SO-FAR

Skip to main content

Zoom, Click, Waltz

Artist Sarah Choo Jing documents her neighbours dancing in their apartments during the lockdown, while Chief Editor Christina J. Chua also reminisces dancing alone, together.


SO-FAR archive

Documentation of participants preparing to engage in dance

Sarah Choo Jing, documentation of participants preparing to engage in dance, 2020

I was not the only one to dance alone during lockdown. A friend, Krystal, had organised a series of virtual parties which live-streamed her friends all over the world via Zoom to the steady beat of jungle and techno, which played through a simultaneous window on Twitch[01]. I “attended” the first of the series, donning red lipstick to accessorise my polka-dotted silk pyjamas, since we were encouraged to dress things up. After two glasses of wine, it was already a proper boogie. While in between moves, I’d check the Zoom chat to say “hey” to friends I knew, sizing up or down the gallery view to scroll through other costumes and funky backgrounds. In these virtual halls, I had noticed gallerist Audrey pouring cocktails while waving her hands around, my Italian friends Carolina and Raphael nodding to the rhythm with alligator masks on, amongst others like Tiffany, or Shermin and Yang who were chilling on sofas, curious, observant. It was a fun night, but at the end of it, I turned off the lights, and was still alone.


Sarah Choo Jing, documentation of participants preparing to engage in dance, 2020

Sarah Choo Jing, documentation of participants preparing to engage in dance, 2020


The novelty wore down sooner than later, and I skipped out on the next sessions. A couple of weeks later, the same Audrey who owns the art gallery Yeo Workshop, invited me to a Zoom conversation with Singapore artist and filmmaker Sarah Choo Jing. This time in nought but yoga wear, I clicked to log in, comfy but ready to learn. Sarah began playing a slow-moving video, the medium she is most known for. After a few slides elaborating her practice, as artists usually do during such fireside chats, she paused at her most recent pieces.


Sarah talked about how her previous video series Accelerated Intimacy had begun with her rather compulsive habit of staying in hotels, slipping quizzical notes under the doors of neighbouring rooms to her own. Sometimes the anonymous occupants would write back; sometimes they would not. Yet the secrets she and they shared became the backbone of an entrancing video montage which she presented in an atmospheric exhibition at Yeo Workshop in 2018[02].


Sarah Choo Jing, documentation of letters mailed to each household, 2020

Sarah Choo Jing, documentation of letters mailed to each household, 2020


This practice of letter-writing had enabled her newest work-in-progress which was begun during lockdown. Entitled 27 Happenings  (working title), it was an ongoing survey of Sarah’s neighbours roused also by her daily trips in her apartment building’s glass elevator to throw the trash away. Every day, taking the lift down and up again was in itself enough of an event, as she peered into the rooms and apartments of other shut-in individuals, busy or not at their desks, working out, watching TV. Sarah began to develop a letter where, instead of expecting a written reply, she anticipated a moving one. She begins the missive with a poem that is formed like the shaft of an elevator, stopping at a floor, where “you are home”.


Here, several months after our lockdown has lifted, and not knowing whether it will ever be imposed again, I attach the letter and the documentation. May it be an empathetic reminder of that unforgettable season, when we were all strangers, all alone, together.


Sarah Choo Jing, digital composite of participants engaging in a dance, 2020

Sarah Choo Jing, digital composite of participants engaging in a dance, 2020


Dear Stranger,


this May,


there is everything


to hope for —


and nothing to regret.


we have come a long way —


where day bleeds into nightfall.


and we are, all;


alone, together.


tonight, I dance


with tears in my eyes.


a distant memory of my first dance


— with dad.


more, an embrace.


how beautiful and comforting


that stillness was.


tonight, I dance alone;


to the memory of his limp gait


to the scent of Sandalwood & ash


to the sound of music inside my head.


you are home.


waltz with your partner;


sway on your own.


think back to a shared memory.


tonight, in your living rooms,


slow dance to the tune


of moon light.


Sarah Choo Jing, digital composite of participants engaging in a dance, 2020

Sarah Choo Jing, digital composite of participants engaging in a dance, 2020


5 May 2020 at 11:17PM:


My name is Sarah Choo Jing, and I am a Singaporean artist living across from you at The Strata.


Firstly, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my letter. This is a project inspired by relationships, longing and intimacy during this period of Circuit Breaker[03]; it is a work that is close to heart.


I am writing to you to kindly seek your participation in my upcoming film project that documents a person or people dancing in the living rooms of their homes.


Should you be interested to be part of this work, you are invited to dance with a partner(s), or on your own on the evening of 15th May 2020, from 8.30 – 9PM. Kindly draw your curtains and switch on all your lights in your home. Dance to your choice of music by the window in your living room.


Your willingness to be a part of my project will mean so much to me.


However, should you rather not participate in this project, I completely understand and will respect your choice. Please draw your curtains and I will not include your window in my recording. Thank you once again for your time.


Very sincerely yours, Sarah Choo Jing




  • 01.

    Twitch is an American video live streaming service.

  • 02.

    “Sarah Choo Jing: Accelerated Intimacy” (2018), Yeo Workshop, Singapore. www.yeoworkshop.com/exhibitions/sarah-choo-jing-accelerated-intimacy

  • 03.

    The “circuit breaker” was a stay-at-home order implemented by the Singapore government in response to COVID-19. See Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, “PM Lee Hsien Loong on the COVID-19 situation in Singapore on 3 April 2020”, Prime Minister’s Office Singapore, April 3, 2020. www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/PM-Lee-Hsien-Loong-on-the-COVID19-situation-in-Singapore-on-3-April-2020

Artists and Contributors

Christina J. Chua portrait picture

Christina J. Chua

Christina J. Chua is Co-Founder and Chief Editor of SO-FAR, a hybrid publication, gallery and artist incubator. Prior to founding SO-FAR, she worked at galleries and art fairs throughout Asia representing and exhibiting a spectrum of emerging to blue-chip contemporary artists from around the world. As a writer, she contributed to various international and Singapore art publications. Today, Christina is committed to bridge-building in the Singapore art scene, while developing a new generation of art patrons through her fine art consultancy and education group, Metis Art. With her interests lying at the interstices of business, technology and contemporary art, Christina is also Strategic Advisor of innovation consultancy ArtBizTech.

Sarah Choo Jing picture

Sarah Choo Jing

Sarah Choo Jing is known for her interdisciplinary approach to photography, video and installation. Her work depicts identifiable moments and characters within contemporary urban society suggesting a plethora of private and often solitary narratives. The artist is concerned with the gaze of the flaneur, voyeurism and the uncanny. Choo lives and works in Singapore since completing her MFA at the Slade School of Art in London, in the Summer of 2015. Choo was recently shortlisted as a Finalist for the Audemars Piguet Art Commission for Art Basel 2020 and invited to present her practice at Le Brassus, Geneva in Switzerland and is a Finalist in the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2020. She clinched the Gold Award in the 2019 PX3 Prix de la Photographie Competition, the 2017 Perspectives 40 under 40 Award and came in First Place in the 2015 Moscow International Foto Awards.