Tongue Gymnastics
#1
Dance, 44 minutes
Concept & Choreography : LEE Yun Jung
Performers : LEE Yun Jung, IM Eun Joung
2022 Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, The Zoom Art Center
2022 The Place Theater, London
2022 The ZOOM art center, Seoul
2019 ‘The Best Work’, The Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers2019 The Place Theater, Korean Cultural Centre, Korea Art Management Service
2019 Theatre Sinchon , Seoul (Premiere)
#2
Video, 20 minutes
Concept & Choreography : LEE Yun Jung
Performer : LEE Yun Jung
2023 International Typography Biennale, Seoul
2020 Daelim Museum, Seoul
2020 Gucci (Commission)
In the piece <Tongue Gymnastics>, Yun Jung LEE applies a choreographic technique into the physical mechanism of the tongue root’s movement and experiments the process of the movement being transformed into the work of art. The tongue root movement the choreographer had accidentally found led to the experience of the density in dance resulting from the sequential movements of internal organs that had never been noticed before and became a motif for this piece.
The tongue, which is a muscle generating the movement, can feel the taste and it relates to the food intake. It also has the function of generating the language, but it often gets hidden in daily lives and on stage in theaters or functions as a formalized and familiar symbol regardless of ‘its substances’.
The Choreographer builds gymnastics to activate the tongue and tongue roots through a score-based strategy, while continuously providing ideas for the choreography. This process dissolves social norms or customs that relates to the tongue while connecting to the production of individual images arose from the materiality of the tongue.
Therefore, the piece questions about the dance through the 'tongue' that has been excluded from the subject of history,
context, and ideology in dance, while at the same time exploring the possibility of dance being experimented as 'reality' and 'materiality'.
