Hidden Connection

ASIA Superposition Showcase – Collaboration Project of Asia Dance Company

Overview

The Office for Hub City of Asian Culture at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is carrying out various internationally cooperative projects to establish Gwangju as the Hub City of Asian Culture. ‘: Collaboration Project of Asia Dance Company’ is proceeded as a part of the International Exchange Network Project of the Office for Hub City of Asian Culture that seeks to create an international network of art communities in Asia. Since 2011, this project has looked for specific ways to collaborate with Asian artists and presented showcases as results each year. This year, the project has expanded to a six week residency, carried out by dancers from 14 Asian countries, and a double bill of performances, which will be presented to the public for the first time in connection to Asia Culture Center in Gwangju. Its world premieres, choreographed by Japan’s Hiroaki Umeda and Korea’s Hwang Soohyun, generate questions of what Asian contemporary dance is, and whether a common cultural identity exists in Asian dances. The audience will come to identify that the various dances of Asian performers are not as precisely divided into either ethnic, traditional, modern, contemporary, Eastern or Western dance as they may have thought. ‘ project’ reveals Asian dance in its superposed state, unable to be defined in one word. It is not an overlap of dance categories, but a superposition of states. The choreographers of Korea and Japan attempt to explore the realm of Asian dances, which was unable to be classified by the existing cognitive frame.