Performance “Stran:ger” received a Grand Prize at group dance category in Seoul International Choreography Festival 2015.
Choreography: Jae Seung Kim
Choreography assistant: Jang Yun Na
Dancers: Jae Seung Kim, Hye Jung Lee, Go Woon Lee, Cho Seung Yeol
Music: Lee Aram, Hwang Min Wang, Sung Si Young, Yeo Seong Ryong
Music director: Lee Aram
Composition: Aram Lee, Min Wang Hwang, Si Young Sung
Duration: 30 min.
Premiere: 2015
Jindo Ssigimgut (Jindo Purification Rite), designated as Korea's important intangible cultural asset (No. 72) is shaman rite that prays for a dead person to go to heaven. In Jindo Ssigimgut, exorcist, wearing in white mourning clothes, puts up a petition to heaven while dancing and singing. In Jindo Ssigimgut, exorcist plays a role that connects a dead person to descendants of a dead person.
We study new movement of shamanism which dwells in Jindo Ssigimgut by giving a change in time, space, weight, flow, feel, emotion etc. and make a contemporary dance. Jindo Ssigimgut is one of the rites that transfer the spirit of a dead person to the other world in the course of yeongdonmari, and it includes a course which makes something that symbolizes a body of a dead person and washes it. We will create beauty of oriental image and contemporary image based on images of aforementioned rites, and a contact of breathing by applying a contact of contemporary dance to breathing of Korean dance. Dancers communicate with body language while exchanging breathing with each other. We will seek beauty of breathing which is invisible by above-mentioned work. Maholra Dance Company will seek image and beauty of contemporary Korean dance based on new perspective of a dance, continuous observation and challenge and experience which has been gained through practice.
So many men, so many values in life. As nobody escapes death, we live a life which is given to us, and people vary in using their time. I question myself “what life should I live?”
We live experiencing many meetings and parting. We feel a great sadness in the final parting in life. It is our life and fortune that contains such sorrow. Precious relationship, conflict, repetition of feelings and inexorable time. Travellers who meet in time that flows slowly, yet fast, travel in time with which they shared. Travellers listen to others, sympathize with each other and live together in different time. Travellers pray for themselves, love, and promise seeking meetings they forgot. Travellers and people who live in a place away from home flow along the road that everyone goes expecting another start.
Kim Jae Seung graduated from the School of Dance at Korea National University of Arts in Seoul with both a bachelor’s and master’s in fine arts, and completed a Ph.D at Dankook University. As an outstanding dancer and emerging choreographer, he boasts extraordinary dance techniques that traverse and encompass modern and traditional dance and his choreographic works that are grounded in traditional Korean dance are gaining recognition. He won the gold medal at the 37th Dong-A Dance Competition in Seoul and was selected to participate in the Performance Artists Incubating Program for emerging choreographers, which is supported by the Arts Council Korea (ArKo) in 2011. As executive director of Maholra Company, he has presented a host of intriguing choreographic endeavors including “Corea Ura”, “To Survive”, “Prayer”, “Honpuri” and “Gentleman” (this performance received a Grand Prize at solo dance category in Seoul International Choreography Festival 2013).
Maholra is a Hebrew word meaning those who dance before God. The term epitomizes the determination to never forget the essence and roots of dance and always view, create and perform a dance with the same reverence as if dancing before God. The company has been deeply involved in searching for the esthetic sense of Korean dance and in promoting creative Korean dance performances.