This study aims at considering on Japanese postmodern dance, by researching Hijikata Tatsumi’s Ankoku Butoh, Dance of Darkness, which is known for most famous avant-garde dance of 1950s in Japan. Hijikata’s Butoh, started with Kinjiki in 1959, was an entirely new dance form having different qualities of expression from the other dances such as classic ballet and modern dance at that time of Japan. Mostly showing the experimental attempt on the stage by ordinary movement from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Hijikata changed his performing style from his work in 1968, Hijikata Tatsumi and Japanese – Rebellion of Body. That means that Hijikata tried to make his own movement method. This study focuses on ‘Butoh notation’ as the principal reason of changing movement style of Butoh. By analyzing the existence of Butoh notations and contents of them, the research would figure out the actual relation between notation and creation of a new style.

Dance is an intangible art that disappears without a trace at the moment of performance, and it is necessary to record it for preservation, re-appreciation, and recreation of dance. From the past, the record of dance has been preserved in a fixed medium such as pictures, photographs, dance notations, etc., which capture impressive scenes of dancing and record images and texts, and a moving image that records the whole process of dancing. However, the recording by these media was indifferent to the thoughts and voices of the people involved in the dance creation. Naturally, in the writings of Korean dance history using these materials, the voice of dancers and the people who are related to dance creation are avoided. The dance oral history emerged as a methodology of dance research is based on the dancer's memories of the body, dancing, and life, and can be used as reliable date for dancers and researchers in that dancers speak for themselves and participate in writing dance history. In order to increase utilization of the dance oral history, this paper seeks creative way for application of 48 dance people's oral history transcripts produced by the Korea Arts Council in 2008 and 2009. Accordingly, three types of diagram related to the Korean dance scene in the 20th century, such as a chart for the 20th century dance educational institutions, a map of dance studios in Chungmu-ro, Seoul in the 1950s, and genealogy charts by dance genres were created.

Dutbeki is a local dance which has been transmitted by customs in Kyongsang area since ancient times. This is a formless dance that each of the villagers enjoyed with their own colors at seasonal farming events in the past. Today, however, Dutbeki is disappearing with a rapidly changing social environment. In this situation, the researcher is going to study the origin and present condition of Dutbeki, local dance of Ulsan area, to protect and transmit it to the future. The method is as follows. Regarding the origin of Ulsan Dutbeki, the researcher reviewed the records of life from the past in Ulsan area. As for the current status of transmission, the current status of the natural handover of Dutbeki in Ulsan area and the current status of it with the participation of the researcher, a native of Ulsan, are discussed. The folklorist Jung Sangbark has established Dutbeki, which had been called as a generic name, as a local intangible culture by attaching a local name to it. As a result, Dutbeki in Ulsan area was designated as Ulsan Dutbeki and the value as an intangible cultural heritage was obtained. In this context, this study has made an accomplishment of confirming the identity of the intangible cultural heritage in Ulsan by establishing the origin of Ulsan Dutbeki and examining the current status of its inheritance.

In this essay, I explore the relationship between dance, choreography, violence and torture, particularly in relation to the television show So You Think You Can Dance. I argue that the act of choreography can sometimes be thought of as a violent encroachment on the body, and consider how torture and abjection are concepts useful to unpacking this power dynamic, particularly when dealing with torture as mediatized visual pleasure. I end with a short analysis of torture in Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria.

The period from the late 1930s through the 1940s was a tumultuous time in China because of two devastating wars—the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). This essay examines the impact these wars had on concert dance, at the time still a newly emerging art form in China, by examining the case of Liang Lun 梁倫 (b. 1921), a dancer from Guangdong who began his dance career during the 1940s. Although Liang is widely considered to be one of the founding figures of modern Chinese dance, he has received almost no attention in the English language scholarship. This essay thus serves as a preliminary examination of Liang’s early choreographic repertoire, as well as a reflection on the ways in which Liang’s experiences reflect broader trends in Chinese dance during the wartime period.

