NORRI (2023), 60-minute quartet, photo by Taso Papadakis
DaEun Young
California, USA
Performance/Choreography/Dance
Artist in Residence, 2025
↗ https://daeunjung.com/
Artist Statement
My work interlaces the forms, principles, and methods of folk and classical Korean dance and interdisciplinary performance practices. I rearrange, reinterpret, and transmute codified dance movements—their stylized forms, gestural essences, and somatic principles—to invite the spontaneous grooves of contemporary body.
Chance procedure, Hangul (Korean alphabets), numeric patterns, irregular folk rhythms, and minimalist composition methods are my inspirations for aleatoric sequences which take shape on graph paper, Excel sheets, whiteboards, and floor grids for solo or group dancers.
In my work, Pansori (Korean folk opera), Janggu (hourglass-shaped drum) rhythms, electronic beats, and algorithmic sound patterns are layered with the dancing body(ies) of mixed backgrounds under rigorous or playful rules in self-constructed systems.
Where the past and present, self and other, system and play, and rigor and spontaneity coexist, the female Asian body, rooted in a non-western dance practice, claims singular authorship in contemporary choreography.
While at Headlands
I will develop a new solo that challenges the binary dialogue present in my previous works: traditional vs. contemporary. This project summons (and investigates somatic and choreographic methods to summon) my multilayered movement roots. Just as Korean dance has always been contemporary in its evolving practice, the traces of my movement practices stem from different contemporary moments within my personal and collective history.
I will continue researching image archives that reflect my poly-temporal cultural and movement roots, including Minhwa, the 18th–19th-century Korean folk paintings that capture ancestors’ everyday actions, the signature dances of first-generation K-pop stars, and gestural poses in American fashion magazines.
Memories in my body, reflected in these images, will be juxtaposed, interwoven, patterned, or morphed through self-constructed systems of improvisation and composition. With abundant studio time at Headlands, I will devise, craft, hone, and refine the structure and body of work that embodies this ongoing research.
