Educated at the school of rigour, of precise, demanding Korean discipline, Post-Orientalist Express choreographer Eun-Me Ahn is also a daredevil performer, ready for all kind of piracies. Some have seen her jump from the top of a crane, attack a piano with axe and scissors, rip from herself her fairy dress made of white ties to distribute the pieces to the audiences while performing a teddybear dance, bury herself with a clown costume under a rain of balloons, be locked behind bars in a duet with a chicken, or dressed up as a mushroom. Eun-Me's motivation is more than mere provocation. It is rather the affirmation of a curiosity and a freedom held by work and style, pushed to their most unexpected limits.
Read the Post-Orientalist Express artistic statement from the enfant terrible of Seoul below, before you see this unique and vibrant contemporary dance at Roslyn Packer Theatre in January.
Post-Orientalist Express: A language that dances beyond
I am currently travelling beneath the banner of the “Post-Orientalist Express,” crossing layered cultural thresholds to reframe the body’s expressive language throughout the East. This endeavour overturns the once-accepted label of the “Orient” and recognises Asia not as an exotic museum curated by outsiders, but as an endlessly evolving crucible of languages— emerging, receding, and merging anew. In this dynamic space — where Okinawa’s waves meet the Philippines’ inscrutable rhythms and Indonesia’s spiritual undercurrents—I find myself asking: now that we have moved beyond the prefix “post,” where might we be heading? Which sentences can a new dance construct, and by what means shall those utterances traverse the borders of nations and continents, languages, and cultures?
"This endeavour overturns the once-accepted label of the “Orient” and recognises Asia not as an exotic museum curated by outsiders, but as an endlessly evolving crucible of languages..."
The bodily lexicon I have gleaned from traversing many corners of the East cannot simply be catalogued like a dictionary. Rather, it draws upon scorching sunlight, sudden showers, swirling winds, beads of sweat, unspoken gazes, and the cool, indifferent grins of youths dancing offhandedly in busy streets. Might I carry these fragments onto the stage, rearranging them into a fresh context? Once more, I am reminded of the almost mythical notion that “the entirety of existence is composed of language,” and so I allow it to shimmer anew. If the body is a sentence and dance its language, then deconstructing and reassembling this expansive, many-layered text called “Asia” becomes a deeply humbling pursuit. In truth, I do not know how it may unfold. Thus, I keep walking, tumbling, colliding, turning—and dancing.
"The bodily lexicon of the East draws upon scorching sunlight, sudden showers, swirling winds, beads of sweat, unspoken gazes..."
Embarking upon the voyage of the “Post-Orientalist Express,” I once again see in Asia a cosmos of dragons, each with its own secret pattern. It strikes me that this journey may never truly end. Yet, perhaps the physical language of dance will in time serve as a surprising “yeouiju, a jewel held by a dragon” of encounters— a hidden pearl yielded by these meetings. A faint, electric sense courses through my toes, suggesting that by continuing in motion, we are forging the next shape of Asia’s unbounded dance.
– Eun-Me Ahn, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Post-Orientalist Express
