Kontemporary Korea: A Double Bill of K:Dance
A Festival of Korean Dance 2025
About Kontemporary Korea: A Double Bill of K:Dance
Kontemporary Korea is a showcase of two of the freshest new voices in K-dance, each finding inspiration and play in the balance between the mundane and the virtuosic. The event will be followed by a post-show discussion.
0g (zero grams) by Melancholy Dance Company
Moving and uplifting
The Herald, on Flight
Inspired by the repetitive and seemingly pointless actions of the mythical figure Sisyphus, 0g utilises the principle of ‘free fall movement’ to uncover the meaning of life anew within monotonous daily routines.
Melancholy Dance Company, founded by choreographer Cheol-in Jeong, plays with gravity through this principle of ‘free fall’ and applies it to various parts of the body, experimenting with extreme situations and dynamic movements, which are often dazzlingly virtuosic.
0g is the winner of the 2020 Dance Arts Award presented by Chum (Dance), a monthly Korean magazine specialising in contemporary dance.
About Melancholy Dance Company
Founded in 2016 by choreographer Cheol-in Jeong, Melancholy Dance Company sees the world we live in itself as art. Their works Flight, 0g, Overmensch, Your Sign, Mobility, and Non-Protection take human life as the theme and explore human history and phenomena through variations of speed, rhythm and weight.
melancholy-dc.com
Cast & Creatives
Choreographer: Cheol-in Jeong
Performers: Ji-soo Ryu, Gyung-jae Mun, Cheol-in Jeong, Young-sang Ju and Joong-keun Jeon
Producer: Min-young Kim
Sound Director: Tae-kyung Choi
The performance is part of A Festival of Korean Dance, supported by the Korean Cultural Centre UK and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange. The festival is presented in partnership with The Place, The Lowry, Dance City, and Pavilion Dance South West.
Shinsegae by Ji-hye Chung
A lecture-style solo performance which dissects our most unconscious everyday activity - the act of walking. Shinsegae, which means ‘new world’ in Korean, distinctively incorporates video imagery to represent the human body with a computer game, creating a sensory interplay between the natural and the artificial. Ji-hye Chung encourages reflection on the evolution of walking and the function of bipedalism, offering us a chance to discover a ‘shinsegae’ of walking.
About Ji-hye Chung
Ji-hye Chung is a choreographer and performer based between Korea and Europe. She collaborates with artists from various fields, moving beyond fixed media to observe moments and possibilities where concepts are redefined within already blurred boundaries. Her work examines the reasons behind movements accumulated in the body, and she is currently exploring dance by imagining the future body within the relationship between the artificial and the natural.
Her choreographic works include Air Becomes Ears, Ears Become Eyes (2020), Open Letter (2020), Positioning Game ver.21 (2021), A.D 0000 (2021), Nondance Dance (2022), The Skills of Dust (2023) and Nondance Dance 2 (2024). She trained in the UK and has previously participated in the annual Choreodrome residency at The Place.
Cast & Creatives
Choreographer & Performer: Ji-hye Chung
Sound Director: Jundo
Lighting Designer: Sung-hee Yu
Outside Eye: Lyon-eun Kwon
Game Advisor: Seung-back Shin
Project Manager: Seo-ha Kim
The performance is funded by GyeongGi Cultural Foundation, and is part of A Festival of Korean Dance, supported by the Korean Cultural Centre UK and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange. The festival is presented in partnership with The Place, The Lowry, Dance City, and Pavilion Dance South West.
