40 minutes goes by in no time watching Jin Lee dance. The petite Korean, who has already delighted the Munich audience in Ceren Oran’s “Relationshifts” and “Schön Anders”, among other things, has so much grace, naturalness and technical finesse that the eye and soul cannot get enough of it. About halfway through the three-part solo performance, which Lee and her dancer colleague Jihun Choi choreographed themselves, she turns on the kettle on the Hoch X stage and prepares a cup of tea.
It’s the part where the creature she’s impersonating comes to a temporary rest and does ordinary things. Clean up, pick up a book, slip into a pair of pants. After that and especially before that, something cryptic happens in the realistic living room setting. “Huabun” – in German: “potted plant” – is the name of the duo Zinada’s debut production, which is sponsored by the Munich Cultural Department and tells of uprooting and repotting in a figurative sense. A personal theme for the Munich-based South Koreans, who also took aesthetic inspiration for their piece from plants that scan their surroundings with 20 senses.
At the beginning, Jin Lee is squatting on the floor with his back to the auditorium, his knees on his shoulder blades, his head tilted forward and looking cut off. A structure that gradually shifts and mutates with jerking, its distorted anatomy is continued in facial expressions. Benny Omerzell’s scree-like music also signals that something is just getting going with difficulty. It could also be a doll that comes to life here and doesn’t trust its upright position. In any case, what Lee is doing is unlike anything you’ve seen before; Exhilaration and relaxation alternate in a flash.
Only in the last third do the movements become softer, but remain restless and have to repeatedly reassure themselves of the space and of themselves. The migrated “plant” seems to have arrived in an environment that it does not yet trust. One almost feels a little sadistic that one enjoys this dance-turned homelessness so much.
Huabun, until April 1, 8 p.m., Hoch X, Entenbachstraße 37