Dragons, the avant-garde performance by the pioneering Korean choreographer Eun Me Ahn, graced the Barbican stage this last weekend and will subsequently show at The Lowry, Manchester, from Tuesday 26th – Wednesday 27th September. 

Considered one of the most important artists in South Korea, Eun Me Ahn is the founder of the self-named Ahn Eun-Me Company (established in 1988). She is known for bringing a fluid, liberal and inclusive energy to her performances, regularly subverting traditional attitudes to age and gender roles with her acclaimed intergenerational works. Her most recent production, Dragons, is an exuberant, ever-shifting combination of colour and uninterrupted movement that blends live performance and video projection. Soft, flexible metallic tubes constitute the one recurring prop. They curtain three sides of the stage, while a screen separates the audience from the performers with a variety of hologram projections of dancers, plants and metallic tubes similar to those on stage created by Taeseok Lee.

Following no particular narrative, the surrealist piece explores Pan-Asian notions of dragons and their symbolism; auspicious, magical beings of unsurpassed power and vitality – representations of lightness, joy and optimism. The 14 performers from a variety of Asian countries including Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan are made up of eight live and six on video. Those that appear as video projections were born in the year 2000, which in the Eastern zodiac signifies the Year of the Dragon. Their appearance as holograms is a consequence of the Covid pandemic. With in-person rehearsals coming to a halt, the performers took to Zoom; a nod to the hyper-connected ‘Gen-Z’ and their vitality and willingness to adapt to our rapidly changing world. Eun Me Ahn invites the on-stage performers, adorned in metallic colours and flowing skirts with the occasional reference to elaborate traditional dress, to introduce themselves; where they were born and how they came to dance. 

While structurally, Dragons feels like a collection of ideas, the joins come easily. Eun Me Ahn intertwines contemporary styles of choreography that draw in elements of street dance, tumbling and traditional Asian movement. Solos, duets and ensemble sections largely flow smoothly into one another. This is helped by the persistent beat of Young-Gyu Jang’s music which blends contemporary pop and electronic music with a traditional score. Regardless of having no particular narrative, this is an exuberant, vibrant, ever-shifting piece of contemporary dance, where humour plays a pivotal role. It is a kaleidoscopic riot of powerful performances by the younger and older generation; sharing hope and fresh perspectives on how past and future can coexist.

Buy tickets to see Dragons at Manchester’s Lowry theatre.