Sung Im Her was 19 when she took her first dance class. On day one, the teacher told her to lose 20kg in a month and gave her something to bite on while forcing her legs towards the splits. “Harsh, very harsh. Absolutely not recommended,” says the now 47-year-old Korean choreographer and dancer. That punitive beginning would surely have put off many, but Her had become hooked on dance from watching TV and films such as Dirty Dancing and Flashdance. She was hungry – a word she uses many times in our conversation – to discover more.
“Six months later,” she says, “I got on to the contemporary dance course at Hansung University [in Seoul], with top marks. For four years I began at 7am every single day. I then did the two-year master’s degree. But I was still hungry: I wanted more freedom, I wanted to explore.”
The key that opened the door was a performance of Drumming, a landmark work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (“I couldn’t stop crying,” remembers Her). She enrolled at Parts, De Keersmaeker’s school in Brussels, to study choreography for a further two years – and emerged more eager to perform than to choreograph. After “100 failed auditions” she landed jobs with some of Belgium’s best-known experimental performance companies: first Jan Fabre’s Troubleyn, then Alain Platel’s Les Ballets C de la B, and Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey’s Needcompany (with whom she still collaborates).
Choreographic work arose more through circumstance than choice. In 2015 Her had a baby and she moved to the UK the following year to be with her partner. “It was a different world and I was completely depressed,” she says. “I’d had so much fun as a dancer in Belgium and around the world. Here there wasn’t a company I was really attracted to. But what I did find in UK culture is they really value diversity – it’s very open, willing to listen to other voices. I think I’ve had more opportunity here to make choreography in my own voice than I would have had in Belgium or anywhere else in Europe. Though, of course, I also get ongoing support from Korea.”
A Korean, then, who found her body in Belgium and her voice in Britain – but what kind of work did that lead to? The first, a commission from the Korean arts council, was Nutcrusher in 2019, selected in 2021 by the Aerowaves Europe network for emerging choreographers and in 2022 for the UK’s Horizon Showcase. In many ways the piece was an act of self-assertion. “I’d worked for 12 years in Europe with male directors,” says Her, “and there was pressure towards a certain Asian feminine stereotype. You know: slim girl, long hair. One reason I left Korea was to explore freedom from that, so encountering it again was like being pushed back.” Nutcrusher, like Her’s next piece The I of the Beholder (2020), is highly conscious of such tensions between being and being seen.
It’s also a stark, very physical and highly composed work. For Her, “the body is everything. So I need gesture, I need movement.” She doesn’t like complex sets because “that creates other stories” and for the same reason she prefers a degree of emotional separation between dance and its music (often by regulator collaborators Husk Husk, a Belgian electronic duo) so that the body remains primary.
It’s perhaps odd, then, to hear that, beyond choreography, Her has begun working in an area in which the body often plays a supporting role, secondary to “other stories” told through speech, set and sound: movement direction for theatre. The pathway opened when theatre director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart saw a performance of Nutcrusher and, impressed by its abstract yet forceful quality, invited Her to be the movement director for Margaret Perry’s Paradise Now! at the Bush theatre. “I didn’t really know what a movement director was,” laughs Her, “but I said yes.” The risk paid off: Paradise Now! was nominated for an Oliver award and Her was singled out for movement direction.
What has she learned through movement direction? “That there are gaps in theatre narratives that abstract dance and movement can bring something to. Sometimes it’s within the scene, sometimes it’s in the changes between scenes.” And how about working with actors? “Dancers can try things out and find reasons afterwards,” she says. “Actors need a reason from the start. After that, most of the movement comes from them: I direct more and choreograph less.”
Right now, Her is preparing for the UK premiere of her dance trio Tomorrowisnowtodayisyesterday (TiNTiY), which opens the seventh Festival of Korean Dance. As usual, she is dancing in the piece too. “I’m 47 now, and I don’t know how long I can keep on dancing. Each time I wonder: will this time be the last? That makes every performance special for me. But who knows? I’ve been asking this question for 10 years already.”
Tomorrowisnowtodayisyesterday is part of Kontemporary Korea: A Double Bill of K:Dance at Tramway, Glasgow, on 16 May; Dance City, Newcastle, on 18 May; the Place, London, 22 May; and Pavilion Dance South West, Bournemouth, on 24 May.
