As a six-year-old, he was a “hip hop kid” who danced along to Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk wearing a comb and toilet paper. Then he discovered Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Audiences started grinning when he dressed those elegant swans up in the new threads of hip hop and modern dance. At the heart of these humorous and clever 21^st century swans is the choreography of Ahn Soo-young. We sat down with this new Charlie Chaplin of modern Korean dance and found out about his swans.

“All right, swans, it’s time to fly. . . .”

Q : Your version of Swan Lake debuted at the Seoul International Dance Festival (SIDance). You also got good reviews overseas as part of “Kore-A-Moves.”

A : I’m a lucky guy. After staging the first performance for SIDance, we won the Grand Prix in 2012 at the Seoul International Choreography Festival. Then, with Kore-A-Moves, we sold out 13 performances in Europe, places like Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Britain. There was a lot of attention, not just from the dance community but from the press too. So we ended up getting invited last May to the Spring Festival at the Gangdong Arts Center, and this past August we were at the Chuncheon Art Festival. We’ve done about 20 performances so far. It’s not common for a dance work to have a long run, so it’s really an honor to be able to perform multiple times instead of just once.

Q : Swan Lake has been very popular, and it was also selected for PAMS Choice at the Performing Arts Market in Seoul. It must be quite a meaningful accomplishment for you.

A : Modern dancers think it’s more appropriate to talk about the “lake” rather than the “stage.” It also fit with the image of dancers gliding over the surface like swans. What’s really meaningful to me is that when we first started rehearsing Swan Lake, we talked not about “dancers,” but about how it was “time for the swans to fly.” One time, when the dancers were having a rough time, I said as a joke, “Hey, looks like it’s going to sell overseas.” I was just trying to inspire them, but it actually ended up happening. So now I go around saying Swan Lake is an “export leader.”

Q : Where did your version of Swan Lake come from?

A : I was working as a hip hop dancer, and I enrolled in the dance department in college. I started attending ballet classes as a minor, and we were studying variations and the port de bras. But it was different for me from the other students. I was used to “popping,” and that kind of hip hop movement came out naturally. It was a funny memory for me, and I wrote it down in my choreography notes. And I ended up having my first audience in the “evolution of hip hop” section at SIDance.

21^st Century Swans : Truly Beautiful?

Q : It seemed like the story had something of an environmental message as well.

A : At the time, there had been the huge oil spill on the West (Yellow) Sea coast, which was a big shock. I saw those birds covered in oil, just a black tide sweeping in. They were like zombies. It was more shocking to me than any horror movie. So I started researching, and the contaminated birds ended up becoming part of the work, but with the swanlike image. It was a metaphor for us, for how we’re like swans living in a polluted society. We might not think we’re obstructed in any real way, but then you think about how anxious we moderns feel when we don’t have our smartphones with us – how we’re all contaminated in that way.

Q : How was the image developed after that?

A : A swan has two choices. It can fly until it dies from exhaustion, or it can die deformed. Now that their home on the west coast is polluted, they can’t survive even if they go back. So I ended up with the theme of whether the 21^st century swans were actually beautiful. I was talking to the dancers, and I asked them, “What would you do if tomorrow was your last day?” And there were different categories of answers: I’d sleep with such-and-such a woman, I’d meet my family, I’d do nothing, and so on. So that was how we created images for each of the dancers. There were different characters: the sex-obsessed swan, the swan who was hysterical about all the pollution, the swan who suffered from a constant tic.

Q : You did the choreography for the series Things I’d Like to Do Before I Die, and you appeared in Conditions of Death. From your work, it seems like you’re always thinking about death. I don’t mean that the work itself is dark, but. . . .

A : A few years ago, my mother underwent a big operation, and I started thinking a lot about death after that. It also tied in with the dance work I was doing. I read Dante’s Divine Comedy, and I did all sorts of research. I mean, life and death are always coexisting. I thought about how a beautiful life wasn’t much different from a beautiful death. How sad it is when someone dies and no one comes to see you, you know? There was also a kind of ironic sense to it – instead of always having the idea of “death” in mind, there was also the hope of, “If I don’t do such-and-such, I’ll be able to live a beautiful life.” With Swan Lake too, I created it with the idea of, “The swans could live such a happy life if it weren’t for the pollution.”

