Burnt Offering

25th May 2024

Burnt Offering: something, often an animal, that is burned in honour of a god.

99Artcompany bring us a sublime piece of art, based on the traditional dance ‘Seungmu’, focusing on ritualistic traditions of the past and how this can resonate in today’s society. “In a world that grinds us down, this is a ‘burnt offering’ for meaning, beauty and peace.” Founded in 2014, they present Korean tradition through contemporary stories under the motto “dance that resonates with the soul”. Burnt Offering won the Best Production award at the 2nd Seoul Arts Awards at the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture earlier this year.

Choreographed by Jang Hye-rim, she performs herself, and is joined by fellow dancers Jang Seoyi, Lee Gowoon and Lee Sookyung, alongside musicians Hwang Gina and Lee Hwayoung. Kim Keonyoung has designed the particularly effective lighting.

“An outstandingly beautiful, soulful, hypnotic performance...A truly incredible piece.”

A simple white square on the floor, set against a black backdrop, provides the floorspace for the performance. The lighting is low, and four candles burn slowly to the rear of the stage. A full audience watches as two female dancers enter, dressed in utilitarian sand-coloured T-shirts and shorts. They kneel and begin to make repetitive circular movements with their upper bodies, mirroring each other, whilst at the same time their hands drawing out this movement with black charcoal on the floor. The result – a beautifully symmetrical pattern, formed by the constraints in movement from their upper bodies. They allow themselves to become covered in their artist’s material, presumably representative of ash from a pyre.

Their movement becomes jerky and disjointed whilst they perform a tribal, almost animalistic dance together around, what I grasp to be, the newly created metaphorical fire, and are joined by two musicians in black, one of whom plays a Gayageaum – a traditional Korean 12-stringed instrument. The poem, that is recited in Korean, tells of the trance-like state that the musician reaches when playing repetitive phrases. “The labour of the body and the labour of the mind become one.” The accompanying traditional Korean music, performed with incredible musicianship, is discordant and rhythmic; repetitive and mesmerising. The whole audience appeared captivated.

The performance depicts the daily grind: life that burns away with no meaning. A reminder to us all to take time to think – to look up once in a while, and watch the smoke rising to the sky.

An outstandingly beautiful, soulful, hypnotic performance. The standing ovation at the end, and comments from the audience (“Wow”) summed up the effect this had.

A truly incredible piece.

Rhea Shepherd