Details

‘Silver Knife,’ a small island that sings – and the bloodshed

Their skills are crude but their spirit transparent, their long black hair look sharp yet stumpy, with caution

About performance

is inspired by the silver knives that Korean widows had to wear historically, to attack someone or commit suicide to protect her chastity. The dancers show various aspects of human beings on stage, not only dancing but also singing, rapping, using swear words and force or doing nothing. The imaginary island Silver Knife on stage is where women are living, and their sharp repressed emotions are portrayed through movements. shows the contradictory feelings of women who are bashful yet filled with anger, which tries to lead us beyond the idea of ‘women’ into the emotions of those who need to keep concealing something in life.

Synopsis

started from the keyword ‘woman’ – the 4 female dancers who co-created from it trace the origins of their identity, which led to the questions of women in history and arriving at the idea of ‘silver knife.’ In this piece, we see women with contradictory feelings: quickly changing from being soft to tough, crude but like a sharp knife, bashful yet filled with anger.

The women here say:

“What did I do wrong in my past life? What did I do wrong to live like a sinner now? Unbelievable. I want to look around the world but I’m always supposed to keep my head down. Hell with chastity, I’ll easily become a bitch with no manners. No manners. I’m a common widow but I can feel my skirt swelling when a man passes me by. I tell you what, so I was six or seven, right? And my mom gave me this silver knife to protect myself. Maybe I can poke my thigh with this? Then who knows? I might feel so good I could almost fly. Damn it. Really, what did I do so wrong? Do you want to hear about it?”

Credit

Suggestion of direction / Jin-ho Lim, Kyung-min Ji

Co-creation / Sung-eun Lim, Hyun-min Ahn, Kyung-gu Lee, yeon-ju Lee

Performance PD / So-jin Park

Stage PD / Jin-woo Kim

Music / Rémi klemensiewicz

Lighting Director / Seung-ho Lee

Sound Guidance / Yul-ah Baik

Cast / Sung-eun Lim, Hyun-min Ahn, Kyung-gu Lee, yeon-ju Lee

About company

GOBLIN PARTY

GOBLIN PARTY means a (political) party of Korean goblins, who can bewitch people with extraordinary tricks and have naughty behaviors and ideas. It is composed entirely of choreographers without a single leader, who generate stories through co-creating process. In the party of GOBLIN PARTY, there are the piece, direction proposer(s), co-creator(s) and the audience. Based on contemporary dance and with the strongest focus on communicating with audience, it is constantly thinking and trying to expand the audience’s perspective as well.

Reviews

“ goes by in a blur, leaving traces of sadness in its wake, but there’s enormous pleasure to be taken from this captivatingly offbeat world.”

- David Pallant, The List

“There is an air of quiet defiance in , that reaches out from the edge of the stage and grabs you. The work was inspired by the Korean Eunjangdo knife – a traditional tool worn by women as a sign of fidelity – but the four women performing it are most definitely living in the now.”

- Kelly Apter(dance critic), The Scotsman