LAX Festival: Dance and Chance with DaEun Jung

Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40 sees dancer-choreographer DaEun Jung and accompanying pansori singer Melody Shim, produce a performance based on chance. Using random dice throws, Jung arranges a chance-based vocal score and choreography to procure a truly unique sequence of movements. True to her brand, she interrupts and advances the traditional flow of Korean dance by incorporating the Korean alphabet (Hangul) into this piece. Her interdisciplinary approach reveals a new flow, a new structure, and a new art form. I was able to ask Jung some questions about her project and its framework.

Is there anything you would like the audience to know about the conventional flow and forms of Korean dance before watching your piece?

I began this project to interrupt the conventional flow of Korean dance which blurs the start and end of each movement in transition, following circular energy pathways. What I realized while embodying the randomly arranged movements is that my body was generating new flow as the new sequence was mastered. Then I started relishing a new flow which had not been in the form but in principle rooted in my muscles, bones, and cells.

I see that you have gained some inspiration from Merce Cunningham’s “chance operation” and the Korean alphabet. How do you feel that you are challenging or progressing these art forms?

Both the chance procedure and Korean alphabet (Hangul) combining structure provided me with structural ideas to generate random sequences of movements and vocal notes. The initial point of using them was to yield my authorship in choreographic decision making, but in order to establish the consistent system to operate, it required another range of authorship as a system builder.

Having been years of exploration in this project, as Melody and I find ourselves becoming more comfortable in the random sequences with the auto-generated flow, now I am more interested in execution of the composed materials with external layers and interruptions for new challenges and discoveries. 

I believe this particular iteration of Byoul with Daniel Corral, an inquisitive composer of aleatoric sounds, manifests our evolved interests. In Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40, Daniel’s electronic sounds generated by his own algorithmic systems are juxtaposed with Melody’s vocals and my dance under the 40 bpm pulse as the three follow shared or discrete rules to execute 246 beats, syllables, and movements.  

Coming back to the discourse on flow, we also find and enjoy the freshness of new interruptions and how we digest them in the new flow. New layer as an interruption becomes a new flow, another layer with collisions reconciles, and these create consonances or dissonances in this small world of chance and rules.

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DaEun Jung will be performing Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40 at the Live Arts Exchange (LAX) Festival presented by the Los Angeles Performance Practice on Saturday, November 6, 2021. Tickets and more information are available here.

Elaine Nguyen is a recent graduate of USC with a focus in public relations and marketing. She is currently the 2021 Development Intern at Los Angeles Performance Practice.