CHOE CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY AT KENNEDY CENTER

On tour, Sang Cheul Choe's Contemporary Dance Company, was triumphant with its stunning performances at the KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, on August 18, 2019. Under invitation of the Korean Cultural Center of Washington D.C., Choe's company performed CHAOS and LIAR, compelling works with visual, dramatic, and intellectual elements providing an expressive range of artistry and technique.

Two works were performed at Kennedy Center: Chaos and Liar. These remarkable works received a standing ovation, and you can see summary of the performance provided by the Korean Cultural Center.

CHAOS

CHAOS, strangely enough, is about order. Visually, the work seethes with tension between order and disorder... Beings glide around a central dominating figure, effortlessly. Artistically, it may seem risky to introduce such apparently effortless motion of self-propelled gliders in orbit, but the beauty of motion and tension created circling the central figure provides a sense of wonder and awe.... Alwin Nikolais had a similar effect in Pond, which I saw recreated in 2010 at NYU, but gliders were powered by the dancers. Chaos is a much more ambitious work than Pond, and the range of diverse movement which celebrates the human body is the exact opposite of Nikolais' work, where bodies disappear to conform to geometrical revelation of imagery and pattern. Chaos is a rich tapestry exploring order emerging from chaos, suggesting that from disorder emerges the need for structure and tradition. But it is also a celebration of the human anatomy, emerging from evolution as highly functional for self defense and coping with sources for food but also aesthetically attractive to insure the continuation of the species. But the order sought is not that of this world, but one fashioned from the fabric of fantasy, somewhere beyond reality, suggesting that chaos is out natural condition. Order comes from the imagination, achieved in a world beyond reality.

LIAR

LIAR is an intriguing work. The polarities of being attracted and repelled by the Liar are convincing and visually exciting.  The choreographer Jung-Hoon Kim achieves the level of a parable. The main figure emerges in the midst of a group of people, gesturing in such a way that they should follow him. He seems persuasive, but quite suddenly, he exits right, and immediately emerges again entering from the left. It is startling. Impossible. But we soon discover there are two identical figures, which one is authentic? Are they both liars?

The moving images that we link to in this Blog, are not video, but rather assembled live photos from iPhone, which provides another, different tool, for examining and understanding movement. The movement imagination is vigorous and spirited, and there is a strong narrative as to how we manage to deceive ourselves. The program notes state:

"We experience many constant lies and often view human conflict and division through the lens of unreasonable deceit. This dance work expresses the soul of youth, especially those who have experienced such conflict and anxiety as a result of an irrational society."

Choe & Company Honored by NYU

Following the performance at Kennedy Center, Choe brought his dancers to visit his Alma Mater, where he received his PhD. The Department of Music and Performing Arts with faculty from Dance, Music, and Music Technology celebrated Choe's work and provided an opportunity for his dancers to tour the facilities and studios where Choe attended for doctoral studies in the 90s.

Choe was greeted by the Director of Dance and Dance Education, Professor Deborah Damast, who provided an update of the profile of Dance at Steinhardt, while Dr. Elise Sobol greeted Choe and his dancers, as Director of Music Education. Professor Tom Beyer, Chief Systems Enigineer, greeted the visitors on behalf of Music Technology, and led a tour of the Dolan Recording Studios. It was such a treat to see Dr. Choe in the context of the Steinhardt Department of Music and the Performing Arts, especially since during his time at NYU, the department has continued to graduate an impressive array of artist educators.

Choe & Company Celebrated by Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery

The next day, before the Choe Contemporary Dance Company would return to Korea, they were invited by the Director of the Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery, Young Cho, to a tea ceremony in honor of Choe's dance company.  It was a happy coincidence that Technoimagination was installed at the gallery, introducing to New York the leading edge of media art in Korea, as part of the Korean Media Arts Festival 2019. Technoimagination was curated by Odelette Cho and Kyung Ran Joo, Director of FUSE Art Project.

Cho's Tea Ceremony honoring the dance company was inspiring, if only to witness how he managed to serve several pourings individually, even though there about 15 people in the room. Throughout the moments of that special occasion was the sense of reverence for life, and for art, and for honoring everyone's aspirations as artists. Young Cho is the founder of the Donghwa Foundation, and has been the source for inspiration as I have had some past association with activities of the Foundation. Serving as the Director of the Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery, has enabled Mr. Cho and his wife Odelette Cho, to enrich the community and the cultural scene in NYC, but also throughout the world. 

What makes Sang-Chuel Choe's coming to Kennedy Center significant in my ongoing work of ARC and its focus on collaborative arts has been my personal connection with Dr. Sang-Chuel Choe. I had the privilege to serve as the Chair for his doctoral research at New York University and have followed his professional and academic career since his time at NYU in the 1990s.

Sang Cheul Choe's career is impressive, from his early days in Korea, to his study at NYU and his work as a choreographer in New York City, responding to a new energy in contemporary dance in NYC, as choreographers were exploring new media and evolving new techniques.

