When a traditional dance form is uprooted from its local culture it runs the risk of losing its integrity or its life. But Binari, an unexpected charmer of a show that’s based on the songs and dances of Korean funeral rites, makes the journey to the western stage with real grace.
On paper it sounds forbiddingly austere, its narrative essentially the rite of passage by which the soul of a dead woman is released into the afterlife. Yet Binari is choreographed with such a satisfying fusion of dance, music and imagery that the work feels anything but remote. There are moments of simple but expansive beauty: a spiralling ensemble of shadow dancers who weave a pattern of lighted lanterns over the woman’s dead body (represented on stage by a mask and winding sheets), or a duet where the female shaman sings to the woman’s soul and the latter responds with dancing of infinite delicacy.
The central section by contrast is a comic masked pantomime in which the woman recalls memories of her husband – a skinny, puppet-jointed rascal who provided her with two raucous sons but whose gambling and womanising eventually became the death of her. The refined vocabulary turns broad and boisterous here, and in places irksomely so, especially when members of the audience are hijacked into the drama. But when the ritual returns, and the shaman floats through a river of white silk to release the woman’s soul, the work conjures an astonishing ceremonial atmosphere of peace.
•At Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, until 29 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
