Asia Dance Channel

The 16^th ChangMu International Dance Festival 2010
13-21 July 2010
Uijeongbu Arts Centre
By Joseph Gonzales

The 16^th ChangMu International Dance Festival 2010 was held at the Uijeongbu Arts Centre and several outdoor spaces in Uijeongbu city, located approximately an hour from Seoul. The theme selected for this edition of the festival was “W/A/R-War, Arts, Recovery” commemorating the 60^th year of the Korean War and potently describes the mind-set of the South Korean people who wish to rise from the ravages of the past. This locates Korean artists as people who see arts as a tool for this healing process and places the body as the principle medium of memory transmission.

This festival was established by one of the doyennes of Korean dance Kim Maeja who serves as its Artist Director. Kim has had a long and illustrious career as a performing artist who has opened a private performing arts space in Seoul, the Changmuchumteo in 1985. She also publishes a monthly dance magazine called Momm meaning body, runs the ChangMu Dance Company and continuously creates new work. She is renowned for her interpretation and revival of Korean traditional dance and places it within contemporary society. She has incredible energy, passion and artistry.

I had the privilege to be invited as a member of the International Advisory Panel consisting of Americans Andrew Chiang of the Nai-ni Chen Dance Company, Sara Nash who is Program Associate from the Mid Atlantic Foundation, and Andrew Wood who is the President of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Due to prior commitments, I was only able to participate for three full days. In that time, I was treated to a host of activities that included private showcase showings of the works of young Korean choreographers, public showcase performances of various groups or companies and the Main Performance of selected dance companies, both Korean and international.

Our program of activities included meetings with the Korean Arts Management Service (KAMS) committee for international festivals and meetings within the panel. Since 2005, KAMS organizes a Performing Arts Market (PAMS) every year in the month of October that that gathers material and information about Korean artists from various disciplines of music, theatre, dance, film, and visual artists that is placed on display for ‘sale’ to festival organizers, presenters and managers from around the world. I have been the Artistic Director for the Malaysian biennial TARI Festival since 2000 (the 2009 installment was cancelled due to the A-H1N1 virus threat and the festival is awaiting its resurrection), and have attended dance festivals since 1982.

In this extremely long period of time, I have observed that South Korea aggressively promotes its artists at international festivals. The individual dancers and choreographers or their companies are given prominence. They are always presented with very good publicity materials, brochures, photographs and often, if there is space, there is a sizeable Korean performance presence too. Through this organization, together with Korea Foundation, and The Arts Council of South Korea, artists are able to apply for funding for international travel and financial support for production. Added to this service, any translation and interpretation required is sponsored by the Korea Literature Translation Institute. This commitment to promotion and organizations support of the arts is perhaps only rivaled by Singapore in the Asia Pacific region.

These policies that are in place have allowed for great development in Korean arts reflected in the availability of arts programs offered in universities. There are approximately 2000 dancers graduating from Korean universities annually. Competition for jobs and still-limited spaces have raised standards to incredible heights that Korean dancers are winning international ballet, modern dance and choreography competitions while a large number of these dancers are now dancing with large international dance companies around the world.

The quality of the choreography by young choreographers that I was privileged to watch was refreshing. Can there really be new themes anymore? Art, Film, literature or dance continuously evolve around the same themes since the Greeks, but the challenge is to present it in “new” ways. Creativity is measured by the ingenuity to translate these thoughts and ideas into a work of art. Young Korean choreographers that I watched have a strong grasp of the fundamentals of choreography and are able to use technique, humour, irony and juxtaposition intelligently, to create work that is quirky and out-of-the-box.

Among those that stood out were Suck-Hoon Ryu for Dance Company THE BODY, Na-Hyun Lee from UBIN Dance, Namjin Kim from Dance Theatre CHANG and Me-young Kwon of the Lee K. Dance Company with their desire to use their body as a site for dialogue and investigation while seeking to push the artists’ role as a social commentator and critique. I thought that many of these works would be suitable for smaller fringe contemporary dance festivals appealing to niche audiences.

The evening performance schedule consisted of Korean companies ChangMu Dance Company, Teotmaru Dance Company, One Dance Project Group, choreographer-performers Jin-yeob Cha and Sung-hoon Kim, Sungsoo Ahn Pick-up Group, and several others. The international invitations that I witnessed were Beijing Dance Academy Youth Dance Troupe and Lines Ballet from San Francisco while other invitees were the Sumatera-based Eri Mefry’s Nan Jombang Dance Company and the Sergey Smirnov Eccentric Ballet which I wished I had seen if for nothing else but its name!

The impression that I got was that the toast of the ChangMu Festival was Alonzo King’s Line Ballet with 11 beautifully built dancers of multi-ethnicities. With sinewy rippling muscles, beautiful feet, high battements and 180 degree penches, the dancers were literally eating up the space. The company performed a double-bill of Dust and Light and Scheherazade, both by Alonzo King that was received with rapturous enthusiasm. The choreography emphasized use of space with great attention to solos and duets that emphasized the dancers’ technique.

They enthralled with their lightning-speed footwork, which must have been extremely challenging especially for the longer-limbed dancers. My personal favourite was the dancers from Beijing Dance Academy that I have long wanted to watch and they did not disappoint. It appeared that their exploration of contemporary dance vocabulary still remained very Euro-centric, their dancing was nonetheless mesmerizing especially in Beijing Dweller by Jonathan Lunn. Their profile indicates that they work towards incorporating traditional culture into contemporary dance as in Tow but this work was still raw and innocent in its synthesis of genres. However, it is definitely a group to take notice off and I expect that the world will be seeing a lot from them in the future.

The visit was over all-too-soon and as always, I was grateful for the opportunity to learn - this time from the Koreans especially about systems that can invigorate the arts industry, great dancing and pushing choreographic ideas. Congratulations to the organizing committee of the festival and personal thanks to Director Kim Maeja, Andrew Chiang, International Director, and Deputy Director of the Festival Yi-rong Hong or better known as Dragon Hong.

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