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Performance Info

KIM Min Jung (Choreographer, director, director of the theatre company Movement Dang-Dang . Currently based in Montreal, Canada)

: Which genre? I am not the one who decides.

You have worked in various fields from Korean dance, to contemporary dance and to theatre. I am curious about career paths you have pursued. Movement Dang-Dang also started from contemporary dance as I know.

I have learned Korean dance since I was little and joined a theatre club in high school. The reason why I chose contemporary dance as my major at university was to be an actress. I went through an audition and made a debut as a professional musical actress. Around the same time, I presented a choreographic work at a competition for new choreographers. In addition, I had been working as an actress at the theatre company named Mythos for more than 10 years since 1997. In brief, an actress who knows how to dance started to choreograph and then direct based on the experiences of writing a script for chorography.

I didn’t intend to extend the genre’s diversity. What I did was to create and express something and it was the audience that determined which genre it belonged to. In 2010 when the work The Life was selected as the final work in the incubating program by a theatre director, my directing work seems to have begun to be classified as theatre.

The group name that had continuously changed depending on the project became Movement Dang-Dang in 2002. In the beginning, the whole members of the group were dancers. But the number of the actors and actresses has increased and most of the members are currently actors/actresses. I am not sure if changes in my working style have changed the members or the changed members have changed my working style. It doesn’t matter in either case. For me, creating my own style and genre is more important than determining the genre - theatre or dance. In this sense, my work can be described as multidisciplinary art.

What is your main focus that has been consistently applied to all your work, while pursuing diverse changes in the form?

I am fascinated by all the taboos; The strongest taboo from my childhood until now probably in our society is ideology. Therefore, I became interested in Korean history and felt a sense of resistance and anger, having witnessed that ideology was used as a means of retaining government power. Those who disclosed hidden things or said forbidden things in history have influenced my work and the victims in such a history have formed the basis of the narratives. The Life, based on the tragic story of the real revolutionary and his wife, and Light of A Factory (2014), dealing with the leading figures who participated in the labor movement in the era of the modernization, can be understood in this context.

In line with these subjects of history and taboo, I explore the good and evil of human nature as well as the essence of power recently.

With regard to the form, I put emphasis on seeking a new form every time because I am not willing to follow oppression, authority and convention. Following its two showcases, The Life was presented at 5 festivals in Korea and Light of A Factory was performed at Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival and Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, and so on. As the performance was staged repeatedly, a new version was created. A Forbidden Act (2014), an installation performance depicting different moments of death in each room out of 12 rooms installed onstage, gave different versions of performance in two domestic festivals and on tour in France. I attempt to develop the work in a space - theatre, city - where performance takes place together with performers.

My recent work Unhappiness (2015) shows this characteristic best; the latest work is supposed to be the closest one to me. The scenes including myself feeling unhappy, those feeling miserable and a miserable society are presented in the form of performance all over the theatre space. Numerous questions about misfortune, swinging emotions are exposed, while those participating in the performance don’t find the reason why they feel miserable. The audience are required to decide what to see and where to go by themselves independently. Some of the audience might feel inconvenience in this setting because the range of seeing the performance varies depending on their own judgment. But I think it is a new method I can present currently.

Apart from performance, you have been involved in diverse activities.

Due to my eclectic tastes, I have been working in various fields including directing music performances as well as short films and installation art, transcending boundaries. Thus, collaborations with several social organizations as part of solidarity activities aimed at researching historical and social issues were meaningful. I have also actively participated in the arts and cultural movement as a way of practicing the issues visualized in the form of work.

You recently moved to Canada. What made you decide to go there? What are your future plans?

I feel like I’m standing at a critical moment as a person as well as an artist. I have discovered issues from history and society and been working on them for about 20 years. Such a work was not my choice, but my duty, I thought. But on the threshold of my forties and after the Sewol ferry disaster , I had a really hard time as an adult, individual as well as artist. I was a key member of Camino de Ansan (2015-) and did some theatrical work related to that, but I still suffered from trauma, feeling guilty and helpless. That is why I left Korea.

For now, I don’t have any plans for my work. I thought I had to start over in the isolated situation, so I moved to a different place. I try to start all over again after taking some time to catch my breath. In this sense, Montreal was a good choice.

For me, curiosity to see veiled things, courage to discover something hidden and consciousness to remember disappeared things and not to forget them all are connected to theatre. Seeing the mothers of the victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy organize a theatre troupe and perform, I recovered my fundamental faith in theatre. I still have faith in theatre and it will lead me to a new work someday.

* Photo "Unhappiness" copyright : Namsan Art Center

Production Details

Director
KIM Min Jung

Reference

E-mailinnstage@gmail.com

Program

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