Authored by Kanisha Greaves
Photograph of Eun Me Ahn from the William Harris Papers at Marymount Manhattan College
The William Harris Papers at Marymount Manhattan College consist of 96 unpublished scripts and 4,450 folders of newspaper clippings, playbills, and photographs accumulated by the collection’s namesake, William B. Harris. Harris was a drama and dance critic who amassed this collection until his death of a massive coronary in 2000. After his death, the collection was given to Marymount Manhattan College, which has a performing arts program. Included in this collection is the photograph of Eun Me Ahn pictured on the left. As a dancer and choreographer in Korea and later in New York from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s, the avant-garde dance style of Eun Me Ahn was acclaimed by the press as unusual, but powerful and deeply touching. Throughout her time in New York, she was dubbed the Korean answer to the sacrosanct Art of Japanese Butoh.
Born in South Korea, Eun Me Ahn’s career first began at the age of twelve with her training with Traditional Korean Dance. In 1989, she graduated from the E-Wha University for Women in Seoul. From 1986 to 1992, Eun Me Ahn danced in the Korean Modern Dance Company and the Korean Contemporary Dance Company. She then began her choreographic work, exclusively working in Korea until the early 1990s. Based in New York by 1993, she received a MFA in Dance from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1994.
For five seasons working as a choreographer in New York, from 1996 to 2000, she made a name for herself amongst critics for her controversial and bizarre performances. Taking on the roles of choreographer, dancer, and sometime costume designer, some of these commendable productions includes: “Tomb” (1996), “Rainbow Café” (1997), “Starry Night” (1998), “Revolving Door” (1999), and “Period 2” (2000). Throughout her stint in New York at Joyce SoHo and the Ohio Theater, she was acclaimed for her “thoroughly absorbing works that assault the viewer with disturbingly confusing images,” her ability to convey “brilliant visual imagination and wit” and “trap [the viewer] within multi-sensory experiences.”[1]
Returning to South Korea, Eun Me acted as Artistic Director of the Deagu City Dance Troupe from 2001 to 2005. Now working exclusively there and occasionally in Europe, she has added to her success with some of her productions including: the “Please” series (2000-2002), the “Let…” series (2004-2005), “Princess Bari – the Life” (2007),“Princess Bari – the Death” (2010) and “Chunyang” (2010).
References
Brown, Mary Elizabeth. “The William Harris Papers.” Marymount Manhattan College, 2001. http://www.mmm.edu/live/files/98-harrisguidepdf.
Dunning, Jennifer. “Dance in Review.” The New York Times, December 7, 1998, sec. Arts. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/07/arts/dance-in-review-311413.html.
“Eun Me Ahn.” Folkwang University of the Arts. Accessed March 22, 2014. http://www.folkwang-uni.de/en/home/tanz/folkwang-tanzstudio/guest-choreographers/eun-me-ahn/.
“My Name Is Ahn Eun-Me,” 2010. http://www.ahneunme.com/.
Sagolla, Lisa Jo. “Eun Me Ahn Dance Company.” Back Stage 41, no. 43 (November 27, 2000): 62.