AISLE SAY Berkshires

LDP/LABORATORY DANCE PROJECT

Artistic director – Chang Ho Shin

at Jacob’s Pillow/Ted Shawn Theater July 27-31


Reviewed by Joel Greenberg

 

LDP/Laboratory Dance Project, the South Korean company making its debut at Jacob’s Pillow, is young and extraordinarily precise in discipline and execution. The company also changes the pace and rhythm of much recent programming. Let me add that I am not, and have not been, advocating change – Ella Baff and her remarkable colleagues know very well what they are doing and they also know that audiences need the best kind of shaking up. I’d say that LDP is a company that we are all glad to have met this past week. Also worth noting was the very large number of young (as in teenage) and eager audience members. The Pillow people wisely see the future as something far beyond the separate showcases performed each week.
 
LDP was founded in 2001 by graduates of the Korean National University of Arts (Department of Dance), the first dance conservatory in Korea and the first national university devoted to professional dance education with the support of the Korean government. The all-male company that performed at the Pillow presented three dances.
 
“Are You Happy to See Me?”, created in 2005 and choreographed by Mi Sook Jeon, illustrates LDP’s style – powerful attack in all attitudes and transitions plus ensemble stamina bordering on the maniacal.  In addition, and no less emblematic, is the fine attention to design elements that house and amplify the world of the LDP stage. Jun Kim has designed a floor surface and an overhead set piece that defines the dance space and also allows for the set’s textures to shift with music, sound and bodies. The jokey displacement of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” against the music of Pan Sonic is both disorienting and intriguing – I have yet to determine which of these two is the dominant.
 
“Modern Feeling” is Insoo Lee’s 2008 dance for two men – and Lee, himself, performed with Jinyook Ryu. Of the evening’s works, this was the most emotionally engaging and also the most carefully structured.  Two men explored the boundaries of distance and connection and Lee’s fascination with physicalizing the discomfort experienced by men who aim to understand what male intimacy can be (and this is not coy language referring to things sexual) is, by turns, humorous and touching. Sentiment never overshadows the work and both Lee and Ryu establish a chemistry and synchronicity that dazzles.
 
“No Comment”, the evening’s final piece, is also the dance that Pillow Executive/Artistic Director, Ella Baff, referred to in her opening curtain speech as the work that prompted her to bring LDP to Becket for their premiere performance. Choreographed by the company’s Artistic Director, Chang Ho Shin, this dance for eight male dancers is, according to a programme note, also the company’s “signature piece”. It is a wild mix of hip-hop, martial arts, gymnastics and LDP’s playful approach to body/space exploration. Bodies fly across the stage one moment and then leap into the air the next, some in isolation and others assisted by their partners. There is no discernible “shape” to the work, though this does not imply any lack of purpose – the use of contact improvisation appears to be central to the dance (as it does in the opening piece) and this imbues a freedom of response from the audience. The audience clap-along portion that establishes the final frenzied section of the work roused the audience, to be sure, and the presence of the pulsing-pounding dancers in the aisles succeeded in bringing stage energy into the house. The dance could do without this unnecessary interaction, but there is no doubt that it worked for the majority of the opening night audience.
 
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