Korean art has long enthralled the West: from Changgeuk and Pansori (Opera/folk performance) to swooping, spidery calligraphy. Now, a festival of dance expands our horizons once again.
Having missed Jinjo Crew at Breakin’ Convention at the beginning of the month, I fairly squeaked when I spied that a Korean dance festival was on at The Place and in its eighth year. It is supported by Korean Cultural Centre UK, and the country’s Foundation for International Cultural Exchange. These big governmental institutions have partnered with The Lowry, Dance City and Pavilion Dance South West to induct more people into this wondrous subgenera with Kontemporary Korea (if you’re a grammar purist I promise it’s the last time I will type the name). We settle in for a double bill around the concepts of the mundane and the virtuosic (enter eye-roll here).
Melancholy Dance Company was founded in 2016 by choreographer/dancer Cheol-in Jeong. He begins the piece with a solo involving a little tap, and mesmeric hand work with an apple, to complete silence, just the scraping of his shoes: my bristles are up. Yet apart from another long section of awkward foot squelching and heavy panting from the five dancers, the piece is not an unadorned 45 minutes. Exploring the myth of Sisyphus (very loosely) and relying on free fall movement, support and monotonous daily routines are the focus. 0g (Zero Gram) dazzles with its group work. Like an amalgamate blob, the gents centipede along, using their bumping to propel the whole forward; interesting and vaguely unpalatable. The principles of contact improvisation involve them catching each other’s hands as they swing, falling and being caught, and then flung into the air. Dressed like Uniqlo models in greens and beiges, the piece heats up when Tae-kyung Choi’s electronic alarms propel everyone into a running circle – a clumsy relay if you will, as they collide and begin the endless trek up and down the hill.
Not just languishing in the house lights, Ro–wa Jeong makes inventive use of sliced and focused spots to give the clearest nod to the myth of the Greek hero and his unending battle with the boulder. Props feature from the starting apple, a shoe on a piece of string and a belt with elastic cords (very umbilical) that ties two and then three of the dancers together. The last crafts a wonderful ‘he’s-up-he’s-down’ almost musical hall routine. Many-headed, many-armed monsters jump from the pages of Homer onto the stage, manufactured through lifts and balance work. The company zing when working as a hive. Dropping distracting solos from their syncopated group work is the only possible improvement, and filling the uncomfortable noiseless chunks.
Our beginning piece Shinsegae (new world) is a lecture-style solo work by Ji Hye Chung. Sadly, it has none of the above-mentioned points of interest, as it is mainly Chung playing a mid-2000s projected internet video game, trying to get an athlete to run 100 metres. Then there is some manipulation of a doll with vague discussion of walking. It doesn’t contain enough information on the evolution or social implications of bipedalism to be a lecture, but Chung’s choreography is so sparse that it’s hard to call it dance. Although the subject matter is central to the art-form (the movement of the everyday) the piece is rather pedestrian.
The festival continues for the rest of the month and is spread across the UK, so try and snatch a ticket, beg, borrow, steal, etc… The works are bold, deeply experimental and not afraid of pushing the boundaries of dance, for better or worse. Feedback forms in the interval seem rather overeager, but hopefully will keep the festival going into its ninth year.
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