Review: Ambiguous Dance Company, Rhythm of Human ★★★★★

Rhythm of Human is an unfathomable, at times deeply aggravating and only occasionally interesting, mess. It’s the work of sui generis choreographer Boram Kim for the South Korean Ambiguous Dance Company, one of the leading lights in the country’s burgeoning dance scene.

Here’s how the piece currently at the Coronet is billed: ‘Rhythm of Human follows a modern Korean man who fights to break free from societal expectations and norms.’

Here’s what I saw: a man in colourful swimming trunks and sunglasses burst onto the naked stage, performed a cartwheel, struck a pose and stood there immobile and in silence for what felt like an eternity. At the point when started wondering, is that it? another man in identical attire walked on and started displaying his physique with mock poses out of a bodybuilders’ contest.

He crouched on the floor beating a rhythm with both hands, at which point a third man appeared, crouched behind him, picked his nose and smeared the result on the other man’s back.

A fourth man came on, did a cartwheel and crouched, his hands mimicking rabbit ears. The final man entered. I forget what his gimmick was. Then they all left; and then the whole scene, nose picking included, was repeated again and again and again for the best part of half an hour.

Finally some music: a Latin piece by Buena Vista Social Club. The five men rummaged in their privates and extracted black crayons.They proceeded to scribble on their own and each other’s naked torsos and legs.

They pranced around clutching their genitals – a gesture which was repeated often enough to be a kind of leitmotif, but the meaning of which entirely escaped me. And then the first man simulated an orgasm.

Daft Punk followed on the soundtrack. The first man again rummaged in his privates and came up with a pair of black socks, which he put on, while on the sidelines the others put on a variety of apparel: a white shirt for one, a vest for another, black pants for yet another.

Then a long passage from a Mozart piano concerto. Now uniformly dressed in black two-piece suits and white shirts the men finally performed a sustained, high-energy dance, which showed that they are all good dancers, but bore little relation to Mozart’s sublime music. Or indeed to any meaning.

After about an hour we mercifully reached the end with all five men jumping up and down for the duration of Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love). Their energy was exhausting, but admirable. I felt they deserved better, but what do I know? Rhythm of Life won the Best Piece Award at the 2014 Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers.

Go figure.

Age Guidance: 12 +