Author: Sunčica Sodar
On the last day of the Sissi Autumn Dance Week (SŐT7) on November 17th, the solo performance Dream of a Ladybug was held at the Bethlen Téri Theater in Budapest, whose choreographer and author of concept Ha Ji Hye is also the dancer in the mentioned work.
This year, the Sissi Autumn Dance Week celebrated its twelfth anniversary with a week-long event. The festival started with a gathering and presentation of the professional Hungarian dance scene, but on the last day, the focus shifted to the local dance scene in Budapest. It is important to note that during the festival week, viewers could see nine dance performances from four different countries of the world, one lecture performance and a site-specific performance, which was created during the festival itself as a product of a four-day workshop by dancers from six different countries.
It is no less important to note that almost half of the performances at the festival were selected by the organization Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery – the Creative Europe project, whose founders and partnership consists of the Central Europe Dance Theatre (Hungary), Bunker (Slovenia), HIPP (Croatia), Krakow Dance Theatre (Poland), M Studio (Romania) and Vitlycke – Center for Performing Arts (Sweden).
In its mission, Beyond Front@ encourages the local development of the entire field of activities within contemporary dance with an emphasis on dance, writing and choreography. Therefore, it is not surprising that the festival program itself was very diverse. Starting with young artists from Hungary, the program opus of the festival expanded to artists from Slovenia, Croatia, but also from South Korea. And it was precisely this diversity that had a kind of power to educate the audience when watching different performances; different authors, dance references, ideas and contextualizations of the countries they came from. Although the variety of the program undoubtedly offers the viewer a choice, it is an inevitable fact that this diversity can often be tiring and can lead to a loss of identity. While the fatigue from watching a certain play may dissipate after the play is over, tiredness is harder to shake off in real life. Often, we simply don’t have time and do everything to forget about it, continuing on. This is exactly what the performance of the artist Ha Ji Hye speaks of in a way; both through dance movements and through the idea of living, no matter what country we come from or what nationality we belong to.
The lady bug’s dream
Starting from a culturally specific context, Ji Hye talks about young people in contemporary society who struggle with everyday life far from their families. She talks about people who have left their hometown and surroundings for a life in a big city and have come to Seoul with dreams of the future that awaits them. As she put it: “I would like to reach out with compassion, comfort and positive messages to those who are too busy every day and don’t have time to think about what the day is like or who they are”.
The performance itself is characterized by a very clear dramaturgical structure that is almost identical to the basic division of a dramatic work: introduction, climax and denouement. As a dramatist, I could predict the possible plot line and ending of the story, which may be the irony of moving away to a different city for a better life only to find out that it can be found in the very place we left. But let’s start from the beginning. (Nothing more, nothing less.)
The introduction is very simple and its basic components are present until the very end of the performance: an empty stage with white, cold lighting in the shape of a circle, at the center of which is the dancer, Ha Ji Hye. The light thus creates an imaginary space in which she moves. Dressed in black pants and a white shirt, with her appearance and movements she reminds me of a music box in which, once you open it, you find a ballerina dancing; spinning round and round. But she does not spin in a circle, and the music is anything but classical. Although at the beginning her movements are graceful at times, the emphasized bass in the music reminds me more of a techno party with funky disco motifs, and the dancer slowly transforms her movements into head and body repetitions, following the rhythm of the music. Finally, she gets trapped and she can’t find a way out of the circle. Every time she raises her head (only to swing it again), Ji Hye reveals her smiling face. And indeed, while watching the performance, I had the impression that she thoroughly enjoyed the dance. But just as Ji Hye draws the audience into her imaginary world of crazy fun completely – including myself, moving my whole body to the rhythm -, the performance takes on a new form and the action spreads to the entire scene. The lighting diffuses from the circle and becomes lilac, and the dancer begins to compose a series of different stylistic dance movements. Her movement patterns contain elements from contemporary dance, break dance and classical ballet. Still with a smile on her face and following the rhythm of the music, Ji Hye seems to get tired at times, but when she notices it herself, she smiles proudly. Proudly – I say – because the artist, despite the fatigue she feels but also the doubts that are just starting to emerge, is proud of what she has already achieved. Just as the lights expanded the stage, so did her dreams. And this is exactly what makes Ji Hye proud. She hasn’t given up (yet) and at times it seems like she’s just getting started. Her movement introduces a completely new performance element to the stage: stripping.
