Eun Me Ahn is

Hyungmin Pai

-Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Seoul

-Director, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 

Eun Me Ahn is a dancer. She is a choreographer. She is the designer of her stage and her costumes, the coordinator of video, music and lighting. Searching for a term to describe her work, Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art,” inevitably comes to mind. Ahn’s performances, at the same time, stand at the polar opposite of any kind of Wagnerian heroism. Ever so lightly, she leaves behind the idea of the total work of art as the realization of the artist dictator who controls and designs everything. Her holistic stage is grounded on a profound regard for difference. With wisdom and humility, Ahn learns from difference, makes it palpable on a stage where song, dance, form, and music are integrated.

Difference emerges when we move away from the violence that we know all that we need to know about the other. Gestures, expressions, the patterns and colors of clothes, manner of speech are not signs that define others. For Eun Me Ahn, they are the connectors of curiosity and empathy. Elastic baggy pants are not merely a fashion code confined to grandmothers working in the markets. They are celebrated as an ingenious device that enables new movements of the body. When the sounds that accompany dance are eliminated, we gain a sensibility that awakens us from the confusion of everyday prejudices. What Ahn never loses in the bountiful play of choice, exaggeration, transformation, narration, parody, and comedy, is the wonder and respect for life.

Old or young, with eyesight good or bad, with arms and legs short or long, Ahn is a magician of beauty and vitality, a conjurer of each and everyone’s special life energy. Even as we notice their different pace and movement, at a certain moment, instead of dwelling on their distance, we become immersed in the stage as one whole. We do not break through boundaries with stern debates and gestures of salvation. When we play together, when we respect our different rhythms and trajectories, when we throw away our fear of the senses, we may gain comfort in the company of others. That is how the depth, height, and joy of Ahn’s stage are created. That is why Ahn Eun Me is a dancer and a magician of this earthly world.