Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Finest Dances I've Seen: To be as God

It may or may not be germane to Halfland per se, but Paul found these two Korean dance clips on YouTube that are among the finest examples of dance as art I've seen. The first was from a couple years back of the stunning dancer Min Young Park and we love her entire presence throughout her piece, even the way she commands the stage as she walks onto it. All the way through.



The next is a sublime young male dancer named Sun-Chon HAN who, it seems, has been inspired  by the previous performance and taken the genre/style higher still. He makes a leap at the 2:39 mark that, if one is at all in touch with their heart in that moment, will move the viewer to tears with its total ecstatic abandon.



There is something profound at work in these pieces. Something at the core of dance as an artform. They both seem to be not just merely dancing to music, nor performing it.

To dance is to become the music. Not to dance to it. Not to perform it. But in reality to become the vibratory expression itself. To be as God.

7 comments:

  1. This is absolutely wonderful.... thank you so much for sharing these two treasures...

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  2. Oh, Isabelle, I'm so glad you could appreciate these too! I just watched them again after you wrote and I'm even MORE impressed!

    Astounding aren't they?!

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  3. This isn't dancing, but there was once a wonderful Kata (or Form, as it's known in Tae Kwon Do) I once saw while visiting my cousin at around the peak of the California Raisins.

    The Form was performed to a piece of orchestral music that, to this day, I still can't find but hear snippets of now and then. I think it's used by a movie company during their logo screen before the start of a film. It did seem like a dance, though. It must have been pretty mesmerizing if I still remember it 20 years later.

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  4. Wow, that must have been one of those great life enriching experiences to see, Don.

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  5. Just watch this piece again. And I'm even further convinced of its genius.

    I know quite a bit about the history of dance, at least the last 400 years of it thanks to Jennifer Hoomins. And all I can say is that this performance by Sun-Chon HAN is certainly my most favorite expression of dance I've ever seen but also quite likely one of the greatest moments of pure art ever recorded.

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  6. Wow!!!! Nearly brought to tears by the second piece. Thank you for posting these Shelley!

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    1. Oh! I'm so glad you got to enjoy them too, Victoria Don! Thanks to your comment, I re-watched both and DOUBLE DOWN on my remarks about them both.

      I cant begin to imagine two greater performances that transform the dancer into pure movement expressing something of meaning.

      That leap! My God, that leap! Gets me every time.

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