At the very beginning of the climax, the dancer takes off her white shirt and her black pants. She leaves them almost in the corner of the stage and remains dressed in a black turtleneck and a red tracksuit. With her costume, but also with her movements which become private (she spends a few seconds walking around the scene catching her breath), she gives the impression that she is at a rehearsal; as an artist, a dancer – what she is in real life. With that intimate act, the performance enters its true climax. Ji Hye goes to the middle of the stage and the lights, the primary creators of the performance’s world intensify into sharp blue hues, forming a circle once more. The dancer finds herself in the spotlight and becomes the main star of this world. She takes poses reminiscent of club or street dance (raising her hands in the air and moving her body lightly), or even breakdance. Slowly intensifying the movements that change the dynamics of the performance, Ji Hye lets her thick curly hair down and continues with a smile on her face, doing exactly what she is on stage for – dancing. Her repetition of the same movements, to the delight of everyone in the audience, is interrupted by a headstand, after which the smile on her face turns into frustration, which manifests itself through further nudity – taking off and throwing away her socks, her sweatpants and then her T-shirt. In yoga, headstand or “sirshasana” is one of the most important asanas that revitalizes, detoxifies and releases stress. This very moment gives us indications of the fatigue that the dancer is experiencing. Although it is only a motif within the performance, its artistic intention is very clear, which slowly leads us to the deconstruction of both the perfect image (the dancer’s exceptional perfectionism in movement) and the dancer’s body itself, which will be revealed to us later. The dancer deconstructs the body through almost complete nudity, presenting a clear image of its state before the viewers – Ji Hye unravels in front of the audience in black underwear, her body full of dark, round traces of cupping therapy. This alternative medicine technique, in addition to massage purposes, is primarily used for treating tired and suffering bodies. With six dark round marks only on her back (and a considerable amount of them on her arms, legs, thighs, etc.), the performance introduces us to the finale of the climax, but also offers us a new look into the artist’s intimacy.
The light changes on the scene and borders it with six white circles, arranged in two parallel rows of three circles each. The dancer is in the middle circle of the first row. And then, her fight begins. A body cooling spray is rolled onto the stage and she applies it excessively, causing discomfort and difficulty to see and breathe in the audience. This makes us identify with the performer and her suffering on the stage for a moment. It is clear to us that the dancer uses the body spray in order to decrease the pain in her muscles and to be able to continue on without giving up on her dreams. It is difficult to resist the spray, designed to cool the body just enough without causing numbness at the same time. Her suffering body thus gets a chance for a new beginning, yet it’s hard to think that this is the dream Ji Hye originally strived for.
When the spray is almost empty, the performer starts running in place. Then she falls down, stands up, falls down, stands up… until she remains on the floor. There is no longer a smile on her face but visible pain, and strains on her whole body including the muscles of her face, which are still trying to smile. And there is no longer any spray that would simply postpone all that pain.
The denouement of the performance is offered to us at the moment the dancer gives up and the lights on the stage go out. All that remains on the scene is her rhythmic inhaling-exhaling, as a result of her persistent running and exhaustion. These are the remains of what Ji Hye calls a ladybug’s dream.
Leading us through the idea of a young person’s dreams, the author, somewhat ironically (through various stylistic dance figures, pictures, movements and musical numbers) presents us an image of life in which we are ready to make compromises with ourselves, in order not to even achieve all what we strive for. Passing through fragments of life in which we smile even when we feel like crying; or in which we act out what we would like to be, Ji Hye slowly guides us to where everything begins – the empty and dark stage of a theater. Because isn’t everything just an illusion, like in the theater? Therefore, the ending of the denouement of this performance is also its plot, its true meaning. The fact that the fatigue of the material began on stage with the lights off, and ended the moment the audience started clapping (while the dancer was still breathing loudly on stage), means to me that we all move within a circle, which at times opens up, offering us a view of new vistas and waiting for our steps. Such is the re-emergence of Ji Hye as a dancer, as an artist, as a woman and a girl who once dared to dream of a better life in a bigger city – just like all of us.
The text was created in the framework of dance critics residency taking place in Budapest in November 2023 as part of Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery project.
