A leading choreographer on the contemporary Asian and global scene, rooted in shamanic rituals and trained in both Korea and the United States, Eun-Me Ahn has developed a choreographic language that blends East and West, tradition and transformation. Her new creation, Post-Orientalist Express, brings together theatre, dance, contemporary circus, ancestral traditions, and pop culture to explore the richness of Asian heritage while questioning its representations.
Legends, costumes, music, movement, and references to pop culture become tools to confront clichés and stereotypes, bending them to the point of absurdity in order to reveal their contradictions.
Ahn gathers fragments of movement from everyday life and from different corners of Asia—from crowded markets to the beaches of Okinawa, from the rhythms of the Philippines to the spiritual vibrations of Indonesia—to reassemble them on stage and shape a colourful, vibrant, eccentric, absurd, playful, poetic, and ultimately timeless universe.
Eun-Me Ahn has found a new, unexpected, and exhilarating way to address one of the central challenges of all artistic research: the relationship between tradition and modernity. On the one hand, there is the need to know, understand, and absorb what past generations have created; on the other, the need to forget them, move beyond them, and search for something new. Introduced to French audiences in 2013 and 2014 through the Festival Paris Quartier d’Été, Eun-Me Ahn has built a unique artistic path shaped both by the study and exploration of shamanic traditions and by the years she spent in New York, as well as by a profound friendship with the late Pina Bausch, who invited her to Wuppertal on several occasions. A Korean and cosmopolitan choreographer, a figure of the avant-garde and also the creator of the official opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup in Daegu in 2002, as well as a guest at some of the world’s most important international festivals, Eun-Me Ahn celebrates the beauty of contrast: she mixes polka dots, stripes, and floral patterns; plays with the brightest pop colours before shifting into solemn austerity; explores the subtlest shades of androgyny; and uses slowness to unleash the rhythm of trance.
Trained within a culture of rigor, precision, high standards, and distinctly Korean discipline, Eun-Me Ahn is also a fearless performer, willing to push beyond every stage convention. She has been seen launching herself from the top of a crane, attacking a piano with an axe and scissors, tearing off a fairy-tale dress made of white neckties and handing its fragments to the audience while dancing with a teddy bear, burying herself in a clown costume beneath a rain of balloons, performing behind bars in a duet with a chicken, and even disguising herself as a mushroom.
Yet it would be a mistake to view all this as mere provocation. Rather, it is the expression of an inexhaustible curiosity and creative freedom, sustained by rigorous work and a style capable of pushing itself to its most unexpected limits.
Choreography and artistic direction: Eun-Me Ahn
Music: Young-Gyu Jang
Light design: Jinyoung Jang
Video direction: Taeseok Lee
Set and costume design: Eun-Me Ahn
Technical direction of creation: Jimyung Kim
Meta-dramaturgy: Geun-Jun Changwoo-Michael Lim
Costume realization: Yunkwan Design
Prop realization: Dongyoung Kim
Production assistant: Sungbin Kim
Dancers: Eun-Me Ahn, Hyekyoung Kim, Yongsik Moon, Doohee Lee, Deokyeong Kim, Gaon Han, Jeonghwan Oh, Hyeonseo Lee, Seyeon Kim
Photo © Jean-Marie Chabot.
Production: Eun-Me Ahn Company
Co-production: Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Berliner Festspiele, Théâtre de la Ville – Paris, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre d’Orléans / Scène Nationale, Sydney Festival
