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Reflecting on life through Park Na Hoon’s dances

The beauty of suffering: Symbolism in Park Na Hoon’s Three Airs shows that not everything is as it seems

A. Kurniawan Ulung (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, July 17, 2019

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Reflecting on life through Park Na Hoon’s dances

The beauty of suffering: Symbolism in Park Na Hoon’s Three Airs shows that not everything is as it seems.

South Korean award-winning choreographer Park Na Hoon turns the way he sees life into art.

For dancer-choreographer Park Na Hoon, life is hard. All good things are difficult to achieve, but bad things are very easy to get.

Therefore, he is often confused when it comes to making a decision as if he is stuck at a crossroads.

“Where should I go?” he asks. “To the right or to the left?” 

Hoon asked the audience those questions several times during his recent performance of The Two Doors at Komunitas Salihara arts center in South Jakarta on a Saturday evening.

Hoon is an award-winning South Korean choreographer who has performed in many countries, such as China, Japan, Germany, Russia and Brazil. He recently took part in the ARI Project: Performing Arts at the Korean Traditional Dance and Music Festival in Los Angeles, the United States.  

He performed the contemplative creation The Two Doors in Berlin before staging it in Jakarta as part of the Helatari Salihara dance festival.

“This is my first performance in Jakarta,” he noted.

The 20-minute dance began with Hoon playfully moving a caterpillar toy, which is made of green food baskets attached to a string.

Under the narrow, intense spotlight, Hoon started performing modern dance and classical ballet with movements that changed unpredictably in speed, rhythm and direction.

When he took a pause, two animated green caterpillars were projected onto the stage. They hunted each other — just like the ghosts in the arcade game Pac-Man.     

Burdensome: Three South Korean dancers — Park Sang Jun, Moon Hyung Soo, and Kim Kyu Won — perform Park Na Hoon's creation titled Three Airs.
Burdensome: Three South Korean dancers — Park Sang Jun, Moon Hyung Soo, and Kim Kyu Won — perform Park Na Hoon's creation titled Three Airs.

Hoon told the audience members that the big caterpillar was “yes” while the small one was “no”. Looking confused, Hoon asked the audience which should he chose. He kept on dancing while waiting for the audience to come up with a decision.  

The Two Doors basically tells about human choices,” he said in an interview after the performance.

Simple questions Hoon asked on the stage portray how he tries to find the truth. “Yes” or “no” and “right” or “left” reflect a plethora of decisions that humans have to make every single day of their life.

Hoon, an assistant professor in the Department of Acting and Performing Arts at Youngsan University, also brought three of his students onto the Helatari Salihara stage.

The young dancers — Park Sang Jun, Moon Hyung Soo, and Kim Kyu Won — staged Hoon’s award-winning creation titled Three Airs, which touches on the issue of humans’ constant struggle.  

In the 30-minute performance, each of the three dancers lifted a balloon on their back. The balloons expanded to become something like a petal of a giant lotus.

The dancers, clad in white shirt and pants, acted as “organisms” in the air. 

The balloons look pretty — a stark contrast to the men carrying them who looked depressed and very thirsty.

Looking irritated, the dancers put down the balloons and showed their moves alternately — from classical ballet, modern to hip-hop.

Hoon said Three Airs captured human desires to survive and to strive for the best. The contrasting quality of the beautiful lotus balloons and their distressed carriers also signifies that in life, not everything is as it seems.

“There could be a struggle and suffering behind what appears pretty,” Hoon said. “I want to show contrast and irony through Three Airs.” 

Caterpillar: South Korean choreographer Park Na Hoon reflects on human decisions in his dance creation The Two Doors.
Caterpillar: South Korean choreographer Park Na Hoon reflects on human decisions in his dance creation The Two Doors.

 — Photos by Komunitas Salihara/Witjak Widhi Cahya

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