'Choreography is the person themselves': Inside the making of 'Mongyu Dowonmu' [Interview]

Choreographer Cha Jin-yeop and dancers on 'Mongyu Dowonmu'

Rehearsals begin with mutual discovery — and always feel new

A landscape painting built from everyone's stories

The National Dance Company of Korea rehearses 'Mongyu Dowonmu.' [National Theater of Korea]

A hazy scroll unfurls, and a mountain walks out. Ridgelines drawn in ink become human bodies; winding valleys become the arc of a life. Toward a place almost within reach, the landscape of survival ripples and seeps in. Life and death, happiness and sorrow, achievement and failure, smooth sailing and shipwreck, reality and dream — the contradictory seasons of a life shaped by so many opposites pass by.

The stage is an ink-wash painting rendered in the bodies of individual people. The dancing on it is not a mechanical execution of correct answers. Choreographer and dancers held long conversations — dancer Kim Mi-ae recalls that on some days after rehearsal, they stood in place and talked for more than an hour. It was not a session for feedback or debate about the work. It was simply time to share "where we are right now, our stories."

"I used to be someone who only knew herself," Kim said.

In those conversations, one person described the process of tearing down walls inside herself; another spoke of passing through a long darkness; another laid bare her own anxiety. Choreographer Cha Jin-yeop saw in those stories fragments of life cast in different colors. She listened for a long time, recording even the moments of silence in her body. Those lives gathered together and became dance.

Long conversations: seeping into each other like ink spreading across paper

"Mongyu Dowonmu" begins with the work of getting to know one another. From the premiere in 2022 — staged as part of a double bill — through the current third run, Cha has made a practice of spending time looking deeply at the dancers who join her. For her, mounting a second or third production is not a simple recreation of the dance but an endless act of discovery, with the dancers themselves as the ones doing the discovering.

"Choreography expresses itself through movement, but its essence is the person — the person themselves," Cha said. "The trajectory of a dancer's life, their experiences, their joys and sorrows, the state of mind they carry right now — all of it comes out as dance. That's why I'm so curious about each dancer as an individual. I have to genuinely fall in love with the dancer as a human being before curiosity and inspiration come to me."

Hwang Yong-cheon, a dancer joining "Mongyu Dowonmu" for the first time this season, said he had a new experience every day. "In the rehearsal room, we don't jump straight into practice," he recalled. "We go through a process of getting to know who I am and who the choreographer is." Once Cha shared her thinking about the work, the dancers began, one by one, to bring out their own stories. Hwang said that while many choreographers had come to work with the National Dance Company, he had never experienced such deep emotional communication. The approach itself felt unfamiliar. Rather than performing a given work and given choreography, the dancers became the protagonists drawing out their own stories in the language of the body.

Choreographer Cha Jin-yeop (left) rehearses 'Mongyu Dowonmu' with members of the National Dance Company of Korea. [National Theater of Korea]

"Before working on 'Mongyu Dowonmu,' I would watch the other dancers and feel like they were saying something personal — but I also wondered whether I was just supposed to step into a pre-written story," Hwang said. "I never imagined the work itself would become my story. But the choreographer kept observing me, listening to my life, and revising the choreography to create something that was mine alone."

Rehearsals begin with loosening rigid bodies and minds. The starting point, Cha said, is "becoming aware of where you are today" — warming up together.

"It starts with opening up the breath that had been closed off," Hwang said. "Of course we breathe every minute of every second, but when I come to the rehearsal room and share touch with the other dancers, my breath opens and I feel a sense of calm."

It is not the kind of warm-up that feels like a daily routine. Through it, Cha said, "it's important to care for one another, to build trust, and to develop the sense that this space is a safe zone where anything is possible."

"Sharing breath is, I think, a way of caring for someone and sharing love," Cha said. "It's an attitude toward dance and an attitude toward your own body. I think that's where sincerity comes from."

Park Hye-ji and Kim Mi-ae, who had been listening, both nodded. Park said it was "refreshing and stimulating to feel that hearts can connect through physical touch and contact, even without words."

