When movement is the closest translation

It was love at first sight when an Irish dance company saw the work of a Korean counterpart and discovered the parallels between their two cultures, writes Michael Seaver

WHILE CAREFUL networking is sometimes required to set up co- productions and international tours, occasionally they can just fall into a company's lap. When Korean choreographer In-Young Sohn's NOW Dance Company was performing at Draíocht in Blanchardstown in May 2007, she needed some local know-how on the venue's technical set-up for dance. She phoned Dance Theatre of Ireland, whose members told her of their experiences at the venue and invited her to use their studio for a workshop.

One thing led to another, and last month the two companies completed a six-venue tour of Korea. On Wednesday, they begin an Irish tour of two joint creations, Parallel Horizonsand Under the Roof. For the Irish company, it was love at first sight.

"We were firstly drawn to her way of moving," says Loretta Yurick, joint artistic director of Dance Theatre of Ireland. "But there was also a simpáticowith her approach to history, tradition, nuance, silence, image and music, all of which we could see in an hour's workshop. Then when we saw her choreography onstage, we really empathised with its theatricality, yet also with its deep undercurrent of spirituality and tradition."

That description also fits the choreography of Yurick and fellow artistic director Robert Connor. With a body of work consisting of more than 20 dance pieces, they constantly question contemporary society's relationship with itself and with the past, and in doing so embrace digital technology and high theatricality.

"Even before deciding to work together, we found ourselves talking about the ideas that might be possible," says Connor. "And this wasn't just about dance. We also discovered how Ireland and Korea have a lot in common culturally. They both have a long history of occupation, have experienced sudden economic booms which have changed values in both countries, and both countries' music is rooted in strong rhythm. In fact, if you hum the tune of both national anthems, they are almost similar!"

This year marks the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ireland and the Republic of Korea, says Jaichel Cho, of the Korean embassy. He is also a writer, influenced by WB Yeats, a fact that becomes less surprising when he points out that the poet features in a Korean schoolbook.

" The Lake Isle of Innisfreewould be known, and even memorised, by Korean students," Cho says, adding that productions by Yeats and Lady Gregory played in Korea in the 1920s and 1930s. "Koreans can relate to the same themes of longing and waiting, because Koreans have had difficulty with other powers."

Last month, the embassy supported a production of Waiting for Godotby Korea's Sanwoollim Theatre, which came to Trinity's Samuel Beckett Centre It was directed by Young-Woong Lim, who has been producing the play for 40 years.

Irish audiences would be considerably less au faitwith Korean artists, including, for example, Ko Un, whose poems have been translated into 12 languages. His themes of mutuality and creating a broad picture of life from tiny details inspired Connor and Yurick. "It might sound trite, but there is this forgotten idea that many hands can carry a load," says Yurick.

A similar theme spurred on In-Young Sohn, whose Under the Roofuses metaphors of shelter and domesticity. "The roof is a simple but very effective image," she says, for highlighting tensions between individualism and mutuality, conflicts as prevalent in Korean society as in Ireland.

These days, themes of global oneness might be ubiquitous and even over-played, but the cultural similarities between Ireland and Korea give them a strong mooring.

WHEN CREATING Parallel Horizons, Connor and Yurick returned to ideas of ritual in contemporary life, drawing in perceptions of ancient Asian ritual.

"Ritual takes time, but these days everyone is busy and time-starved," says Connor. "Within the piece we've worked with contrasting elements of time, creating chaos and order and chaos again."

"Which kind of mirrors life for us," adds Yurick. "Things hold together and then fall apart. You get inundated or you have moments of clarity. Those contrasts are at the heart of how we live."

However clear the artistic concepts, the process of putting them together was less straightforward. In addition to time constraints - four weeks in total to create each piece - there was the language barrier. This became more of an issue for Connor and Yurick, who normally involve dancers in discussions about ideas during the creation of a piece. But none of the Korean dancers spoke English, although In-Young Sohn is fluent.

"To speak about ideas was almost impossible," says Yurick. "We just didn't have a language to discuss complex ideas. To a certain extent we could talk with In-Young, and to a certain extent she could translate. But it always got reduced into quite a simple translation." So how did they get over this? "It's a bit like being a parent. The way that you do things sometimes translates the idea. In-Young's dancers often got the concept through the quality of the movement or by how we were speaking. They would pick up something, not through the words, but through the demeanour and nuance."

Sohn works less through words and more like a sculptor, crafting movement directly on to the dancers' bodies and shaping how it looks. A traditional dancer, she is almost unique in Korea for mingling traditional forms with contemporary technique. At NOW's Draíocht performance last year, the programme mixed contemporary improvisation with traditional fan- and rhythm-based dances. She doesn't usually engage in ideas-based dance, but after watching how Connor and Yurick worked, she pushed herself into dialogue with the dancers.

"I ended up not using much traditional dance in this piece," she says. "In fact, after the Korean tour, some local critics felt that Robert and Loretta's piece seemed Korean and that my piece seemed the more western of the two."

This flip seems the perfect summation of the project. As Connor says, it wasn't about trying to get Korean dancers to dance like Europeans and vice versa. Rather, it was about incorporating what the Koreans do well into a western dance. And vice versa.

"I think that's what made it unique as an international collaboration," Connor says. "It wasn't just about performing in each other's countries. It actually went right into the bodies. It was a very deep process and all of the artists had a profound experience."

• Parallel Horizonsand Under the Roofrun at Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, from Wed to Sat, then tour to Galway, Clare, Cork, Castleblayney, Bray, Wexford; www.dancetheatreireland.com