Eun-Me Ahn Company Dragons at Birmingham Hippodrome

Eun-Me Ahn Company Dragons at Birmingham Hippodrome

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Posted 2024-12-30 by dpmfollow

Sat 25 Mar 2023 - Sun 24 Mar 2024


Birmingham Hippodrome this spring welcomes leading South Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn and her spectacular show Dragons.

The 61-year-old choreographer has been a dance trailblazer at home and abroad for decades. Eun-Me Ahn Company, which she founded in 1988, is one of the leading South Korean contemporary troupes, playing theatres and festivals around the world including the FIFA World Cup in South Korea in 2002.

Her show Dragons was a hit with audiences in London and Salford in 2023 and this spring returns for an eight-venue tour including Birmingham Hippodrome on 25 and 26 March.



Eun-Me is hoping UK audiences will fall in love with South Korean dance just as people worldwide have embraced both K-pop and Korean film and she believes the world has finally woken up to the powerhouse which is South Korean culture. “The Korean people have a special kind of talent, really truly,” she says. “We combine historical background with personal vision. We have had to struggle to survive. Since the Korean War ended, we have tried very hard to develop our country and prove ourselves.

And she explains: “Culture can be more powerful than armies and the Korean people want to share their culture with other people. Education was very important. People studied dance and music and history. At the same time, we accepted modernity and new ideas of politics and economics. And we did that in a very positive way, importing ideas from the West, from Europe and America, but also keeping our own culture and traditions. It was very natural for us to mix them together.”

This blend of past and present is captured in Dragons where Eun-Me wanted to draw on one of Asia’s most significant and iconic creatures. “The dragon is a very symbolic creature. Everybody knows it and we have many, many stories about the dragons. But the dragon in Asia has many sides. Sometimes it is very good, sometimes the dragon has humour, sometimes it is a brave hero and sometimes it becomes very bad.”

In the show, the traditional heritage of these mythical beasts is combined with cutting-edge technology to create a stunning kaleidoscope of past and present. Dragons features a cast of seven dancers live on stage – who interface with six guest performers who appear as holograms. These six young dancers come from Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea and five of them were born around the year 2000, a Year of the Dragon.

The idea of combining holograms and stage performance was first sparked by having to use technology to communicate during Covid-19 lockdowns. “I needed to develop a way that people could communicate with each other and the only solution was online technology,”recalls Eun-Me. “And so Dragons is a piece about the condition of the world, the young generation who are in the world and how they had to fight. It was the first time for them. Young people had never had this kind of world disaster through their life. It didn’t matter which country, it happened to all of us suddenly.”

Eun-Me and her team spent months directing and filming the six dancers and the development of the piece was painstaking. “This process took a long time because we had to do it one-by-one,” Eun-Me says. “We had to teach them the movement using cell phones and sometimes we couldn’t even see their whole bodies. But we never gave up. And when we made the final show, I saw it in the theatre and I just shouted ‘wow’. It was unbelievable, we had made a beautiful moment.”

Eun-Me chose non-professional dancers as the guest performers as she believes they bring their own magic. “I’m trying to introduce the culture and traditional dance of each of their countries and then the young people’s energy - how beautiful they are - that was a very important development,” she says. “They bring their originality to our dance, which can’t be learned. The body is a pure land and when they dance and do something, it tells us a lot. I said ‘whatever you say, say something’ and they really said something! It’s not through professional eyes but they are smart and beautiful and they tell us more sometimes as they are.”



Renowned as an exceptionally charismatic performer, Eun-Me takes to the stage as one of the dancers in Dragons. She has also designed the spectacular costumes and overseen the creation of the dazzling sets.

The Dragons tour is presented by Dance Consortium, a group of 21 large-scale venues across the UK and Ireland who aim to bring top quality contemporary dance from across the world to local audiences. “I care about the whole world, how we can use dance to communicate with all people - it’s a very beautiful weapon to use,” Eun-Me says. “I love travelling, to go abroad and meet new people, especially the kids. They love my piece because I put sunlight and salt and pepper in it for them!”

And she is looking forward to sharing the show with British audiences. “It’s good to be touring new cities in the UK because it’s a way for us to bring our stories to those audiences. Historically the country has a strong art and culture scene but our Korean approach is different. So, two countries meet together and we can learn more about each other. This show will give audiences lots of new ideas. Visually it’s sparkling and shiny. Dragons is a dance of miracles.”

Eun-Me Ahn Dance Company’s Dragons is at Birmingham Hippodrome on 25-26 March 2025, for more information and tickets see here.

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300113 - 2024-12-29 19:22:38

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