Derring-Do Dance with Faye Lim. She has a joint practice with theatre practitioner Chong Gua Khee; their work Tactility Studies: Hold to Reset, was part of Singapore International Festival of Arts 2021.
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, 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 contributes to online publications ArtsEquator and FiveLines, 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 is an MA Fine Arts candidate at Lasalle College of the Arts. She is 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”. Now a new mother, she has recast herself as MAMAMILKMACHINE™.
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/Derring-Do Dance with Faye Lim. She has a joint practice with theatre practitioner Chong Gua Khee; their work Tactility Studies: Hold to Reset, was part of Singapore International Festival of Arts 2021.
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, 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 contributes to online publications ArtsEquator and FiveLines, 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 is an MA Fine Arts candidate at Lasalle College of the Arts. She is supported by her family, friends, and young child.