I, myself, was earnestly following the career of Erick Hawkins who was in the twilight of his career in the 90s, but I had discovered him when he visited Texas Tech University in 1959-60 and performed his work Geography at Noon, utilizing a new technique of Hawkins based on free flow with gravity. By the time Choe came to New Yorkin the 90s, dance was undergoing a transformation, and in my estimation was the leading edge of contemporary arts in influencing the direction of new work. I preferred dance concerts over new music concerts to get the pulse of new works and artists.

Choe's work detected this NYC new energy, and he was undergoing artistic change as he worked in a new environment. Returning to Korea, Choe incorporated new media as an essential factor in his choreography. He developed his own method, fusing video and dance as a highly integrated embodiment, while embracing new technology in the context of the human body. Choe still regards BLACK ANGEL as his best use of media technology.

During the years following his sray in NYC, Choe sent me video disks of major new works almost yearly, compiling an impressive repertory that rivals the innovative technological work of Alwin Nikolais, the contemporary choreographer of New York who incorporated technology to transform the stage and the dancer as constructions, blurring distinctions between body and space. Nikolais also composed his own electronic scores so that every element of his work departed from the conventional space and time of dance protocols.  As I followed Choe's work from a distance, I saw his work take on an edge as he harvested the potential of media and choreography to create an impressive array of new works, while continuing to explore and extend the expressive range of the human body.

As this Pandemic Lockdown of 2020 became a global experience, I contacted Dr. Choe to ask about the effect on his work.  Choe replied and provided a haunting excerpt of on-line choregraphy and dancing. He had turned his command of technology to teachng and choregraphing on-line.

Dr. Choe commented:

In the past few months, it was a time with a new daily life like I had never experienced, it was a little uncomfortable and awkward, but the dancers became accustomed little by little. 

During this pandemic, Korean performing arts tried to do something by switching to a new direction of Internet live broadcasting. But the limitation of the inspiration is that it is not the familiar method we have always been doing, and it takes getting used to.

I think a lot about how precious it was for me to have such a small pleasure in completing a dance piece in discussion with dancers. Now we have to communicate all of these things through a cold machine, and I think that it is our new challenge: to get used to the process little by little and make the cold machine warm.

As you know well, Korean people meet, eat, drink, get excited about small things, and love to do something together. However, the reality of such meeting has become a fear.
I asked my graduate students to make a choreograph without meeting each other. I would like to share it with you as a very good result comes out. Of course, it is still an initiating effort, but these are pure dancers who have never challenged this “cineography” ---it's called “Fear”.

 

Choe's online work with students creating choreography ("Fear")

                   Choe's online work with students creating choreography: FEAR.

BEATRIZ ALCAINE'S LA LUNA VISION

Gaudi's Casa Batlló

On a recent trip to Europe, I stopped in Madrid to catch up with my former student, Sonia Megias, a marvelous original poet of musical composition, whose scores are often a feast for the eyes as well as a festival of sound. She was a marvelous host, introducing me to the joys and madness of Madrid. I had mentioned I would like to take a day trip to Barcelona, and she accompanied me on the high-speed train connecting the two cities. The wonders of Barcelona were overwhelming, and my experience in roaming through the home Casa Batlló built by the architect and artist Antoni Gaudi is worth a separate description in a later entry. But after a scenic ride through Barcelona that was being whipped by severe wind gusts, we managed to end up at Gaudi's masterpiece, and Sonia had arranged for us to meet her friend, Beatriz, after we finished touring the house---a magnificent home built without blueprints, just Gaudi on the scene, directing everything to be sculpted and handmade on the spot. It was under the intoxication of this tour, that I met Beatriz, who was waiting for us outside the Gaudi House. It has started to rain lightly, so we ran to a nearby bar with outside seating and the cover of umbrellas. We managed to order drinks and a few small dishes, but the weather became more intense, and we finally sought refuge in a taxi that took us to a small coffee place Beatriz knew that was near the Train Station.

Beatriz, John, & Sonia at Train Station in Barcelona

Our conversation was magical, and I saw why Sonia had wanted us to meet. Beatriz was thinking about starting a business connected to wellness and well-being, and I told her of Jeju Island, where I had lived for awhile. 5000 years ago, the first Emperor of China sent an emissary, Seobul,  to Jeju in search of plants and animals that might provide the means to health and immortality. Seobul spend many years there, and found all manner of natural elements and plants to improve and extend life, and promote the general well-being of a people. I lived at the foot of a sacred mountain, Sanbangsan, and I could feel the spiritual energy emanating from that area.  This was the area where Seobul lived and pursued his research. I had thought of Jeju as being a home for an Institute for Arts Collaboration that sought to promote wellness and well-being.

Soon, it became time to catch the last train to Madrid. Beatriz was leaving also for a town nearby Barcelona. The rain stopped briefly, enough for us to hurry to our train, which returned to Madrid, arriving around 1 a.m.

