Choreographer: Jang Hyerim
Two dancers kneel in front of each other, holding each other’s left hand in their own. With their right, they take a stick of charcoal. Each draws out an arc on the white dance floor, a semicircle around each dancer, the pair joining between them to form a large “S” shape.
Silently, the arcs build up, thickening and widening with every slight variation. Then, the dancers use other movements to create arcs in different directions. There’s a beautiful asymmetry in the pair’s symmetry, slight variations of direction and pace. As they move from their kneeling position, separating and reforming, the arms of the artwork change direction, creeping outwards, forever building up.
The opening ten minutes of Burnt Offering, presented by South Korea’s 99Artcompany as part of the Place’s Festival of Korean Dance, is a stunningly beautiful, mesmeric creation of art, by art. The sense of fluidity and human mechanics, and how that translates into such a drawing of true geometric beauty, is such a strong visual image that what follows cannot help but diminish its opening movement.
But that is partly the point. The charcoal blurs and smears with every foot, leg or arm that comes into contact with it. As musicians Hwang Gina and Lee Hwayoung provide musical accompaniment on their gayageum – traditional Korean multi-stringed instruments, plucked to provide melody while also struck for percussive accompaniment – the two dancers become four, a series of repetitive moves initially indicating some form of sacred rite, but gradually becoming something more grotesquely mechanical.
Choreographer and performer Jang Hyerim bases her work on traditional Seungmu, a folk dance form originated by Buddhist monks. Here, it feels as if the modern, industrialised world takes on the country’s traditions and contorts them into something cruder, more workshop than worship. That becomes accentuated when the world darkens, and the dancers don miners’ helmets, their head-mounted lights providing the only illumination.
The dance style here feels less of a unique experience than the piece’s opening movement, with moves that wouldn’t look out of place in any other contemporary dance piece. But that is, maybe, part of the point – a unique experience that, over time, descends into homogeneity that is neither unpleasant nor quite as inspirational.
As the 55-minute piece approaches its finale, the second pair of dancers peel off, leaving us once again with two. Some semblance of the original pairing re-emerges, but it is very different now. On top of the original artwork, now smeared almost beyond recognition, a new form of ritualised movement, less organic than the first, arises.
Burnt Offering’s meaningful work illustrates that art, faith, and life are all cyclical, even if there are many differences each time around. One may mourn the loss of that stunning initial piece of art, created in charcoal around the dancers’ feet, but the lesson is to find beauty in what follows.
Reviewed on 25 May 2024
