Tonight, Korea National Contemporary Dance Company takes over the stage with what promises to be an amazing spectacle, titled Bul-ssang. Iggy Fenech interviews artistic director Aesoon Ahn.

Dance is fluent in all languages. It adapts itself to all cultures and it doesn’t discriminate between religions and ethnicities. In more ways than one, it is devoid of cultural, national and geo-graphical boundaries and could be the catalyst to a world free from prejudice.

That, of course, can only happen in an ideal world, where movement and rhythm would trump power and wealth. We’re not there yet, but still, dance is something everyone can understand or at least enjoy.

Making the most of this is the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company (KNCDC)’s latest performance, Bul-ssang, which will be on at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta tonight.

It will be a one-off performance for the island and it will deal with how the Orient perceives the Buddha.

“I got the inspiration when I saw Buddha statues used as decorative props in a Buddha bar in Paris,” says Aesoon Ahn, the choreographer of the piece and the artistic director of the dance company.

“I think we all perceive Buddha figures to be the most representative symbolism and religious iconography of the East and I took that as the stepping stone for this performance.”

From a religious icon, the Buddha has now become a sort of decoration in the West. The likeness of the legendary Indian sage who founded Buddhism has been stripped of its meaning and spiritual value.

“Buddha statues were transformed and consumed as a commodity for many years and they have been transformed over the years according to the tastes and location they’re found in,” Aesoon says. “And, I have to admit, I pitied those statues.”

Correlating the Buddha statues, which in Korean are bul-sang, and pity or misery bul-ssang, Aesoon has created a dance performance with a name that has multiple layers to it and which unites East and West in a rather unique way.

“The piece was started from the presence of mixture and distortion of the past and the present, East and West and the popular and not so popular,” he says. “This was then developed in this way that included all of them in movement.”

A dance performance with multiple layers to it

Over the past five years the KNCDC has created for itself a name in the world’s contemporary dance scene with expressive performance that delved into various subjects, including reinvented traditions, body discourse and artistic experiments that took place in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Annually, the company produces new contemporary dance work as well as collaborations with local and international artists and choreographers,” says Aesoon. “We also conduct research into many possibilities of new contemporary artwork in Korea, which we can use to communicate with the world.”

Although its history is short, the dance company has been invited to many countries, including Germany, the US, Mexico and Italy.

“This kind of international presentation means a lot to us as it gives us the chance to introduce the company and Korean contemporary dance to people from all over the world.”

While in Malta, the KNCDC will also take part in a workshop led by ŻfinMalta’s director, Mavin Koo. Aesoon says that this workshop will not only help the two national dance companies share their experiences with each other, but will also help their relationship develop and allow for cultural exchanges to take place.

ŻfinMalta will also join the KNCDC on stage tonight for a joint performance entitled Stabat Mater, which will intertwine Maltese and Korean culture and contemporary dance in a festival of movement.

“Bul-ssang will express the reality of Korea through contemporary dance as well as the mixture of East and West in our culture that has sprung from the influence of the West during the modern era in Korean history, which has evoked huge change of the society,” says Aesoon.

“This took place too quickly, so it was strangely mixed into Korean culture and has remained unchanged until today… Ultimately this is what Bul-ssang grasps,” he says.

“We hope Maltese audiences will listen to the sensitive languages brought about from the mixture of unfamiliar elements. More than that, however, we hope they actively react to them and enjoy them,” he says.

In many ways, Bul-ssang is as much a reflection of Western society as it is of the Eastern; it’s as much a representation of how we don’t see the Buddha as it is an interpretation of how the East sees the Buddha.

This is what makes this performance such a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves through someone else’s movements and to see someone else’s culture through their own. And what’s even better is that it’s harder for these meanings to be lost in translation.

Bul-ssang takes place tonight at 7.30pm at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta. Tickets are available online or by calling on 2559 5750.

www.mcc.com.mt