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Eulogising a show for its scene changes may seem like damning with the faintest praise. But South Korean choreographer Sung Im Her’s sparky sequences for Paradise Now! at the Bush theatre in 2022 were not just strikingly inventive but also perfectly attuned to playwright Margaret Perry’s satire.
Alongside movement direction for theatre, her dance productions have considered the sway of social media and #MeToo in her home country. She now confronts another headline issue, the climate crisis, in the Southbank Centre’s Kunsty performance series.
In a solo prologue, she steals on to a barren stage in silence, gradually unfolding her body. From a compact state she limbers into a canter around the perimeter, starkly lit by an imprisoning grid of bulbs. This individual transformation prefigures a collective one as the choreographer exits, replaced by six dancers initially buckling under the world’s weight. They veer from inertia to thwarted intentions, huddling vulnerably under a spotlight as if cast adrift. While they’re dressed in shirts and slacks, the parallel is those images of polar bears on shrinking icebergs.
Mio Jue’s costumes incorporate scraps of silver, giving this ragtag band the air of survivors amid dystopian wreckage. Gradually they assemble to confront an issue that has overwhelmed them. It’s a compelling call to replace climate anxiety with collaborative action. Husk Husk and Lucy Duncan’s score accordingly moves from woozy and spectral, with glimmers of hope, into a thumping pulse as the intensity builds and the ensemble stride with straight backs, endure body blows and mobilise to a dancer’s occasional cry. Crucially, the performers are shown to not just be keeping up with but learning from each other.
As their arms are raised and thrown down in release, there’s a sense not just of shedding fear but holding on to joy and that switch is similarly conveyed through Young Uk Lee’s lighting. We need to roll up our sleeves, the piece suggests, but let down our hair too.
There is a gnomic coda and an overall coolness that can feel restrictive. But what it lacks in sweep and emotion it mostly makes up for in the urgency for a collective reset as those bodies, this body of people, prove more resilient than they first seemed.
