NATIONAL PREMIERE
Trained in traditional Korean dance and shamanic practices, Eun-Me Ahn mastered key modern dance techniques in the Big Apple, where she also graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts. A leading figure in the South Korean art scene, Eun-Me Ahn choreographed the opening ceremony for the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Seoul and was the director of the Daegu Metropolitan City Dance Company from 2001 to 2004. Since the early 2000s, her works have appeared in Europe, particularly in Germany and France. A friend of Pina Bausch, who invited her multiple times to Wuppertal to present her powerful solos before her passing, Eun-Me Ahn is a woman with a shaved head who loves to wear colorful clothing. Tradition and modernity converge in her persona as in her choreographic works, open to multiple interpretations and imbued with a mysterious charm. Through dance, Eun-Me Ahn seeks to assert a freedom still denied by South Korean society, governed by ancient codes, as demonstrated in Let Me Change Your Name, an acclaimed work making its Italian premiere in Rovereto. The title is both an invitation and a provocation, addressing the theme of gender identity and the place of the individual in modern society through compelling choreography. Eighty minutes of rare coherence unfold with enchantment and contrasts, obsessions and rituals as the dancers shift from darkness to light, from black to fluorescent colors, from gravity to humor, from agitation to the hypnotic trance. The choreographic language is deliberately hybrid, suspended between joy and gravity, disco dance and shamanic ritual. And shamanism is intrinsic to Eun-Me Ahn, who appears on stage three times, interspersing the dances of her eight performers, first wearing a long black dress, then in bright red, and finally bare-chested with a white skirt. Her interludes seem to introduce a 'change of state' through the ritual, so much so that the dancers, after her appearances, shed their skins (and costumes), dancing until they lose themselves and their gender determination in the rhythmic vortex. The costumes change style—from the most traditional long black dress to multicolored stretch skirts—and transform into whips and unisex sashes that guide toward a poetic androgyny. To reiterate that the body, sexuality, and clothing do not define a person.
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