Review: Jungle, The Place

It’s a striking opening: 16 members of the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company occupy a massive stage, slowly following each other in a circle as an almost industrial beat echoes from above. There’s a hypnotic rhythm to it that pulses and builds, until suddenly a lone rebel breaks from the circle and defies the established rhythm with jerky and uneven movements stage-center. Soon others follow, breaking off slowly at first but cascading until the former strict order is replaced by a wild mass of flailing.

An interesting spectacle? Absolutely. One with a deeper meaning? Less so. The dynamic of order and collapse is constant for much of the show, where about a dozen separate scenes centred on the titular jungle theme slowly establish themselves only for things to fall apart and dissolve into a kind of general on-stage anarchy. 

Within this motif, the show does find some variety. Much feels like it’s demonstrating the law of the wild, as the performers writhe and struggle throughout each scene before succumbing and collapsing to the floor. Something akin to a cycle of life and death repeats itself several times over, and though emblematic of a certain view of nature, many scenes merely arrive at the same conclusion of the last: a cycle continually repeating, an understandable if unambitious take on the subject matter.

What does demonstrate ambition is the company’s use of the ‘Process Init’ style developed by artistic director and choreographer Sung-yong Kim, which is stated to have a focus on sense and reaction. Though this has the advantage of allowing the dancers to respond dynamically to each other on stage, it often in practice feels as though most of the performers’ movements are jerky, half-baked and random. At times of climax, this could be a strength, but at others, there was a failure to differentiate from prior scenes or build tension where it would have been most engaging. 

Experimental to a fault, then, with as much gained from this approach as there is lost, some awareness of the need to tame on-stage chaos leads to appropriately timed moments of synchronised movement. In these moments, it’s a relief to no longer be trying and failing to keep track of 16 separate performances, and it’s this contrast within the work that is its most promising aspect. Ditto for the moments of stark lighting, such as when piercing cold light is flashed from one side of the stage and the dancers artfully recoil from it as if struck.

There’s much to enjoy here, sometimes too much and sometimes too little, in what is an engaging but flawed piece of experimental dance.

Choreographer & Artistic Director: Sung-yong Kim
Composer & Music Director: Marihiko Hara
Scenographer: Jae-hun You

Jungle plays at The Place until Thursday 8 May
 The Festival of Korean Dance continues until 20 May