Lucky, for Sure: Suddenly Dance in Victoria, Canada and Seoul, South Korea - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Robin J. Miller
Suddenly Dance Theatre’s David Ferguson had his latest project all worked out. In 2019, the dancer, choreographer, and film director won a $25,000 Chrystal Dance Prize from Dance Victoria, followed by two Canada Council for the Arts grants totalling $83,000. The funds were intended to support four in-person residencies and live, in-studio performances of a new piece called Lucky Maybe in both Victoria, British Columbia, and Seoul, South Korea, followed by the production of a 20-minute film version.
It started out well. In July 2019, dancer/choreographer Hoyeon Kim and four other dancers from Seoul’s DAB Dance Project travelled to Victoria for a three-week residency with Ferguson and his Suddenly Dance Theatre artistic co-director, artist/musician Miles Lowry. Two months later, Ferguson and Lowry spent two weeks with Kim in Seoul. “We had worked with Hoyeon since 2016 so we already had a language, a way of working together that carried over to this project,” said Ferguson. “The title, Lucky Maybe, came about because I said it a lot when we were working with him on another film, called We Are Diamonds. Three of his dancers had no English so I ended up using a gesture — two fingers crossed, with my hand tilting back and forth — and the words ‘lucky maybe?’ for motivation when we needed to rehearse again or reshoot a scene.” Over time, the phrase became an inspiration for the new work, which explores the idea of luck through characters out of Korean folklore.
But luck, as we know, is a fickle thing. When the world shut down in March 2020, the next two in-person residencies — as well as live performances and the plan for Ferguson and Lowry to film on location at the spectacular Wauwoojungsa Temple in Yongin — were cancelled. When the collaborators saw each other again, it was over Zoom.
“Much of what we had done in the in-person residencies was directed improvisation, with David throwing the dancers ideas,” said Lowry. “Hoyeon would then interpret David’s ideas through his choreography, while I sat at a piano developing the soundscape.” Transitioning to Zoom across multiple time zones and sometimes glitchy connections made continuing this exchange both frustrating and enlightening.
With the support of the Seoul Dance Centre, Kim, co-choreographer and dancer Jungha Lim, and dancers Jeongyeon Yum and Juyhe Cho, used a studio there to work through summer 2020, with Ferguson and Lowry periodically Zooming in from Victoria. “It was a very different practice, a different way of seeing, listening, choosing through a long-distance lens,” Ferguson said. “It made me confront a lot of control issues I might not have confronted otherwise. You hire people for a reason, and then you have to let them shine. If Hoyeon thought an idea, a movement, worked, I went with it.” Added Lowry, “It was a matter of letting go of one thing in favour of another,” which was getting the filming done by December 2020, the deadline set by Arts Council Korea, which also contributed funds to Lucky Maybe’s development.
Fortunately, Ferguson and Lowry had visited Wauwoojungsa Temple on their last Korean trip to record audio and video, take pictures, and choose locations and camera angles. After the pandemic shutdown when they realized they wouldn’t be able to return, those resources helped Lowry continue to develop the score — “There was constantly music on the wind, bells and chanting and birds” — and Ferguson to create a video storyboard of shots and angles. From there, it was up to Kim and dancer-turned-cameraman Jeongeun Lim to interpret the storyboard and shoot the film.
“The filming was where I really had to give up control,” said Ferguson. “I wasn’t there, and we didn’t even try a live feed in that remote location. They didn’t always capture what I thought I wanted — they were only allowed to be in the temple for so long, so it was essentially a live performance — but they gave me lots of alternative shots. As director and editor of the film, it was a great lesson in adapting and finding new ways to shape and redraw the story.”
The result is raw at times, but there is considerable beauty and humour as well. The temple provides a stunning playground for two well-known Korean characters: Horangi (Hoyeon Kim), a slightly bumbling tiger, and Gatchi (Jungha Lim), a mischievous magpie, who together are said to expel evil and invite luck. At times, Kim and Lim are like Laurel and Hardy; at others, as they partner the two female dancers, like Fred with Ginger. But, said Lowry, “Lucky Maybe is definitely not a pop piece.” Rather, explained Ferguson, “It’s a film-slash-art piece with perhaps a narrative or something impersonating a narrative.”
This experimental aesthetic is in keeping with Suddenly Dance Theatre’s long-standing mandate. Founded in 1992 to support what Lowry called “high art, in a town where nobody was taking risks in dance,” the company set out to deliberately push the limits of experimental dance in this rather conservative West Coast city. “We had no intention of giving Victoria a Christmas show,” he said. “We knew we couldn’t make good stuff unless we were doing our thing. People haven’t always liked it, but here we still are, 30 years later.”
Suddenly Dance Theatre soon branched out to include dance presenting as well as creation. For 20 years, Ferguson and Lowry produced the ROMP! Festival of Dance each summer at indoor and outdoor venues across Victoria, bringing in emerging and established local, national, and international dance artists. The co-directors also gradually began to add layers of film and other media to their own creations, long before multimedia became mainstream.
The company’s first stand-alone dance film, Opium — written and directed by Lowry and based on the life of French writer Jean Cocteau — was presented on Bravo Television in 2005 and chosen for the 35th Dance on Camera Festival in New York. Starring in it alongside Ferguson was dancer/choreographer Jung ah Chung, who had moved from South Korea to Victoria in the early 2000s. “She was my dream creative partner,” said Ferguson, “both onstage and on film. We had a wonderful, intense 15-year partnership during which she introduced Miles and me to South Korea.”
Suddenly Dance Theatre toured South Korea four times between 2008 and 2015, performing original works in Seoul, Kimhae, Busan, and Daegu. The company also established an international program called From Korea with Love, bringing top dancers, including Hoyeon Kim, to perform in BC. “For me,” said Ferguson, “Hoyeon has the same intuitive way of working as Jung ah, and we share a similar understanding of humour and irony.” Over 2021, Ferguson, Lowry and Kim continued to hone their creative partnership over Zoom, working on a second episode of Lucky Maybe, called Tiger in the City, where Horangi leaves the countryside for the bright lights of Seoul. Filming has begun in South Korea, with additional filming in Victoria, with Canadian dancers, set to start shortly.
With luck, Tiger in the City, too, will get screened widely. After premiering in Canada in May 2021 as part of the National Arts Centre’s CAPSULE video dance series, Lucky Maybe was shown in June at Busan International Dance Festival in South Korea. It will have its US premiere as part of the 20th Anniversary Dance Camera West Film Festival, opening March 24, 2022, in Los Angeles, with more dates, said Ferguson, “on the horizon.”
