In residence at SFU DanceLAB

Excited to be one of ten artists in residence at the SFU DanceLab for May and June.

I will be working on some new ideas in relation to text and contact improvisation together with Isabelle Kirouac and Arash Khakpour.

In an email in which I asked him to expand on this, Chung described how he finds talking while dancing can bring out poetic qualities in the talking, that rhythmic variations in speech can inflect the dancing with unexpected nuances, and how ‘the structure of intention of the talking, e.g. an interview; solo free association; open conversation with the other dancer; telling a story or narrative; answering questions referenced from a body of knowledge or experience’ tends to affect his relationship with the other dancer and with his own movement (2014). His observations suggest that setting up conversant modes in language and movement can inflect and draw focus to physical and mental relationships within improvisation, bringing greater awareness to another, and one’s own movements. He concluded,

The practice is most satisfying when the two parallel improvisations of talking and dancing interweave, inform, and enrich each other. Isadora Duncan said, ‘If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.’ But if one could do both wouldn’t there be a richer experience?

- Malaika Sarco- Thomas, touch + talk: Ecologies of questioning in contact and improvisation (2014)