Beings, Wang Yeu-Kwn / Shimmering Production
Wang Yeu-Kwn, Beings © You-Wei Chen
Beings by Taiwanese choreographer Wang Yeu-Kwn was always going to have an easier chance of getting into my good books. Beautiful, lyrical contemporary set to a classical music soundtrack? Tick, tick, tick. But it was so much more than that, and for that, I crown it my personal favourite performance across both the Rose and Bloom Prize presentations.
It opened with a person walking on stage cocooned in a ball of rice paper, an alien and bizarre sight. The paper unfurled to reveal a woman (Lee Yin-Ying), the crackle of paper piercing the silence of the Lilian Baylis Studio. Upon this paper she slowly moved with her male partner (Yeu-Kwn) and they slow danced, their cheeks and hands barely touching, in a small circle, before miming what looked like cooking behind each other’s backs, their arms big and staccato and completely at odds with the gentler movement elsewhere and the accompanying lilting vintage jazz track.
Yeu-Kwn got the balance between humorous and serious dance just right. Later in the work he was wrapped up in the paper, only his head visible (a little like ET), while Yin-Yang drew a replacement body for him on the paper, hot cocoa and pet dog included. The work finished with both dancers cocooned within the paper like a chrysalis, before it opened up to reveal only Yin-Yang.
Wang Yeu-Kwn, Beings, Wang Yeu-Kwn and Lee Ying © You-Wei Chen
But the duets in between the surreal were equally compelling and mesmerising. Slow and considered (but still engaging), they leaned on and walked across and around one another in skilled slow motion, ink from the drawing transferring across both of their bodies.
The work was inspired by the Chinese character 人 (meaning person) and you could see this shape referenced throughout the choreography, especially at the beginning. However, the work went deeper than this. Yeu-Kwn suggests in the programme that this work is about relationships. The crumpled paper was like a stormy sea, and the writing transferring onto their bodies was commentary on how people want to be remembered through recording their lives in journals and on social media. I’m sorry to say that neither concept was clear without the programme. The portrayed relationship, for example, lacked enough emotional dynamics to suggest anything particularly tumultuous going on.
However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this work was really enjoyable. It was meditative and calming and a tonic to the fast pace of life. It takes a brave choreographer to create a slow work, and a braver one to create work with significant portions of silence. But the presence of the paper, shuffling and crunching under their feet and hands, and choreography that constantly moved forwards and developed, meant it was captivating from beginning to end. The work is the first part of a triptych and I really hope Yeu-Kwn will have the opportunity to present all three in London in the future, because this is the first show I’ve seen in an age that I would happily watch again.
★★★★
Beings by Wang Yeu-Kwn / Shimmering Production
Lillian Baylis Theatre / 8 February 2025
Press ticket
Nominated for the Bloom Prize for Choreography. Find out more →
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