Q : I’ve heard that you’ve kept reworking and adding things since the debut. Still, it’s possible that viewers might not recognize the environmental message.

A : I’m less interested in presenting a “plausible” dance story with perfect storytelling technique than I am in showing the kind of dance where it seeps naturally into it, the way a droplet of water does on a piece of tissue. The magical thing about modern dance is the way it simply captivates you. It’s not about understanding the work and approving of it, or gaining a new awareness of it. Instead of making a decision beforehand about whether a club is good or bad, you should go and experience it. Then you can think about whether you liked it or not. Isn’t that a better way to do it?

The Most Powerful Weapon : Detail

Q : With PAMS Choice, your audience is market professionals rather than ordinary viewers. Do you feel prepared for that?

A : I wouldn’t call myself a perfectionist, but we’re definitely preparing. I once visited a booth at the market, thinking, “You have to know your enemy if you want to know yourself.” I’m working on trying to satisfy both requirements, being artistic as well as commercial. So this time around with Swan Lake, it’s kind of a “timing battle.” I’m trying to play up the details at this second or that second – small enough that even people who’ve seen it before may not realize anything’s changed. Ordinary viewers may not detect it, but these are performance experts, right? So I’m working on making each sequence tighter, so you know it right away when you see it. I’ve heard about how foreigners who see Korean hanji paper are astonished at the detail, or how they’re amazed at the novelty of coffee mix. I want to show the kind of detail and novelty and get them to ask, “How did you do that?” Detail is the most powerful weapon.

‘Even I find myself laughing at the dancing’

Q : You’ve staged the kind of dance that makes people laugh so often that people now think of Charlie Chaplin when they hear your name.

A : I started getting that after Time Travel 7080 at HANPAC Rising Star. It was embarrassing, but also really nice. I didn’t have any nickname before. So now there’s a word to describe me – cautiously, anyway. I think laughter also helps communicate with the viewer, and it can also be my joker, my hidden card, if you will.

Q : I’ve sometimes resented having to watch performances when I’ve been tired, physically or mentally. But when I go see something by Ahn Soo-young, I’m happy to do it because the stress just melts away.

A : Well, I’m glad you liked it. It’s not so much that I feel like I specifically have to make the audience laugh; I just want to put humorous things in there to reach the viewer. They’re things I find funny myself, and it’s that much nicer when the audience laughs too. The dancers also get to release their own stress that way.
But there’s also a mirror effect when I find myself laughing too. I mean, we tend to laugh when we see someone like ourselves up on stage. So the characters in Swan Lake seem abnormal to us but think of themselves as normal, and the audience recognizes that in themselves. The viewers really seem to find humor in that.

Q : You once said that “dance” and “popularity” have to meet halfway. It’s kind of like how dancers are always listening to what the viewers are saying.

A : These days, I see a lot of critiques going up on social media like Facebook and Twitter. I often look at the things people write on their blogs, and the viewers are really objective, I think. When I see the ones that go into detail, I often find myself nodding my head. So the things the viewers say help to keep it in line, to not let the dancers succumb to mannerism or let the piece get sidetracked, so to speak. I think it’s that kind of affection that can really help make a good work even better.

Q : Why do you think people have said such good things about Swan Lake and you?

A : I’m not really sure, to be honest. Hm. It may be what I call the “promise of dance.” When I started dancing at 19, I put a message up on my wall. It read, “You can’t turn back time, but you can hold it still.” I got kind of a late start in regular dance, after doing hip hop dance for so long, but instead of envying other people’s success, I practiced to be the best I could be. If the others did ten battement tendus or barre exercises to loosen up, I’d do ten times as many. I thought it was the least I could do for my teacher. Even then, I was kind of a pain in the neck to him, following him around all the time and trying to learn things. Right now, I’m still just poking my head out over the lake. I want to use PAMS Choice as an opportunity to move forward.