About
With 19 years in the dance industry, Rachel, known as Racheezels, has continually pushed the boundaries of her craft—evolving from a foundation in street dance into a practice that draws on movement without borders or labels.
She is one half of the creative duo ScRach MarcS, whose work reimagines dance as an art form unconfined by genre, constantly seeking out new and exciting works that challenge the creative mind and raise the artistic bar.
As a practitioner, Rachel has been an active voice in the street dance scene, competing and performing at platforms such as Singapore Dance Delight, the All-Babes Cineleisure Dance Battle, R16, and The Dance Floor Season 2.
As an educator, she is currently shaping the next generation of dancers as an adjunct lecturer in LASALLE College of the Arts' Diploma in Dance and at the School of the Arts.
As a community builder, she has produced and initiated platforms including Ladies First, Pop in Progress, and What's Your Flavour, creating space for the street dance community to gather, exchange, and grow.
Rachel is currently completing her Master's in Arts and Cultural Leadership, where her research examines arts intermediary organisations—their modes of intervention and impact on specific arts communities.
Drawing on her own positionality as a longtime street dance practitioner and her commitment to ecosystem development, she is working toward establishing an intermediary structure for Singapore's street dance community, bridging practice, research and advocacy.
Holding Space: Learning from arts organisations to build a street dance intermediary grounded in community, culture and care
The street dance industry in Singapore has grown significantly over the past twenty years due to accessibility of information through social media and globalisation and the growth of dance studios and practitioners has also given rise to more street dance festivals, competitions, productions and platforms.
However, gaps remain to be addressed as the ecosystem grows, mainly fragmentation and a lack of collaboration, with different players working largely in silos.
In response, the researcher proposes establishing a street dance intermediary to bridge the various stakeholders within the ecosystem and to help the sector and community grow more holistically.
Through individual interviews with representatives of five arts intermediaries and a focus group with nine local street dance practitioners, the research examines different organisational models and their roles within their respective communities, in order to provide a foundational framework for what a street dance intermediary might look like in Singapore. These findings were then shared with the focus group for validation and feedback.
Drawing on the literature review and the interviews, the researcher adopted Tronto's care framework and adapted De Propris's cultural value chain to incorporate a community of practice, thereby connecting the concept of intermediary work to the holistic care of a community.
The comparison of findings across the five organisations was organised around five themes: (1) vision, mission and practice; (2) organisational governance, structures and programmes; (3) modes of intermediation; (4) evaluation of, and response to, the impact of their work; and (5) challenges faced and long-term goals.
The findings suggest that the proposed intermediary should first establish itself as a project-based collective with distributed leadership structure before committing to registration as a non-profit in the future.
Regardless of its legal structure, it should position itself as a neutral organisation that connects practitioners and institutional stakeholders through commodifying intervention, expands the sector's outreach and public visibility through outreach intermediation, and convenes a community of practice in which members can connect, share knowledge and raise shared concerns.
Professional practice
Una Lam Ut I
Loh Wei Zong
Nguyen Hong Doan Trang
Mohika Shankar
