Dancehouse, Melbourne.
7 October 2025.
The title sets the tone. Confluence. The point at which two rivers become one. Think Murray/Darling, Negro/Amazon, the Blue and White Nile. There is an obvious symbolism here – flow, synthesis, unity – but Dumulmeori moves in sync with less pronounced, yet no less powerful undercurrents.
As a whole, the work pools four short solos, two from Melbourne, two from Korea. Although the gathered pieces are not explicitly related, connect points emerge. Whether by design or dance telepathy, Haneul Jung, Alisdair Macindoe, Michelle Heaven and Chosul Kim inhabit similar terrain, as if a choreographic topography was at work, drawing all rivers to a moving sea.
Then again, perhaps this says more about the desire of audiences (humans) to see patterns and create coherent readings. In this, we are more like river water than we might otherwise imagine. Namely, path dependent. Following prescribed courses, only deviating in times of flood and other cataclysms.
Thus, despite being seeded in different cultural/linguistic contexts, all four works appear to be playing with notions of restraint. Umbilical tethers, hard spots, clunky props, gravity. All four seem to wrestle (negotiate) with this, flowing between acceptance and resistance. This tension (dialogue) begs the question: do raindrops dream of oceans?
However, setting aside such musings, we are left with dance and its shared lexicon. Four creators, (from Seoul, Daegu, and Melbourne), translating their distinctness into the flow and articulation of contemporary dance. Across the quartet, we see lines and shapes and swirls we are used to. The river still runs where we think it will.
This is not to say that Dumulmeori is entirely predictable. Chosul Kim’s Diver, with its clever use of a hot spotlight, is both austere and beautiful. Similarly, Alisdair Macindoe’s A Figure of Speech uses projected text to great effect, not simply breaking the fourth wall but taking us inside the blocking and thematic arc of the choreography. Elsewhere, Michelle Heaven’s use of smoke as a dance partner is ingenious, and Haneul Jung’s tussle with a length of rope is a dextrous and, at times, frenetic blend of escape act and suffocation.
Compilation works invariably suffer from a sense of being both disjointed and cobbled together. Conceiver and curator Brendan O’Connell has likely worked hard to blur the seams with Dumulmeori, perhaps using the exquisite mutability of water as his inspiration. Indeed, even in the details of the individual choreographies, there is a play of fluid motion and sharp angularity. Wave and particle. Analogue and digital.
This brings us back to the title. Two rivers meeting. Australia, Korea. Male, female. Without the chasm of language, the tripwires of cultural codes, or the crass obstructions of border walls and ethno-nationalist fantasy, the body interprets freely. It moves in time and space, struggles and suffers and, ultimately, stretches towards an expression that trumps the spectacle of divisive noise.
True, I could be imagining all this. But hey, it’s nice to dream.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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