Water Mirror: a thirst translated into performance
By Lee Hyo-won
There is nothing as all-encompassing yet elusive as water — the symbol of life and its purity, essence and transiency. Reflective still waters, moreover, have served as mankind’s first mirrors — which reflects all but keeps none. But the non-possessive character of mirrors can, most ironically, give way to a dangerous obsession with illusions.
Narcissus may have drowned in his own reflection but others in our real world have learned to plunge in without becoming lost — “To gaze at a river made of time and water / and remember Time is another river. / To know we stray like a river / and our faces vanish like water,” the writer Jose Luis Borges once said.
Film and media artist Choi Seo-ou fortunately belongs to the latter category. She was propelled by a certain thirst to experiment with water and reflective images for “Le Miroir des eaux (Water Mirror)” but didn’t forget to come up for air.
“I always felt a very physical thirst for water. While I have the utmost respect for logic and reason, I admire the state of lawlessness, the feeling of becoming completely diving into something. Water has always struck me as a thing of beauty,” Choi told The Korea Times, Monday in Seoul.
Local ballet fans are likely to have been initiated into Choi’s artistic visions through the Universal Ballet Company’s latest rendition of “Shim Chung,” which featured footage of her underwater ballet sequences. With the support of the Korea Ballet Association, the director showcased an image performance piece as the opening act of the 2010 Seoul International Ballet Festival, Sunday, at Seoul Arts Center.
The performance invited the audience to become immersed in a dynamic interplay between live dance, music and film — never before have fans of ballet been able to observe the art at such proximity, feeling the pulsating movements and breaths of the human body, while reverberating vocals and instrumentals resounded to a video backdrop.
“Modern dance might have been easier to pair with the video images and modern music, but I opted for classical ballet to give the piece a certain framework with its traditional movement. I thought the audience could discover a new side to ballet by seeing it set against something unfamiliar,” said Choi.
“Water Mirror” makes a Proustian exploration of the relativity of time and space, reality and illusions. The physicality of the live performance, particularly the graceful, classical ballet movements and the purity of live vocals, is strikingly juxtaposed with the surreal quality of the film, which flows freely like a stream of consciousness. The result is a dissonant harmony — quite in sync with the piece’s attempt to fathom the beauty of meandering thoughts, wavering emotions and all the pauses in between.
The film, shot on Jeju Island, draws on the relationship between two lovers following a sentimental, rather than a physical, timeline (or complete lack thereof). The actual spoken words, however, are sometimes too direct as the couple questions whether it was love or thirst that bound them together, and the visuals fading into black-and-white or playing backward, could have been employed more subtly and less frequently; such qualities disturb the ebb and flow of the subdued dialogue that remains otherwise free flowing, or in a constant loop. A hobo-like figure also makes intrusive appearances from time to time — but is it a quack philosopher? A figment of the imagination? A distanced observer of truth that is always muddled by memory and emotions? One cannot be sure.
Less can be more, particularly when there is so much going on — dancers performing a pas de deux to Debussy, while lovers speak philosophically about distances on a beach. The power of music, particularly “Missa lumen de lunine,” a haunting set of vocals by Europe-based contemporary Korean composer Hong Sung-ji that had its Korean premiere through Choi’s piece, is enough to captivate the audience, as are the simple, utterly beautiful underwater ballet sequences.
Choi’s intentions were nevertheless clear, as she allowed room for “cracks and pauses” and the beauty of imperfection.