Four Choreographic Experiments, Seoul Dance Center, 2021
During the pandemic, I was invited by the Seoul Dance Center to intiate an interedisciplinary project for its Fall program called Co-Choreo Lab. I decided to collaborate with Handmade Film Lab Space Cell, where I rented a Bolex Camera and asked two dancers, a sound technician, and a photographer to bring a Go-pro camera, an iPad, and their iPhones for these choreographic experiments. I proposed that we use cameras as silent spectators/voyeurs and as dancers/movers in our games and antics, as I questioned the role of performance spectatorship in response to Yvonne Rainer’s “No Manifesto,” from 1965 and Mette Ingvartsen’s “Yes Manifesto,” from 2005.
The First Experiment
Yun Lee designs a game where the performers are destined to fail.
Performers are asked to throw a ball of clay and hit the bullseye (the lens of the Bolex camera) from a calculated distance. Rhythms of failures emmerge in the black and white film with sound, Failing (2022), which was shot in 16mm and was hand-processed and edited by the choreographer. The sound recorded by Minuk Choi during the game was digitally edited by the choreographer to accompany the film.
Setting the Stage
Making Props
Playing the Game
Digital and Film Photography by Haeun Roh
The Second Experiment
One dancer holds the Bolex Camera while two dancers roll the dancer holding the camera. The spine of the camera holder stays rounded. Their task is to protect the camera while being rolled.
In the ‘splicing’ of the film, which involved manually cutting the film into pieces and taping them together, Yun Lee decides to select the footage that contains negative space while discarding footage with body parts flying by. How might the negative space dance in the unit of of 24 frames per second? What are the rhythms that emerge from the movement of space caught in between dancers? Space 사이 소리 (2011)—translated as Space, In-Between, Sound—emerged as the outcome of this experiment.
The props from the First Experiment were used to set the stage for the Second one.