{"id":38853,"date":"2022-07-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/professors-research-of-korean-modern-dancer-is-subject-of-neh-summer-institute-study\/"},"modified":"2024-07-11T16:14:26","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T20:14:26","slug":"professors-research-of-korean-modern-dancer-is-subject-of-neh-summer-institute-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/news\/2022-07-18\/professore28099s-research-korean-modern-dancer-subject-neh-summer-institute-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor\u2019s Research of Korean Modern Dancer is Subject of NEH Summer Institute Study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Associate Professor of Dance Kim Jones joined a cohort of 25 higher education faculty in Chicago this summer for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute: Making Modernism: Literature, Dance, and Visual Culture in Chicago, 1893-1955<\/em><\/a>. Funded by the NEH and running from July 18 to August 5, the Summer Institute explores creative expression in Chicago from the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century through the aftermath of the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in Chicago, Jones is conducting archival research in the Newberry Library to continue her ongoing studies of Korean dancer\/choreographer Choi Seung-Hee (1911-1969). Widely regarded as Korea\u2019s first modern dancer. Choi lived an eventful life through the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean war. As a performer, she traveled to cities throughout the world \u2013 including Chicago \u2013 but her dances have not been seen outside of North Korea since 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring the Japanese occupation, Choi rose to fame as a representative of Japan performing around the world,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThis was very unusual for a female Korean national to have such status and privilege during the Japanese occupation. During her overseas tours, she started calling herself a Korean dancer in her programs, rather than a dancer from Japan. She danced Korean folk dances with a modern sensibility to help expose Korean culture. After World War II, Choi relocated to North Korea, following her husband, who was a sympathizer with the Worker\u2019s Party of Korea. In the 1960s she and her family were purged, and in 2003 the North Korean government released a statement confirming her death in the year 1969. In North Korea, Choi and her work were considered a threat because they offered power to people to assemble and unite against authority at a time when North Korea focused on dance, music, and art to only support nationalistic propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones began her research of Choi Seung-Hee in 2019, with the intention of traveling to South Korea to further her study with the dancer Kim Yeong-Sun, who, now in her late 80s, had been a student of Choi Seung-Hee. With travel restricted by the pandemic, she instead worked with Kim Yeong-Sun virtually with Korean dancer So Young An, a current member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, and production\/stage manager Hae Jin Han.<\/p>\n\n\n\n