This paper explores the concept of 'Performing Body on Stage' based on the choreographic work Glory which considers the critical point of view on system and body in relation to Korean sociocultural context. Glory focuses on the physical experience of Korean male dancers, experiencing the military service and dance competitions, questions the system recreated in the body, and asks "is the body free in dance?" To shape this into work, the dancer’s reflective testimonies are used as the materials of choreography, and the conceptualized and contextualized structure is developed into the form of ‘choreographic documentary’. In this paper, I refer Judith Butler’s proposal on ‘vulnerability and resistance’ to construct the frame of this study. I analyze the choreographic approach to the dancer’s body and how a ‘vulnerable body’ can be transformed into a ‘political subject’ through the choreographer’s practice in Glory. When the apparatus which are invisible but attached to the body are visualized on stage, the body exposes the social and political form. In this sense, finding the index of precarity associated with physical vulnerability was not only the process of choreography but also becoming subject in this work. Having physical autonomy in dance is that one actualizes the potential of artistic creation latent in individual diversity, not the military body identity, which moves in an interminable manner with the same identity. This artistic act of the choreographer is political as well as aesthetic in terms of re-asking about the nature of the dance and contemporary arts at the same time.

This paper looks at Formosa (2017), the last full-length dance work by the founder and artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Lin Hwai-min. As a former writer and trained journalist, he is a socially aware choreographer who expresses his concern for his society through dance. I first contextualize his oeuvre with his earlier pieces based on the theme of Taiwan such as: Legacy (1978), Portrait of the Families (1997), White Water & Dust (2014 double bill), and Rice (2013), leading up to this full-length multi-media production. I also explain the hybridized Cloud Gate corporeal training from the East (e.g. taiji daoyin, Chinese martial arts) and the West (e.g. ballet, Martha Graham modern dance technique), as I unravel how Lin Hwai-min executes his citizenship through choreography.

This case study research aimed to analysis the dance program to heal the unstable emotions of teenagers who experience school violent. The dance program was held at the A Welfare Center in Seoul for 10 sessions, 100 minutes per week. The program has improved the participants' unstable emotions and negative self-image. Participants want to express their feelings in a healthy way and find the positivity inherent in them. And they tried to improve their social skills by improving self-expression. After finishing the program, participants recovered the violence, depression and low self-esteem caused by wounds to the body and mind. It is meaningful that it has a positive effect on healthy relationships by learning how to communicate with other friends.

This study aims to reorganize the chronology of the deceased Kim Suk-ja's life as a dancer, the holder of the National Intangible Cultural Asset No. 97, Salpuri dance. In particular, the chronologies of Kim's dancing activities presented in the pamphlets of her memorial concert which has been held for 10 years after her death show inconsistency and errors. Therefore, this study attempts to correct them. She had carved a place for herself as a traditional dancer while doing activities as a Shamanic dancer in Seoul since 1976. As a result, part of her chronology that displayed the schedules of her activities since then was made public by newspapers and therefore is reliable. On the other hand, information on dancing-related activities from the Japanese colonial era to the 1960s by Kim Suk-ja, who was born in 1927, is unclear. Her chronology during this period does not sufficiently reflect her dancing activities or provides incorrect information. Therefore, this study corrects and reorganizes her aspects of learning dances during her early years and information on her activities in Daejeon from historical contexts.

The purpose of this study was to examine the opinions of experts in dance performance about the barriers to the popularity of contemporary dance, ways to improve the popularity of it, and relative importance of an effort to seek ways of boosting the popularity of Korean dance focusing on Communication. It ultimately meant to improve the harsh performance environments for dance, which was caused by inadequate finance, in order to put performing arts of dance on the right track in the modern society. In the first stage, in-depth interviews were carried out to find out problems with performing arts of dance and how to resolve the problems. The subjects in this study were 20 experts in performing arts of dance who were selected by purposive sampling. In the second stage, a hierarchical structure was generated about how to increase the popularity of dance, which were found in the first stage. Third, analytic hierarchy process(AHP) was utilized to measure relative importance and priority. The findings of the study were as follows: Five areas and five methods were selected as a means to increase the popularity of dance on communication. Five areas were audience communication with the choreographers, communication of the artists and artists, communication between staff members, communication between the audience and the artists. As a result of making a pair wise comparison of the five areas, 0.282 with a significantly higher weight, the choreographer's identification of audience requirements was selected as the top priority. Second was to improve awareness within the dance community 0.170, third was a variety of ways to increase collaboration 0.120, fourth was a constitutional directions of unity for the work of the staff 0.095. Fifth, star choreographers and star dancers nurturing and hiring 0.086.