The Place, London
May 7, 2025
An hour of extraordinary dance and mesmerising choreography. That is Jungle, choreographed by Kim Sungyong and presented by the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company (KNCDC) at The Place as part of the annual Festival of Korean dance.
Sixteen highly skilled dancers bring the jungle to the stage, to a musical backdrop composed by Marihiko Hara. They create the flora and fauna, and even the wind and the light, found in the jungle, through wonderfully expressive and fluid dance. Some animals were clear, others harder to decipher.
Sound effects run through Haro’s is very listenable to, adding yet more colour and intensity to the work. At one point the helicopter blades were so loud; I thought one was about to land on-stage Miss Saigon-style!
Photo KNCDC
Although an ensemble work, the cast dance almost entirely on their own, each wrapped in their personal jungle world. The work is subtitled ‘Sense and Response,’ and, sure enough, they are seen responding to the day-night cycle, weather, water, fear and life.
The choreography was developed using Kim’s own, unconventional dance-movement method, based on the movement research Process Init, and in which each dancer responds to given stimuli in their own ways. He then blended the sixteen resulting interpretations into an hour-long, continuous tapestry.
There may be little personal interaction but it’s a constant flow of seething movement, the dancers filling the space, weaving patterns, constantly crisscrossing each other. At times it felt like the stage itself was alive. To not only achieve such vitality but maintain it throughout is quite a choreographic feat.
Wonderful though this was, I could have done with at least an element of linking narrative here and there to give something solid to grab hold of. Dance is a medium for storytelling that reaches all ages, all peoples, all cultures. Jungle missed that, although perhaps it is not so much not having a story to a tell, but having sixteen individual ones, which remain locked inside each dancer’s private world. Nevertheless, Jungle is something rather special and different, and well worth giving-up an hour of time for.