Details

Under + Stand = US = Understand

You can understand everything when you look at the other person from a lower place.

About performance

The piece takes the idea of ‘understanding’ to explore our current social issues and their possible solutions. Affective disorders such as depression or bipolar disorder could be found in yourself, or your family and close friends. Choreographer Hyun-jin Jung and visual artist Novo offer their interpretations on the theme using their own methods of dance and fine art, and strike up an interesting dialogue on stage. Movement and installation are the main visual elements, the harmony of which leads the audience to get a mixture of feelings that are not easy to define. Creative outcomes of both the choreographer with a background in contemporary dance and the visual artist who uses various types of material are revealed on stage simultaneously, as if we are watching two types of performance, and the additional live music increase the density and integrity of the piece.

Choreographer’s notes

Our stories, familiar yet strange

Part 1. Understand

As it can be broken down into ‘under’ and ‘stand,’ the word ‘understand’ means you can understand everything if you looked at the other person from below. And the two components give the first letters ‘u’ and ‘s,’ making the word ‘us.’ After all, we hope to understand one another, and understanding is what heals us.

Part 2. Affective Disorder

The project began as the creators gathered to research about themselves. The most common thread was that, however small, each one was experiencing a certain level of affective disorder. Affective disorder, such as depression or bipolar disorder, makes it hard to control your feelings and prolongs an emotion for an unusually long time. It is not about something external but an internal problem. Based on our suppressed hopes and hidden personalities, we all carry an affective disorder that we cannot easily control.

Part 3. Home

It is said the reason for affective disorders is quite trivial everyday incidents that are usually family-related. ‘Home’ is the place we’re most closely connected to, and just hearing the word can already comfort us. But today, is it really where we can rest and relax? Isn’t it that we are not understood even at a place full of people I love? Just as when people use the phrase ‘Home Sweet Home’ in an ironical way…

Credit

Choreography / Hyun-jin Jung

Visual Artist / Novo

Producer / Ye-won Chu

Violinist / Erica Yebyeol Lee

Cast / Ji-hye Kim, Jung-soo Kim, Byung-hyun Yang, Beomgeon Lee, Jong-hwa Lee, Mi-ra Ha, Novo, Erica Yebyeol Lee

About Company

Company J

Hyun-jin Jung, who worked as a principal dancer at Trisha Brown Dance Company in New York, has founded Company J to explore a wider range of possibilities. Jung has been presenting sophisticated works with the company, giving a strong focus on most essential and fundamental movements. Company J uses repetitive movements as a method of skillfully combining two opposing elements, tradition and contemporaneity. The works by Company J prove how monotonous yet witty movements can create a wide variety of possibilities.