Choreographer and Composer: Jae-duk Kim
The Place’s annual Festival of Korean Dance closes its 2025 season with an electrifying routine by Jae-duk Kim’s Modern Table company.
Seven dancers kitted out in loose-fitting, mustard-coloured three-piece suits, arriving accompanied by a score full of rhythmic drumming and violin-based melodies. With each dancer taking turns to move into the spotlight, there is a commonality with each routine, the drum beats mirrored by choreography that echoes the sounds with stamping pirouettes from the dancers in their socked feet.
There’s a hint at conformity here, of everybody performing the same rote behaviour, as if office workers constricted by their morning commute. Occasional discrepancies, someone staying in the spotlight too long or deviating from the path, are countered by other dancers pulling the rebels into line.
But as the rhythm and score get louder and louder, the fluidity and repetition become all that matters. This is no grey drudgery, the costumes already highlighting the non-conformity. The bagginess of the outfits means that the dancers’ frenetic spins and flicks are emphasised with billowing fabric. The effect is refreshingly distinctive.
One can see common threads with modern hip-hop dance companies in the mix of traditional dance forms with more contemporary moves, even though the physical vocabulary also seems quite different. Promotional material describes Modern Table’s style as “unique, but inherently Korean”. One may have to take them on their word for this, but some of the loose-limbed dance moves used in their repertoire wouldn’t feel out of place at a Northern Soul night.
After 20 minutes of prerecorded audio, the dancers are joined on stage by a live band led by vocalist Suk-gui Yoon, further intensifying the already gripping score. The band and dancers form an ornate form of call and response, with some of the dancers grabbing microphones to join in the vocal work.
As the audio volume increases ever upwards, the rhythmic repetitions of the dancers’ routines become more visible as some dancers perform on the aisle steps next to the audience. It’s not an ideal arrangement, resulting in some dancers being out of the sightline for some sections. But with those that are visible, there is a thrill at seeing the company’s loose-limbed precision up close.
Billed as loosely inspired by depictions of madness in Hamlet and Macbeth, the connection is so loose that it is almost undetectable. Near the hour’s end, the onstage dancers lie motionless in near darkness as the singing continues. The commuters may have returned home, perhaps, or maybe they are, like the residents of Elsinore Castle, slain.
However one interprets the sequence of events, it is impossible not to be enthralled. Ham:Beth is an hour of dance that is so vibrant and alive that it is joyous from start to finish – and a fitting conclusion to this year’s celebration of Korean dance.
Reviewed on 23 May 2025
