Once Upon a Time
‘These instruments always get beaten. They don't look pretty at all to me. I felt pity and angry for them, so I brought them out to show them around the world.’
This piece seeks a way to inherit the tradition through today’s young artists’ ideas. With traditional costumes, traditional songs (Pansori), traditional Korean’s appearance, and folk tales, it tells stories of old times through breaking down the tradition and adding imaginations. At the same time, it would be a ceremony in contemporary dance for our ancestors.
Traditional people, time, and materials were re-interpreted and re-created through diverse expression tools: movements, songs, and speeches. Traditions got approached in new ways with the effort to assign vitality. We would like to bring up the traditional stories on stage to visit the old times together with the audience. <Once Upon a Time> is a piece that can give a joyful laugh through dancers’ performances with full of talents and imaginations that can help the audience to rediscover the tradition.
Tour Information
Direction Proposer : Kyungmin Ji
Co-creation : Jinho Lim, Kyungmin Ji, Kyunggu Lee
Tour size : 5 people (3 dancers + 2 Staffs)
Duration : 1 hour, 20 mins
International Tour History & Awards
Jun.7.2019 Invited by The Place, ‘Korean Dance Festival’ in London, UK
Feb.14.2019 Invited by Hessisches Staatsballett, ‘Korean Night’ in Darmstadt, Germany
Nov.9.2018 Invited by National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts ‘2018 Taiwan Dance Platform’ in Taiwan
Jun.28.2018 Invited by Studio Theatre, ‘On Stage Korea’ Korean Cultural Center in Washington , US
Nov.3-6.2016 Invited by Korean Cultural Center ‘KOREA FESTIVAL’ in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Awarded for ‘The Best 5 Piece Award’ at The Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers 2016
What People Say
"It tasted completely new: defrosting the ‘tradition’ that was kept in the freezer and cooking them in a dish. The piece naturally found its way into the heart of the audience with a deep inquiry on the theme, brilliant ideas, and black comedic humor that digs between the line of movement and music. Dismantling traditions by adding imaginations, and well organizing the pieces of dismantled traditions deeply inspired the modern sentiment of the audience. It also evoked to empower a creative dance style that was well-blended with traditions and present with controlling the density of expression by co-creation process of dancers as choreographers."
-Gwangyeol Jang
Dance Critic of the Korea Dance Webzine by the Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers
"You get mesmerized to new ideas of the three dancers and to the fascinating flow of stories. The talent is marvelous. How can we evaluate these talents? This piece humorously unravels a story of life and death using traditional props with extraordinary ideas. Then soon, the piece deeply touches the audience’s mind as it plays at the border of living and dying. I feel like returning home with a lucky charm in my heart."
-Danbi Lee, Dance Columnist
“I could imagine the process of working when I watched the performance. I thought how much time they research and spend time with the familiar props sometimes seriously, sometimes for fun.”
-Audience Comment: Naver Blog [The world of Rula]