Dance Consortium presents the multi-media dance spectacular, Dragons

In Asia, dragons represent resilience, joy and optimism. They are the inspiration for this latest work by avant-garde choreographer Eun-Me Ahn, a swirling hallucinatory mix of dance, music, holograms and incredible costumes.

In Dragons, Ahn and her company of seven extraordinary dancers inhabit a constantly changing theatrical space of writhing silver vacuum hoses and the forests and cloudy skies of Taeseok Lee’s vivid and colourful projections.

Entering this fantastical world are holograms of five young guest performers from Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan, all born in the year 2000. They share their individual hopes and fresh perspectives on how past and future can coexist. Together they celebrate the vitality of the hyper-connected Gen-Z and its ability to shift and change in a tumultuous world.

Created in the isolated time of Covid, Dragons interweaves vibrant contemporary moves with ancient dance forms from across Asia. This mix is echoed in Jang Young-Gyu’s evocative soundtrack which seamlessly blends traditional Korean music with contemporary pop and electronica.

Eun-Me Ahn is one of the most important artists in South Korea. Now in her sixties, she founded her contemporary dance company in 1988, presenting work in major theatres and festivals around the world. Her strong feminist views led her to dress in a strikingly unconventional way, shaving her head and rejecting the traditional Korean view of women she describes as ‘long hair, good girl, charming wife”.  Ahn regularly subverts traditional attitudes to age and gender roles with her acclaimed intergenerational works, often working with non-professionals.

The company dancers are Hyekyoung Kim, Seyeon Kim, Hyeonseo Lee, Gaon Han, Sunjae Jo, Deokyeong Kim, Yongsik Moon and Eun-Me Ahn herself. They are joined by guest performers on screen Nur Syahidah Binti Hazmi, Akari Takahashi, Jiwan Jung, Siiko Setyanto, Dwi Nusa Aji Winarno and Guan Ting Zhou.

Joe Bates, Chief Executive of Dance Consortium, says: “I first saw this show with some of the Dance Consortium members in France back in 2022 having just started in my new role. We were so blown away by vibrancy of the costumes, the amazing technicality of the dancers and how the young people in the audience responded that we knew we had to tour it. Dragons is a blend of performance styles – theatre, dance, visual arts, digital art – there will be something for everyone in this show. Shows like this help Dance Consortium ensure that the stages of UK theatres have new and exciting offers to audiences around the country.”