Deep conversation is genuinely difficult within the hierarchical structure of a dance company — but this work was different. For Kim, that shift was "an experience that awakened an inner instinct." Moving freely and sharing stories on the solid ground the choreographer had laid, unguarded emotions became the language of the body. Staging a repertory work multiple times can feel like repetitive labor for a dancer, but this piece always feels new because it is infused with the stories and emotions of who you are right now.

"When I work on a fixed piece, I approach it as a revival," Kim said. "But 'Mongyu Dowonmu' feels like starting over every time. Even working on it this time, we kept saying, 'Why does this feel so unfamiliar?' Noticing how I change as time flows is endlessly interesting and full of things to learn. For a dancer who embodies movement with the body, noticing a shifting state is truly important."

The National Dance Company of Korea performs 'Mongyu Dowonmu.' [National Theater of Korea]

Through winter and into spring: the seasons the dancers passed through

Listening closely to one another's breath, they confirmed the vivid reality of lives other than their own. Inner stories that could not be told anywhere else flowed out through the body. The personal changes each dancer had lived through were reflected directly in the dance. For some, that time was a story of growth; for others, it was one of waiting.

Park Hye-ji encountered "Mongyu Dowonmu" two years ago, during the second run, while carrying the full weight of the hardships of raising a child. "I was going through a really difficult time with parenting and fell into a deep depression," she said. "It was the lowest point of my life."

She was working hard not to show it when, in one of the daily ritual gatherings where the dancers sat together in a circle, she finally let out the tears she had been holding back. It was because of a single remark from her sunbae Kim Mi-ae — nothing more than a gentle inquiry: "Hye-ji, are you having a hard time lately?" "Knowing that someone understood how I felt was a great comfort," Park said. Cha also remembered that moment. "The instant we shed tears together and shared our hearts was truly precious," she said.

The weight of having to exist as both a mother and a dancer had caged Park's dancing. "I hid my dark expression by pulling my bangs down over my face, and even when I danced I wasn't free," she recalled. Two years on, the child in her arms has turned six, and Park has broken the heavy chains in her heart. "Compared to then, now is liberation — complete heaven," she said with a bright smile. Kim patted her junior on the shoulder: "The child has grown up alongside 'Mongyu Dowonmu.'"

Hwang said he had known nothing of Park's situation at the time. He had always thought of her simply as someone bright and flawlessly capable.

"From a distance, everyone looks calm and perfect, but when you actually get close and look them in the eye, you find that everyone is carrying the weight of their life and burdens they cannot speak of," Hwang said. "The process of looking into that feels like the core of what 'Mongyu Dowonmu' is trying to convey."

Park Hye-ji (center) in the rehearsal room for the National Dance Company of Korea's 'Mongyu Dowonmu.' [National Theater of Korea]

For Kim Mi-ae, too, the work became a mirror in which to look back at herself. Describing her past self as "someone who only knew herself," she recalls being a fierce individualist who poured all her attention inward — which meant her body was always tense, unable to let go. Working on "Mongyu Dowonmu" from the very first run over a long stretch of time, Kim gradually found her way toward healing.

"I learned to listen to my husband's heart first and wait with patience, rather than imposing my own needs on the person closest to me," she said. "In the past, when I danced, the drive to do well was overwhelming — now I'm learning how to let go." Hwang and Park nodded in unison. "Before, there was an untouchable intensity about her — you felt you might get cut if you came too close," they said. "Now she moves you just by standing still. She's a sunbae who genuinely holds our worries to heart — like a mother earth to us."

Working together: everyone's dance, everyone's story

The personal narrative of each dancer has become a 60-minute stage. "Mongyu Dowonmu" is therefore not a production that preserves Joseon painter An Gyeon's 500-year-old work under glass. It is a shared landscape painting completed by layering everyone's stories — the grueling seasons of lives moving at different speeds, the ideal paradise each person carries in a corner of the heart, a map of paths that intertwine and wind together in a single breath.

What Cha gave Kim Mi-ae was boundless trust and the freedom simply to exist. "She is a fully realized dancer who has been known in the dance world for decades, so asking more of her technically would have been meaningless," Cha said. "I wanted to give her the experience of 'presence' — the sense that the unique beauty Kim Mi-ae possesses, the fact of her simply being there, is enough." The commanding presence that only a dancer who has commanded her own body for decades can radiate moves an audience without needing to add anything at all.

