MICHÈLE ANNE DE MEY

Michèle Anne De Mey, fascinated all her life by tales and legends, has undertaken an adaptation of one of Korea's founding myths. The tale Tangun Shin Wha tells how the gods granted a bear the power to be transformed into a man because of the patience and courage he shows. But instead of turning into a man, he is reborn in female form and ends up marrying Hwan-ung, the son of the god Hwan-in, who is so moved by such a display of sincerity and determination that he falls in love with her. According to the myth, the entire Korean race is born of this union.

Rich in allegory, the fable provides the choreographer with the perfect opportunity for a reflection on birth and childhood. Questioning these states of being inevitably leads to a contemplation of two of their corollaries: patience and ordeal.

On a stage deliberately stripped bare to represent the cave into which the bear withdraws for his transformation (reminiscent of Plato), the Korean dancer Kyung Hee Woo (P.A.R.T.S.) sets off on a course that leads her from animalism – represented by the bearskin that she sheds in front of us - to humanity, of which her entire body, now unveiled, is representative. In order to achieve this metamorphosis on stage, Michèle Anne De Mey uses ideas borrowed from the Taekwondo register: the katas of the Korean karate style form the secular structure that she uses in support of the creation of her moves. If we consider the position of importance that the animal metaphor has in certain styles of martial arts, it becomes clear how apt this vocabulary of movement is here.

Koma ("bear" in Korean) is a solo that takes on the form of a transformation, speaking out about the forces that can drive a being when it is transformed by the power of desire.

Credits

This has been a fantastic year for her. Kiss & Cry, an original stage object summoning up object theatre, music, words and nanochoreographies for four hands and dealing with the memory of feelings of love, has won unanimous international acclaim. People have emerged from the show overwhelmed and talking about their own emotional stories. She and Jaco Van Dormael have created it with a group of artists, making it a very personal experience since feelings of love, this thread running through her work, are in a way sublimated here: the film-maker is none other than her partner. Powerful music, telling of the affair from its fickle beginnings to the final split, is another constant in her work and woven into her choreographic universe: Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony in Sinfonia Eroica, the 7^th in Neige and the Lamento d’Arianna in her latest piece, a solo she is creating specially for one of her faithful performers. All in all another declaration of love.