Here Be Dragons

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Eun-Me Ahn Dance Company Dragons Alhambra Theatre, Bradford 22 Mar 2025 19:30

The phrase "Hic Sunt Dracones" (Here be Dragons) appeared on an early 16th-century globe to indicate unexplored regions. I mention it because the show is called Dragons.   That early cartographer's term is apt to describe the performance of the Eun-Me Ahn Dance Company at the Bradford Alhambra on 22 Mar 2025 because it defied classification.  It was presented by Dance Consortium as contemporary dance, but it was also a light show with holograms and special effects.

Eun Me Ahn, who was born in Seoul in 1963, is a South Korean dancer and choreographer. Her company consists of 7 Korean dancers.   She describes her company's work in an interview for Dance Consortium on YouTube.  For its tour of the UK, her company has teamed up with 5 young artists from other East Asian countries, all of whom were born at the turn of the millennium.

The show starts quietly with a single figure slowly crossing the stage, manipulating what seems to be a pneumatic tube.   After exiting to the right, a second figure appears and then more.  In the course of the show, still and moving images are projected onto a gauze screen at the front of the stage.  These seem to mingle with the dancers so that it is impossible to distinguish between illusion and reality.

To describe the show as controversial would be an understatement.   A couple from Skegness whom I had met in the bar before the show did not appreciate it at all.  Others found it exhilarating.  Like the unknown regions in the 16th-century globe, it was on the edge of expectations.   

I wish I could say more about Eun-Me Ahn and her company. I could not buy a programme in the theatre and I found very little on the internet.   My most intriguing find is a page of links to Dragons and other works on the Gadja Productions website.   Some of these have very odd names like "Dancing Grandmothers" and "Dancing Middle-Aged Men".  I recommend North Korea Dance, which combines marching with fan and other traditional folk dances.