Performance Info

Maholra is a Hebrew word that means “those who dance in front of God.” Maholra Company was founded in 2007 with the philosophy, “we will uphold the fundamentals of dance as if we are dancing in front of God.” The company has strived to vitalize the Korean creative dance scene through its new approaches to tradition. It chooses subject matter close to human life and artistic expression grounded in tradition to create contemporary dances that incorporate present-day movement, drama, and music. Maholra Company has received international acclaim for its performances abroad and collaborations with foreign artists and plays a significant role in sharing Korean culture and aesthetic values with the world.

Artistic director & Ceo Kim, Jae Seung

Interview

Q: Critics agree that “the modernization of Korean dance which began in the late 2010s was brought about young choreographers like Kim Jae-seung.” Maholra Company has consistently presented original Korean dances that reinterpret Korean traditions in new ways. Please tell us about your creative process and your background as a choreographer.

When I first starting choreographing, I was told that my works had many theatrical elements. Later on, I began to explore contemporary dance and modern movement. In my search for my own creative method, I returned to my roots in traditional dance and did research on the new movements and stories within Korean tradition. In the beginning, I was very cautious about reinterpreting tradition because traditional works are great classics that deserve respect. But my teachers encouraged me by saying, “Even traditional classics were once new creations long ago. When you do an interpretation of a classic, your work can also become a part of our cultural tradition in the future.”

It is a solo work that I feature in and direct. Despite the monumental obstacles that present themselves over 10 months, people are born into this world. Despite the difficulty of having dreams, we work as hard as we can to achieve them. It’s not easy to dance, but we dance! This is the context for “Nevertheless.” I tried to interpret human life through the spaces we inhabit. This work starts in a small room. After being born in this room, the dancer — me — has dreams in it and then breaks free of it to go out into the world to achieve her dreams. Once I go out into the world, my perspective is broadened — but I am left with the fear and anxieties I had while in the small room. I wanted to tell audiences that, despite everything, we need to be strong and not be afraid to pursue our dreams. The movements start from the minuscule movements of the fetus in a mother’s womb and eventually become confident steps taken by an individual who wants to live her life to the fullest.

That’s when I began to research movement based on traditional forms. In 2012, there was an incubation program for next generation choreographers. I attended classes in philosophy, aesthetics, and stage art, and had an opportunity to reflect deeply on choreography. I was the only participant who had majored in Korean dance, and I received a lot of advice on breathing and eye contact. Foreign directors saw the expressive styles I had naturally formed by performing Korean traditional dance and found them strange and unfamiliar. This program was an opportunity to look at myself objectively. From then on, I deconstructed my movements and intentionally broke the flow between movement and music. Through this experimentation process, I slowly found answers to my questions and I began to bring my work to completion.

“Gentleman” is a traditional Korean male ceremonial dance that I dedicated to my mother. It chronicles a man’s life from his conception in his mother’s womb to his death. To gentleman scholars long ago, fans represented their identity, social status, and willpower. A fan is an objet that represents oriental beauty and creates visual interest as it folds and unfolds. “Gentleman” is a fan dance that reconstructs the hallyangmu dance using gutgeori and jajinmori rhythms (jangdan). In this work, I segmented and deconstructed the movements and breathing and then pieced them together again. Instead of following the flow of music, I would go against it and intentionally pause in the middle of a musical phrase to create discord. I tried to make familiar body movements unfamiliar. Through these experiments, I chronicled a gentleman’s life.

When I first heard sinawi music, I was fascinated by the way the musicians improvised and completed the music according to the flow without any fixed rules. I wanted to express the aesthetic beauty of Korean music through dance. The etymology of “sinawi” means “music for the gods” and “music the gods play with.”

That is why it is often used in gut shaman rituals and reminds one of humans depending on and praying to the gods. To foreigners, sinawi can sound like jazz music because it is not formalized music; rather, there is spontaneity and change with the passage of time. In “Sinawee (Balance in Incongruity)” two male and two female dancers appear on the stage. The four dancers act as a medium for showing music through their bodies. In the beginning, individual movements join inside one person’s body and create harmony. Then the individual dancers meet each other and create synergy. As the four dancers interact and get entangled with each other, a new order is formed. I showed the process of these movements harmonizing and completing each other. Just as sounds gather to form music, movements gather and develop into a dance.

After working on reinterpretation of Korean traditional arts, my interest shifted to work based on texts. I was reading Dante’s “The Divine Comedy,” which is divided into 3 sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and noticed that the Korean tradition’s concept of death, although not completely alike, shared some similarities with that of Western culture. I began my “Divine Comedy” imagining what it would be like I could travel in the afterlife. The dancers and I created movements based on Dante’s text “The Divine Comedy.” I think words can means different things to different people. For example, “love” can be something as sweet as candy to one person, and suffocating obsession to another. Through text research, I learned that the feeling and direction of a dance can change drastically depending on the dancer’s intent.

When I approach tradition, I think about the past, present, and future. I believe that artists must study the past, reflect the present, and tell stories about where we should go in the future. When I create, I think about keeping my roots in the traditional, being contemporary, and at the same time, future-oriented. When I was younger, I followed Western approaches and sentiment, but as time went by, I came to realize the importance of Korean traditions and its messages. Since I was born in Korea, I think it’s important to know the country’s history and create stories based on my study of Korean traditional dance. Until today, I think deeply about upholding and developing our customs and traditions in my work.

In the past, I thought I did my best thinking and work during times of solitude. However nowadays, I realize that I’m heavily influenced by other people. My work is greatly affected by who I am with, where I went and what I experienced with others. I never stop asking myself questions. I want to continue what I’ve been doing all along, but at the same time, I want to try new things. For example, in the near future I’d like to go to a foreign country and work with a traditional dance group to reinterpret and contemporize their dance. These days, I’ve become more interested in working with text. I feel power in a text’s drama. In the past, I concentrated more on the inner expression of movement and technique. But now I am more interested in telling stories about people’s lives and creating more humanist works. I would like the art of dance to become more popular in Korea and constantly think of ways to attract people to theater dance performances.

Production Details

〈Gentleman〉
〈Heart〉
〈Sinawee (Balanc in Incongruity)〉
〈tyriB (A forgotten Encounter)〉
〈The Divine Comedy〉

- 2019 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Kennedy Center Family Theater, USA
- 2019 Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance, Israel
- 2017 Encontros do DeVIR, Portugal
- 2016 8/F Platform X Festival, Hong Kong
- 2016 Tenerife Dance Interfaces leal.lav, Spain
- 2016 AURA 24 Int’l Dance Festival, Lithuania
- 2016 Théâtre des Abbesses, France
- 2015 ONE DANCE WEEK. Bulgaria
- 2015 La Briqueterie, France

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