The purpose of this study is to illuminate the development and characteristics of dances in the area of Seoul based on achievements and significant contributions of Han Seong-jun, a master of Korean traditional dance. The study period spans from 1908, when Han Seong-jun settled in Seoul, to 1941, the year of his passing. Research methods involve literature related to Korean music and dance, as well as examining newspaper materials. The research focuses on Han Seong-jun’s dance lineage within traditional dance. The findings reveal that dance evolved through both theatrical and private arts organizations. In the early 1900s, Seoul-based dances, following Han Seong-jun’s legacy, were performed by artists associated with various private arts groups, gradually transitioning into commercialized, staged, and entertainment-oriented forms. From a traditional and creative perspective, dances are categorized into those transmitted and performed continuously and those that have disappeared and are now being revived. From today’s perspective, the approximately 72 works that Han Seong-jun staged, restructured, and created can be considered ‘Han Seong-jun style new tradition’. Most of the works have been destroyed, but there has been a movement to restore and reproduce them recently.

This study introduces the online theater development case of the Nothing Theater, which Korea’s performing arts scene depressed by the COVID-19 pandemic developed based on the game engine Unity. In the online theater, choreographer Hur Yoon-Kyung’s Miniature Space Theater: Open Beta and Cha Ji-Ryang’s Only People Who Want to Leave See Everything were presented as online performances. This study seeks to present the possibility of choreography in online performances by analyzing the choreography and physicality as well as the relationship between performance and audience displayed in those works. When the stage where choreography is implemented and the human body as its medium are displaced into a virtual space, questioning the uniqueness of choreography opens the way for a new interpretation of and discourse on choreography. In the work of Hur, it was observed that the three designed theaters — virtual theater, performance theater, and sound theater were linked and combined through the audience’s movements. In the work of Cha, the audience moves in a three-dimensional space built by twisting and reconstructing a specific space. Suggesting the possibility of online performance, we demonstrate that choreography can be sensed through the composition of space without the physical body of performers and that the online theater can exist through the audience’s participation with their sensing bodies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how nationalism has been operated and emerged in the process of establishing the National Theater of Korea and Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, National Gugak Center, and Seoul Arts Center. I analyze the records about the construction of the theaters from the viewpoint of nationalism. Also I examine how the nationalistic view had been expressed architecturally and how the characteristics were revealed in the performances. The history of the construction of the theaters was entirely led by the state during the 3rd, 4th and 5th republics. The 3rd, 4th and 5th republics, all of which had been ruled by undemocratic regimes, emphasized nationalism in order to compensate their lack of legitimacy. The ‘nation’ has worked as a very effective concept to unite the whole people into a single identity, and traditional culture as well as art have been used as the most effective means of raising national pride. As such, the construction of the theaters as an infrastructure for expanding traditional performing arts was essential, and it was actively promoted in this background. At the height of this flow, which began in the 1960s, there was the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

This study focused on the transformation process in which the traditional dance of Korea created new content and forms and wrote modern cultural discourses after the appearance of a modern theater. The construction of a theater established a modern value system including the perceptions of time and space, formation of a consumption structure, and emergence of the audience in a horizontal order. These changes happened around theaters such as the Mudong Banquet Hall, Hyeoryulsa, Gwangmudae and Danseongsa in Korea, and these spaces attracted the attention of the public through the changes of their microscopic repertoires mostly based on the traditional arts. They held values as they provided the public with aesthetic objects to be enjoyed and created a new cultural tradition through the gradual transformation of the culture. The traditional performance arts communicated with the public and moved forward by making an adjustment into stage performance arts in the middle of microscopic transformations that included the star system based on two Gisaengs of Gwangmudae, Ok-yeop and San-ok, a series story in a newspaper called "Yedanilbaekin," and long-term performance of Gangseonru.

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the National Theatre of Korea’s theater repertoire foundation using Dance, Chun-Hyang; Soul, Sunflower; and Hyang-Yeon. The analysis will be performed using the ‘the circulation structures of establishing theater repertories’ method. The results of the analysis are as follows. As a national brand performance, Dance, Chun-Hyang is a National Theatre of Korea’s unique, symbolic, identity establishment contribution. Through the production and casting, as well as extraordinary attempts in casting, various performance techniques are used to successfully achieve feedback system. The National Dance Company of Korea’s steady seller Soul, Sunflower was selected as a National Theatre of Korea’s ‘most wanted to be seen again’ performance by the audience, which can influence the company’s management policy. With its high artistic quality and box-office popularity, the piece shows an exemplary case that satisfy administrative requirements. Hyang-Yeon represents a traditional dances that been modernized. The reinvention and reinterpretation of traditional dance in this piece produce meaningful outcome that would provide the structural foundation of the repertoire. When analyzing works of art, the theater repertoire’s 3 aspects of representativeness, artistic value, and continuity has been seen to aid in ‘policy decisions’, ‘production environment’, and ‘feedback system’ for convergence and divergence.

This study aims to examine dance exhibitions as a way of putting the dance archival theory into practice. For this, I explore performance theories which are relevant to a dance archive and look into two dance exhibitions, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done by MoMA and Known Future by SeMA, which reflect the new performance archival theories. These exhibitions have three features. First, the present is one of vital matters in the exhibition. Second, tangible and intangible archive are acceptable. Third, visitor’s action is a part of exhibition. These features show a dance exhibition can be a way of putting the dance archival theory into practice. In addition, these two exhibitions show that a dance exhibition is an effective way to hand down a valuable dance to next generation, because less time and space constraints than a performance can make more people have diverse experience about dance. I suggest that a dance exhibition is a good way of putting dance archival theory into practice.