Prompted by this question, dancer-choreographer DaEun Jung built a compositional system inspired by Merce Cunningham’s “chance operation” and the Korean alphabet, Hangul. Assigning the segmented movements of classical Korean dance to each morpho-syllabic block of the alphabet, Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40 finds Jung, pansori singer Melody Shim, and sound composer Daniel Corral exploring concurrence of rigor and arbitrary, spontaneity and rules, flow and interruption, dependency and idiosyncrasy, and the conditional and the absolute.

Choreography & Dance: DaEun Jung

Vocals: Melody H. Sim (Shim)

Electronic Sounds & Counter Videos: Daniel Corral

Costume Design: Alice Park

DaEun Jung is a dancer-choreographer whose work reveals her past and present body memories. Jung’s work has been supported by venues and organizations including REDCAT, LA Performance Practice, Pieter, Electric Lodge, Highways, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and Korea Foundation. She has been awarded artist-in-residencies from University of Nevada Reno, Brockus Project Dance, LA Dance Project at 2245, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs at Camera Obscura Art Lab, LAPP at Automata, and Show Box LA at We Live in Space as well as a residency-lab program Forward Dialogues 2019 at MANCC.

A master artist of the 2019 Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer of City of Los Angeles Department Cultural Affairs, Jung redefines the principle, form, and structure of Korean dance in inter/multi-cultural settings as a continuation of her graduate study at UCLA where she received her MFA in choreography and Westfield Emerging Artist Award. Previously, she performed in Asia, Europe, and North America as a dancer of Gyeonggido Dance Company in South Korea. Having six years of specialized training in dance through the Gugak National Middle/High School as a recipient of the National Theatre of Korea Award, she obtained a BA in dance and minor in Korean literature from Ewha Womans University in Seoul.