Dance Review : Troupe Dramatizes Downbeat Statements of Korean Life

Three pieces steeped in alienation formed the calling-card program of the Seoul Contemporary Dance Company Thursday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.

Formed 10 years ago and made up of two dozen graduates of Kyung Hee University, the company offered strongly executed statements of downbeat themes, with design elements (including Korean calligraphy) in two pieces likely to puzzle non-Koreans, although the overall concepts remained clear.

Byung-Koo Seo’s “Relations” juxtaposed figures representing traditional Korean culture with a restless, mindless, soulless corps identified with Western values. Either rejecting outsiders or corrupting them, this ensemble flowed from one empty liaison to another in a fluid, jazz-related movement style. True loyalty and feeling belonged only to the outnumbered Old Guard.

Myung-Sook Park’s feminist manifesto “A Morning Wake Up Alone” dramatized the plight of city women in scenes of neglect and abuse, but it also incorporated a group of up to eight dancers in passages defining an increasingly positive vision of womanhood: liberated, sensual, free of their early turmoil and any need for male affirmation. Unfortunately, the sugary, deafening taped music proved a liability, as did Park’s taste for excessive repetition.

For concentrated intensity and movement invention, nothing matched “Nostalgia II,” a ritual for five women choreographed by Jeong-Joon Ahn and Ae-Sook Jang to an unsparingly harsh, partly electronic sound-score by Dong-Joon Lee.

Often bleak and minimalist, the work included a passage in which one of the women left the group long enough to take a string of bells--and embrace it--before her final journey. Even for a non-Buddhist, this action eloquently conveyed a sense of connection to the older spiritual realities of Korean life that informed the work and the program as a whole.