27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Wit, whimsy and time's gravity: Korean National Ballet's Kylian Project
From evocative elegy to percussive tension and powdered-wig satire, the Korean National Ballet's Kylian Project brings three of Jiri Kylian's seminal works to the GS Arts Center this week through Sunday.
The program includes "Forgotten Land," "Falling Angels" and the wryly humorous "Sechs Tanze" ("Six Dances"), offering a compact glimpse into the world-renowned contemporary choreographer's remarkable range.
Opening the triple bill, "Forgotten Land" unfolds against a backdrop reminiscent of aged or singed parchment.
The piece is set to Benjamin Britten's mournful Sinfonia da Requiem, which was composed during WWII and grapples with the fragility of human existence.
Kylian described the piece as a work created in the idiom of musical choreography, meaning that all movement derives directly from the music — a reason to pay close attention to how choreography and score mirror each other.
Twelve dancers channel the ebb and flow of time through expressive duets, each marked by distinct costume colors representing the phases of a woman's life, drawing visual inspiration from Edvard Munch's "Dance of Life" (1899), a key influence cited by Kylian.
Making its Korean premiere, "Falling Angels" is a taut, hypnotic work set to Steve Reich's rhythmically charged minimalist score.
Created for eight female dancers, Kylian once described it as a 'somewhat light-hearted homage' to female performers, but the work is anything but light. No one leaves the stage from start to finish, as the dancers remain locked in an unbroken, percussive momentum. Brief moments of individual variation surface, only to be drawn back into the tight, collective rhythm.
With powdered wigs, billowing skirts and a delightfully absurd flair, "Sechs Tanze" takes a sharp, satirical turn in the Kylian Project program.
Inspired by Mozart's "Six German Dances, K571," Kylian has crafted a sequence of six brief, burlesquelike episodes that lampoon human vanity and social absurdity.
Beneath the frothy humor and baroque whimsy lies an ironic bite — Mozartian wit turned choreographic satire.
