EVOCATIVE DANCE OF SPORT

Executive photojournalist Mark Cheong and assistant sports editor Rohit Brijnath explore the harmonious relationship between sport and dance.

- Executive photojournalist Mark Cheong and assistant sports editor Rohit Brijnath explore the harmonious relationship between sport and dance.

In a studio high up in SPH Media’s News Centre, a strobe fires and Mark Cheong’s camera silently clicks. In front of a black backdrop, two women dressed in white explode on cue into motion. One soars elegantly from the left, the other lunges artfully from the right. As they cross paths, their bodies extended, for a brilliant, graceful, athletic second it seems they are duelling.

Both women are athletes, who operate on separate stages, know the pull of perfection and are familiar with the penance of practice. But there is a difference. One, Glenda Yoon, 20, is a law student who is an amateur dancer; the other, Amita Berthier, 25, is an Olympic fencer.

They’ve never met before but it’s quickly evident that they’re distantly related. Movement connects them. Berthier has more muscle, Yoon more grace, yet both bodies are supple, eloquent, trained instruments which not only move instinctively but are also obedient to technique and instructions.

Their actions are precise, their bodies controlled, their feet balanced. Yoon’s are trained in ballet, contemporary dance and street jazz; Berthier’s in scuttling up and down a fencing piste.

"When I fence," Berthier says, "I am responding to my rival's feet." One may say, with a little licence, that she is dancing.

IN FRANCE, A PROJECT IS BORN

On a Marseille street in the Olympic summer of 2024 an idea arrives. Maximilian Maeder is chasing a kiteboarding medal and Cheong and I are chasing him in this ancient port town. At a long day’s end, waiting for a taxi, we talk about the fluency of athletes at the Games and the expressiveness of their bodies. The Olympics are, after all, a festival of movement.