During the train ride, I reflected on our conversation.  I learned that Beatriz had come to Spain from El Salvadore, where she had run a cafe, a hangout for artists and literati, La Luna Casa y Arte. This had become a haven for cultural and political exchange and collaboration.  Even then, I was planning a newsletter, and I was determined to learn more about Beariz's adventure and why it came to an end. But perhaps more importantly, the creative vortex of events that led to the establishment of this movement needed to be better known.

Caught up in crime and  events of San Salvador, Beatriz Alcaine's family lived in exile in Mexico, but in 1983, as she, at age 17, along with her younger sister, Isabel Cristina, visited their Grandmother, they were kidnapped by the government and brutally tortured. This became an international incident and the U.S. Government intervened to secure their release, but not without difficulty. Even today, El Salvador continues to be in the news, being the source of violent MS-13 Gangs nested in various locales in the United States committing violence and selling drugs. It was the renewal of violence that finally led to the closing of La Luna Casa y Arte in 2012 and escaping to Spain.

From 1979 to 1991, civil war raged in El Salvador. This was a time of extreme violence and devastation in El Salvador, and the young poet, Carolyn Forché had come to this country caught in the glare political controversy in the United States. Leonel Gómez Vides drove all the way from there, with his two daughters, to Forché's home in California.   Forché had not known Gómez, but he was a cousin of Claribel Alegría, a Salvadorian poet exiled in Spain, whose work Forché, had been translating, and whom she had visited in Mallorca.

In 1978, Forché traveled to El Salvadore on a Guggenheim Fellowship. She stayed in El Salvador with Beatriz's mother. From her experiences in the shattering miasma of cruelty and dismemberment, Forché published The Country Between Us in 1981, a powerful publication became that rarity: a book of poems that becomes a bestseller. These poems chronicle her experience in El Salvador and reinforce the conversation with Gómez when after describing the desperate situation of his country, Forché suggested he should get a journalist, someone with training to deal with the complexities of the country. He replied he wanted a poet.

Beatriz and her sister had been held hostage and tortured by the Salvadorian government. They were lucky to be released alive when the U.S. Government intervened. But what happen to Beatriz and her sister was an example of violence erupting as Gómez had prophesied to Forché "War is coming," and Forché recounts these epic moments in her recent book What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Press, 2019.)
For a dozen years violence raged in the war that caused the flight of so many people, caught in the rage and cruelty of warring factions. It may be difficult to understand the depth of despair that prevailed, but this was countered by a sense of hope as exiles returned to El Salvadore, among them, Beatriz Alcain who had studied in France and had a rich history of performance and pursuit of the arts.
Bea, as she is known to all her friends, was searching for a way to establish a positive force for the arts. She had no money as family funds had been depleted by 12 years of civil war. When she returned to her country after the war, she had only the legacy of her family home, and the germ of an idea to create and establish a place for artists and musicians to renew their country through  collaboration to express a new era of creativity and freedom. It is only from the perspective of the sheer desperation of a country depleted of its resources, energy, and vision, that we can understand the emergence of a cultural phenomenon such as La Luna Casa y Arte.

Bea recalls:

With the advent of peace in El Salvador,  many exiles returned. One afternoon I was sitting all by myself in that house...and suddenly I had this daydream...I could see a piano...and then I could feel the music all over the house, and saw colors on the wall...and....yes... That is what I have to do... I ran to my friend, an architect, and a writer friend... it should be an enterprise... created with a multi-talent teamed ...a Composer came,  and a Photographer, and a Ballet Dancer who worked with women... and a Painter... they were from the right or left...but we gathered people from both sides... it was like many circles all interlocked.... these students became the artists ...we started with $7000 and I donated the house.... and then we continued for 21 years....

There was cultural arts fair planned, and we wanted to open during this fair... we created a temporary space... incredible space and recruited everyone.... a lot of people... started with a stamp of a new address... a very organic place... started as a cultural space at first. La Luna....feminine energies for San Salvador also... funny place to go...to go to the Moon......we were not the center...we were on the outside... we apparently were not cultural enough because the arts fair excluded La Luna House and Arts... our open space through time and imagination...

Many spaces for dance, music, workshops for kids... a bar and a kitchen...First night instead of the 40 expected, we were overwhelmed with more than 250....different ideologies meeting... it became a place of reconciliation and respect.... 21 years it lasted... we never received funds... we did it on our own.

We began the adventure of La Luna Casa y Arte in 1991.  It was a meeting ground of not only artists, writers and musicians of El Salvador, but also artists from around the world often visited and contributed to the cultural scene.  It was a time of hope and fulfillment. But after two decades, El Salvador slid back into the despair of a new tyranny of gang violence. 

In 2012, El Salvadore experienced widespread violence through highly organized gangs, and it was no longer safe for Beatriz to remain in the country as women were often the target of violence. She knew it was time to leave.

Beatriz carefully timed the closing of  La Luna Casa y Arte to coincide with the ending of the Mayan Calendar... December 21, 2012 completing a cycle of creativity, consilience and reconciliation unparalleled in the history of El Salvador, and special for all those who created and participated in that moment in time.