Search

Toggle dark mode:

Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Browse articles

GDPR Compliance

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

Sleeper

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 3 Published: 14 Aug 2024 Assembly @ Dance Base Show Dates: 2 Aug 2024-18 Aug 2024

Imaginative and atmospheric with striking visual images, there is much to recommend in Jajack Movement’s Sleeper, choreographed by Kim Yumi. It is an allegorical tale tackling the climate crisis with shamanistic ritual and dance, both traditional Korean and contemporary.

A healing ritual to release pain

Sounds of thunderous waves suggest the oceans are rising as three bedraggled females in black, like creatures destined to drown, crawl or drag each other towards a large transparent box covered in cling film. Curled up on the floor inside is a half-visible man. This is the Sleeper, representing humankind, who is responsible for the climate crisis and must wake to save the world.

As he tears his way out of the box, the females return in long white dresses, symbolising purity, and enact a shamanistic ritual involving bangwool (bells), and gopuri (knot-tying) - here represented as long wide sashes of blue, red, and yellow, a healing ritual to release pain.

There are arresting images: the box radiating light as if set on fire; the man’s face and outstretched arms against the cling film, desperate to escape; the virgins bent over their tinkling bells, turning this way and that. The choreography is simple, more like physical theatre than contemporary dance, though the man’s solo, as his trembling builds up to frantic shaking, creates a powerful climax. Following this, the ritual knot-tying scene in which the females wind the colourful sashes around his body, though a beautiful image, lacks emotional drama, and the show ends with a sense of bathos.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

Related to this article:

Location:

Performances

The Blurb:

When the language of rational-centred social science and the words we use reach their limit, we turn to art for how it deals with the climate crisis. Your body is living through the climate crisis. The act of surviving is met with the appearance of destruction – this critical point is faced with duality, crisis and the reality of death. We face this challenge by tying and untying knots, a traditional act of Korean community spirit and praying for the restoration of life. Programmed by Dance Base in collaboration with Assembly.
The Producers
Phantom of the Opera
Les Miserables
Popular now
The Play That Goes Wrong
Matilda
Titanique