When a dance company is well-known, there is a constant pressure of needing to satisfy the expectations of its audiences, but when an audience comes to the theater to see a dance company for the first time, there are no set expectations.
And that is especially true when the company comes from the other side of the world.
Curiosity is more the mood in that case, and so it was for the Bereishit Dance Company on Feb. 14 for their Valentine’s Day debut performance at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth Beach. The name “Bereishit” comes from the Old Testament and is translated from Hebrew as “in the beginning of the beginning,” and contrary to what you might imagine, the company is not from Israel, they are from Seoul, South Korea.
Park Soon-ho, the founder, artistic director and choreographer of the company, created it in 2011 as a vehicle for a choreography that strives to bring new interpretations of traditional Korean art forms as it explores the laws of physicality in nature and mankind. The small company of excellent performers was composed of seven dancers (five men and two women) who were dressed in ordinary, contemporary street clothes while the two musicians and one singer onstage were clothed in traditional Korean costumes.
Park’s choreography is a unique blend of cantilevered partnering based on contact improvisation and martial arts. Often executed in silence that was accentuated by the simple beat of a slap or rhythmic panting, the exacting physicality of the movement was matched with a sense of urban detachment that created a deep sense of theatricality. This felt new and different to me.
Two ensemble works were presented but, in the program, they were listed in the opposite order than they were performed. So, as the opening work began, I was trying in the back of my mind to reconcile how the title Balance and Imbalance fit with what I was seeing onstage. However, I quickly became mesmerized by what was visually unfolding onstage in the dark and murky lights designed by Lee Seung-ho and I did not realize that it was Judo that I had just seen until the lights came up for intermission.
The curtain had opened to reveal a red floor that began to undulate like molten lava. Rectangular pieces of it began to rise up and move. It was hard to discern what was causing this until the red rectangles started to bend giving the appearance of red rooftops during an earthquake and legs could be seen moving underneath the red mats. This eerie and slow beginning of the work was set to the sound of upbeat jazzy music. As the red pieces moved around fitting into different place like puzzle pieces, the strains of the familiar notes of what seemed to be “Tuyo Es Mi Corazón” were heard as the dancers lay down covering themselves with their red blankets. Or were they the tops of caskets being closed over corpses?
A man took another man’s ankles and spun him around in a wheelbarrow lift until there was a loud unison slap on the floor and all seven of the company dancers dressed in an identical black business suits started running and sliding on the red floor with increasing energy and pace. The tempo was broken when one man squatted and huddled on the floor and the others took off their jackets and used them to wrap him up until he was a huge round ball. They then lifted this shape up to balance unaided on the shoulders of a man walking across the stage.
Then in one breathtaking moment, the man with the weighted ball on his shoulder, leaned perilously to one side and together with all the dancers, they tipped over into an unbroken dead fall to the ground. As they rebounded, they unleashed a barrage of movement that built and built until the dancers were torpedoing from one wing to the other. At accelerating random locations, they collided into each other as one leaped high over the other, knocking the other to the ground until it was non-stop mass aggression. It was an outstanding, high-risk tour de force moment in the dance.
The final image was a solo man (Na Ji-hun) isolated by a center spotlight. With the stance of an animal on high alert, he was attacked by these sporadically timed aggressive leaps that came out of the darkness and knocked him down. Each time he willed himself up to standing and fortified himself for the next inevitable defeat.
Judo was an intense work. In the program, the program notes explained that the choreography was about the ambivalent balance between violence — a human instinct that needs to be constantly released, and sports which gives people an opportunity to release this natural instinct. Even if one did not read these notes, the piece was totally engrossing, with its steady build in pace as images of death, frustration and risk-taking commingled with the sheer excitement of watching the virtuosity of the dancers.
Park focused on another kind of duality in the second work on the program, Balance and Imbalance. In this piece, Park paid respect to ancient Korean cultural traditions by utilizing the two musicians and one singer dressed in traditional garb to interact with the dancers who were again dressed in contemporary pedestrian clothing. The musical artists sat on one side of the apron of the stage as the dancers moved on the stage itself, setting up an interesting interaction between the past and today.
In total silence, two men met and shook hands that turned into an arm wrestle and then transformed into connected counterbalanced moves which later evolved into interlocked lifts that hung in space. Another man and two women joined as the musicians began to drum.
The two seated musicians played samullori instrumental music using four different percussion instruments that are part of Korea’s agricultural culture while the singer Kim Eun-kyung invaded the stage space to perform a song called “Sugungga,” which was from the traditional music genre called pansori. As she sang and dialogued the repetitive, patterned words of this satirical and humorous fable about a powerful Dragon King and a turtle, fox and rabbit, she boldly taunted dancer Na Ji-hun, who reacted by striking poses that alternated between being strong and meek. The tale was meant to criticize corrupt political power and those who blindly pledge devotion to it.
The final ensemble sections of Balance and Imbalance were filled with exciting, unconventional unison movement. The choreography was composed of idiosyncratic action/reaction partnering, quirky traveling steps, tumbles, and unusual arm gestures which were flicked or flung. The Bereishit Dance Company’s small group of talented dancers excelled in performing Park’s choreography. They shared a clear common intent in their theatricality and had the same defined clarity in their movement as well as what seemed to be a type of effortless virtuosity.
The work ended starkly with the dancers lined across the back of the stage each in a narrow strip of downward light as the drums slowed and faded into silence. Our curiosity was more than satisfied.