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Home : Program : Dance |
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Symphoca Princess Bari - This World - Korea
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| Time : |
Oct 26 (Mon) 20:00
Oct 27 (Tue) 20:00 |
| Venue : |
Arko Arts Theater Main Hall |
| Ticket Price : |
General R: 30,000 won, S : 20,000 won
Y/S : 15,000 won
*** for groups of 20 or more, a group discount of 30% is available |
| Choreographer : |
Eunme Ahn |
| Company : |
Ahn Eun-Me Company |
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Praised by the New York Times, the Ahn Eun-me Company has been officially invited to the Edinburgh Festival 2011 with this piece! The fable of Princess Bari based on the unique creativity of Eunme Ahn. |
Princess Bari is a god called back at the traditional Gut ritual in Korea performed on the 49th day after a person has died. The name 'Bari' is thought to come from the term, 'to let go'.
The ancient folklore on Princess Bari is as follows:
A long time ago, a king asked a mudang about the marriage of his fifteen-year-old son.
The fortuneteller said that if the prince got married that year, he would have seven daughters and if not, he would be blessed with three sons. The king, disregarding the fortune, had the prince get married that year and soon after, the prince inherited the throne.
The queen of the new king gave birth to seven daughters, as predicted by the mudang. The furious king threw the last born into the sea. Fortunately, a fisherman rescued the princess and raised her as his own. She found out about her true identity when she turned sixteen. On her way back to the palace she was caught by bandits and underwent great hardships. Thanks to the help of a toad, she managed to escape just before she was to be turned into a strip girl to dance in front of old warlords. Then she met a man whom she was about to fall in love with when she received news that her father the king was seriously ill.
She said farewell to her lover and returned to the palace to ask the mudang to foresee the future. The fortuneteller said that her father could only be cured with sacred water that only the princess could secure. The princess visited the underworld and again went through great hardship to meet the Buddha. She then came back to the upper world to meet a holy man who gave her the sacred water. By the time she got back, both her parents had long since passed away, but she was able to revive them with her sacred water. Eventually, she got married with the holy man and gave birth to seven sons. She also became a mudang to save people's lives. And to this day, she is the protector of mudangs and revered at a shrine dedicated to her.
This piece is composed of two parts: Part 1 is about the upper world or the world of the living and Part 2 is about the netherworld or the world of the dead. In Part 1, seven sections compose the piece: 1. Cast Away, 2. The Baby Cradle, 3. Hardship, 4. Desire, 5. Longing for Mother, 6. Encounter with Parents, and 7. Separation. The script is written by one of the renowned authors in Korea, Yong-gu Park. Focusing on the situation of the characters rather than repeating the hardships undergone by the protagonist maintains the tension of the piece. For over ninety minutes, five traditional Korean singers, eight dancers and five performers playing traditional Korean instruments combine to create a beautiful and sacred harmony and resonance of the discrepancies in human history.
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A piece of contemporary dance based on ancient folklore allowing both classical and contemporary elements to come together.
The merger of traditional and contemporary elements is shown not only in the dance but also in the live performance of music and sounds.
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| Choreographer |
Dancer Eunme Ahn(born 1963) who has her public image as a "crazy woman on the run" imbedded in the minds of the public, started taking dance lessons in fifth grade. She discovered Western contemporary dance and Isadora Duncan during her dance activities in junior high school. It was at that moment when her eyes opened to the world of contemporary dance. She has never replaced the traditional with the contemporary during her studies at university nor in her career as choreographer.
She first received critical attention with Siral in 1984 and began her creative drive with the long-piece of Paper Steps in 1988. Still, she always suffered from a 'thirst for a bigger, higher and more energetic world' and chose New York as her "arena where more dynamic elements are in conflict" to continue her studies. She received the Choreographer Award from the Manhattan Arts Foundation in 1999 and 2002. However, it is not her awards that have made her a renowned dancer and choreographer, but herself, Eunme Ahn who runs across the stage with a wide smile across her face like a mad woman as well as her eerie stage that suggests an overloaded mental and emotional state, and her grotesque poison mushroom-like costume.
At the start of the 21st century, Ahn moved her headquarters back to Korea. She served as artistic director at the Daegu Municipal Dance Company between 2000 and 2004 and presented major works such as The Little Match-seller, Sky Pepper and Eun-Me's Chunyang. She has always strived to study the universal language in dance, and for that reason, she is particularly proud that children enjoy her works. The Ahn Eun-Me Company was established in 1988 and her works have never abandoned the theme of deep mental investigation.
Seeking after the truth takes a variety of forms in her works. Please and Catch Me tends to be depressively self-reflective comedies. Princess Bari is a comic Gut that calls for sacrifice and the restraint of unsatisfied desires. A grotesque creature that self-multiplies even though its arms and legs are cut off can be seen in Let's Go! And a crossroad of here (the East) and there (the West) and this body (woman) and that body (man) is explored in Let me Change your Name, New Chunhyang.
In spite of the kaleidoscope of images revealed, the basic framework remains intact. It is none other than 'an ever-changing architectural structure, armed with the algorithm that forever regresses to point zero'. In the world of Eunme Ahn, the chaos caused by compression and amplification twists and turns, and drawing chaotic and wild curves almost invariably is compressed into the 'vanishing point of no boundary'. How that resembles the rules of nature. |
| Director |
Eunme Ahn |
| Company |
Choreographer and dancer, Eunme Ahn founded Ahn Eun-Me Company in February 1988. The company has been actively performing in the US and Europe. The New York Times has likened her work to that of Japanese Butho, while an English critic described her as being the "Pina Bausch of Asia". Her dance, characterized by a sensitive language of the body, mesmerizing colors, dynamic energy bereft of any unnecessary movements and turns, and a sense of humor, is an expression of her desire to go past the boundary of traditional dance and to communicate with the outside world.
www.ahneunme.com |
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