"I wanted to give her the certainty that everything is being communicated even when you do nothing — don't be anxious," Cha said. "In fact, the more complete a dancer is, the most unsettling thing is to stand still and do nothing. But there are things only Kim Mi-ae can do. The power to give an audience something to contemplate just by standing quietly — I wanted the audience to feel that too."

Kim Mi-ae in the rehearsal room for the National Dance Company of Korea's 'Mongyu Dowonmu.' [National Theater of Korea]

Kim is walking that path. The anxiety and compulsion around doing nothing may still be there, but awareness comes to her every day. "I have spent my whole life dancing Korean dance, but there were essential points that never landed in my body before," she said. "Through 'Mongyu Dowonmu,' I am coming to understand with my whole body that the essence of dance ultimately connects deeply as one." Even now, in her 30th year with the company, she said the moment she steps onto the stage still feels like the first time — excitement and anxiety coexisting.

"Experiencing with my whole body exactly what inner state I will be in when I face the audience on this stage — that is the greatest task I have been given," Kim said.

Hwang, who had been quietly listening, offered his encouragement. "When I was young, I couldn't understand why masters would stand there barely moving," he said. "Looking back now, it was because they were who they were — the emotion came through even without movement. Mi-ae is that kind of person."

The change has not appeared only inwardly. It can be sensed in the rehearsal room each morning, where everyone performs the same movements together. Every morning that begins with "Gungnipmun," the National Dance Company's foundational warm-up sequence, Kim looks around at her fellow dancers. "Watching the dancers reflected in the mirror, I find myself thinking, 'Is that person's body not feeling well today? Did something happen?'" she said. "Noticing that in myself is the change I've gained from this work."

Cha says this entire process is the essence of collaboration. "I give the dancers raw material — loosely sketched images or movements — and they add their own seasoning and flavor to cook something up," she said. "When they bring out the trajectory their bodies have accumulated over time and fuse it with their present state and feelings, it becomes something newer. As dancers freshly sense each movement for themselves and layers of difference accumulate, I think a single identity is formed."

My own paradise, everyone's paradise

At the end of the long conversations, the dancers came face to face with one another's seasons. Reflecting on the time that has passed and meeting the changes within themselves, they now look at life with slightly different eyes — and within that, each has found their own paradise.

For Cha, "Mongyu Dowonmu" itself has been a purification and a clearing of the days she has walked. She confesses that apart from the recognition that followed her choreography for the opening ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, she went through a brutal period. "Things were given to me that I hadn't intended or sought, and I kept feeling they weren't really mine," she said. "I was ashamed of works I had made by chasing results out of ambition, and I wanted to cover them all up." "Mongyu Dowonmu" is one of the works she produced on a deliberate journey of rest, searching for the original form of the body.

"Just as something looks like a comedy from a distance but holds a fierce tragedy of survival on the inside, nothing is separate — everything coexists," Cha said. "Getting wounded and fighting hard in daily life, then being cleared and purified in the rehearsal room and projected back into life again — that cycle is my paradise."

For Kim Mi-ae, paradise is learning itself. "I realized that depending on how I approach this work, my state and perspective can change completely," she said. "Every lesson I feel watching the dancers ultimately leads to gratitude. Now I think the warmth of what I've learned here will flow and connect into whatever dance I do after 'Mongyu Dowonmu.' I want to move toward a dance that is firm yet supple — one that just keeps flowing out on its own." For Park Hye-ji, "Mongyu" is a fragile but firm dance of hope that sustains life. "A person needs at least a small hope to keep living," she said. "We all carry inside us the wish to dream of a paradise. The process of discovering that wish while loving one another — that is my own 'mongyu.'"

For Hwang Yong-cheon, "Mongyu Dowonmu" is each person's season. Someone was passing through winter; someone else had arrived at spring. Another stood at the entrance to a new path. Those seasons wove together to paint everyone's "Mongyu Dowonmu."

"We all exist in the same space, but each of us is walking a different season according to the trajectory within ourselves," Hwang said. "Hye-ji's season was winter last time — this time it has become spring. I think 'Mongyu Dowonmu' is an ecosystem in itself: each dancer honestly shows the season they are passing through, and those seasons come together in harmony on the stage."

shee@heraldcorp.com