8th seminar – Jaelee Kim (choreographer/dramaturg)

Dramaturge and choreographer Jaelee Kim talked—from the perspective of dance history—about how the bodily movements which ultimately form “dance,” are divided into specific, individual units. These are then further built on or distinguished through “choreography”, which records order and logic. Paying close attention to these processes and changes, I reflected on the transformation of subjects that move in time. According to Kim, the subject that dances onstage has an empty, anonymous body and exists only through the process of entanglement and involvement. Kim also emphasized that it is important for choreographers, who record the order of movement, to be acutely aware of the difference between notation and score in dance.     

I believe that subjectivity, which changes and moves within time of its own accord, is manifested in the compossibility of “separate” and “together” as Jacques Rancière mentioned. Ironically, it is the lines between on- and off-stage movement, dance and choreography, and dancer and choreographer that reveal the very potential of coexistence. By developing this discourse into questions about the body in the exhibition hall, we can ask ourselves how exhibitions might create divisions and boundaries as well as void and space.
 

– Miji Lee (DCW 2022)

Now that I understand the historical background, systems, and institutional functions that mediated art and dance, I am able to interpret performance, dance, and choreography in an art space from a different perspective. In addition, I can guess how the moments that make up a performance—including time, space, and atmosphere—are treated as variables to enhance audience involvement and understanding. The energy triggered in an instant by unstable movement and expressions might last only a moment, but they remain as reference materials for future performances and directing. It was interesting to examine art and performance collaboration by shifting the axis from the history of art to the history of dance. How can we convey the subtle fun carried in the languages of dance and choreography along with other traits that we cannot bring to the art museum? This question ultimately raises further questions for exhibitions.

– Min Ah Lee (DCW 2022)

I thought about all that the extensive word, performance, encompasses. This performative movement that crosses theater, dance, art, stage, and exhibition hall includes incidents created by the human body and motion. For this reason, “performance” is loosely defined as an all-round keyword that binds countless incidents in art. But can anything and everything fall under this label? Shouldn’t we inspect the myriad branches spreading across the large mass that is “performance?” While contemporary art attempts to converge and integrate everything, it might be anachronistic to divide art and performance and search for each discipline’s specificity. However, attempts at reducing separate movements into a single word have always been presented in violent ways. What is the distinction between dance and performance? How do the performing arts industry and the art industry use the body differently? How do exhibitions and performances meet temporally in space? By ceaselessly asking and answering the big questions, discovering the unique and exquisite nature of individual bodily movements is inevitable.

– Minjoo Lee (DCW 2022)