Could you introduce yeonhee, this traditional South Korean art form that inspired your show, which is designed as a contemporary reinterpretation of it?
Yeonhee is a total art form encompassing traditional percussion music and sangmo-jit, the art of twirling ribbons attached to a hat. In traditional Korean society, it was performed during celebrations intended both to pray for abundant harvests, ensure peace within a village, and relieve exhaustion after hard labour. It is an artistic form of expression designed to unite the community by generating a powerful collective energy. Our project was born from a fundamental question: once stripped of its traditional instruments and the sangmo, how can the body of a yeonhee performer exist on stage today? In order to create from this traditional art form and establish a dialogue with contemporary audiences, I chose to focus on the body and on the performers’ physical movements, in collaboration with a contemporary choreographer. This is how KIN: Yeonhee Project I came into being. For this production, two yeonhee artists and two contemporary dancers perform together. During the creative process, the yeonhee artists explored the ways in which the dancers use their bodies, while the contemporary dancers immersed themselves in the rhythms and gestures of yeonhee.
How is the show structured? Is it a series of independent performances, or is it guided by an overarching dramaturgical thread?
The show explores the possibility of a modernised yeonhee by blending South Korean performing arts with contemporary staging. A long runway-like stage evokes gilnori, the traditional street parade, yet what unfolds on this stage with two yeonhee artists and two contemporary dancers diverges significantly from its traditional structure. Yeonhee is transformed through contact with the free movements of contemporary dance. Through unpredictable alternations of repetition, stillness, silence, and intensity, each of its elements becomes open to reinterpretation. The structure of the performance is defined by colour. At the beginning, we wear obangsaek, the five traditional Korean colours (white, blue, red, yellow, and black). The initial white costume was designed by Ji-eun Kim, a designer from the fashion world. She brought a fresh perspective to modernising this aesthetic, creating a bridge between heritage and contemporary design. As the performance progresses, these colours gradually disperse. The show explores how a body freed from its accessories can express these five colours in a contemporary way and convey the emotions we experience in response to them today. As for the music, it was composed by Jun-young Joo, a composer currently based in France. Through sound, she succeeded in translating the chromatic flow and the sensations inspired today by these reinterpreted colours.
Most French and European audiences are unfamiliar with the codes and certain cultural references that are more readily understood by South Korean audiences. Does performing KIN: Yeonhee Project I for one audience or the other constitute a fundamentally different experience?
In Korea, audiences are familiar with these sounds and are ready to respond with spontaneous enthusiasm. In Europe, I sometimes sense a certain restraint, as though audiences are wondering whether it is polite to applaud during the performance. I would like to emphasise that our performance is an invitation to share in the experience: audiences are welcome to applaud and encourage the performers whenever they feel moved to do so.
How did you come to work on projects that bridge tradition and contemporary dance?
Originally, I trained as a traditional musician, studying first in secondary school and then at university in South Korea. I later continued my studies in France, where I earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in performing arts at Université Paris VIII. In 2015, I founded Liquid Sound, whose artistic approach is guided by a central question: how can traditional Korean arts resonate with audiences today? Committed to interdisciplinarity, the collective collaborates with artists from many different backgrounds, including contemporary dancers, South Korean and Western traditional musicians, electronic music composers, and scenographers. As its name suggests, Liquid Sound aspires to the fluidity of liquid. The collective is defined by the absence of a fixed form, by an inherent flexibility, and by a deliberately fluid identity that allows it to transcend the boundaries between genres. Whenever I seek to create a dialogue between yeonhee and other contemporary art forms, everything begins with a fundamental question: “What can be removed?” Traditional arts are already perfect systems. They are firmly established territories with their own codes. In order to collaborate with other disciplines, one must first accept the deterritorialization of the art form, in other words, breaking down its boundaries and stripping away its ornaments in order to create an empty space. It is through this process of radical reduction, when nothing more can be taken away, that one finally begins to perceive the pure DNA of tradition. Within this newly created emptiness, other languages can emerge, such as contemporary dance or new forms of staging. At that point occurs what Gilles Deleuze called reterritorialization: a new artistic form is reborn, a dynamic territory where tradition and modernity coexist organically.
Interview conducted by Simon Hatab in April 2026