99 Art Company’s Ekah and Abyss transform movement, music and the Korean concept of han into something profoundly human and quietly unforgettable
At once meditative and deeply visceral, the double bill presented by 99 Art Company at The Place unfolded less like a conventional evening of dance and more like a carefully constructed ceremony of memory, grief and endurance. The Korean company once again demonstrated a remarkable ability to merge technical precision with emotional depth, creating work that feels both ancient and startlingly contemporary.
The first piece, Ekah, centred on a dialogue between a female dancer and a live pianist. Yet “dialogue” hardly captures the intimacy of the exchange. The dancer did not simply move alongside the piano music. She seemed to emerge from it, becoming an extension of the instrument itself and of Music. At moments, she climbed onto the piano, stepping delicately across the keys, her body generating sound through motion, transforming choreography into music and music into choreography. There was something quietly transgressive in those moments.
The piano score itself was mesmerising: beautifully pulsed, restrained yet emotionally expansive, carrying the audience through waves of tension and release. The choreography mirrored this elasticity.
Following the interval, Abyss transformed the stage into something closer to a communal rite than a conventional dance performance. Here the idea of han came fully into focus. The dancers moved as though pulled by invisible tides, carrying small boats through the performance. At times, the boats appeared to represent mourning itself, the burdens people carry silently across time. At others, they resembled offerings, memory containers, or fragile human attempts to navigate suffering.
The symbolism of the boats gained further resonance through the choreography’s wave-like quality. Bodies surged and receded across the stage in collective motion, as though the dancers themselves had become the sea carrying those vessels forward. There was an overwhelming sense of humanity attempting to stay afloat emotionally, spiritually and historically.
Sound in Abyss no longer functioned as accompaniment but became a part of the movement itself. Breath, chanting, voice and rhythm merged into the choreography, producing an atmosphere that felt at once ancient and intensely immediate.
Particularly haunting was the presence of the woman dressed in traditional Korean clothing who dominated the emotional texture of the piece through stillness alone. She moved with quiet ritual authority.
Visually, the contrast between white and black costumes became central to the work’s emotional language. That tension between vulnerability and resilience lay at the heart of the evening. Fragility and endurance were not opposites here, but inseparable companions.
What lingered afterwards was less the memory of individual sequences than an emotional atmosphere, a collective pause in a world that rarely allows space for grief. Through music, ritual imagery and profoundly disciplined choreography, 99 Art Company created work that asked audiences not simply to witness sorrow, but to carry it together for a while.