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.

This study explores the primary issues in international performing arts exchange in the post-COVID-19 era. In our in-depth interviews with dance artists, each with over eight years of experience in international exchange before and after the pandemic, we witnessed the challenges and opportunities posed by the current pandemic situation. We used phenomenological methods to analyze the interview data. Our analysis revealed four problems: (1) the gap between live performance and recorded online performance; (2) the lack of equitable collaboration between artists and arts administrators; (3) the lack of diverse approaches and forms of support; and (4) the increase in barriers to international performing arts exchange. Our findings suggest countermeasures, such as: (1) balanced support both for live performance and online performance; (2) more flexible communication between artists and administrators; (3) adoption of more diverse and creative modes of international exchange; and (4) provision of training and education to promote artists’ access to and mobility in international artistic exchange.