Works before 2013

Fish on a Tree in a Little Pond

The piece talks about unachievable dream and desire. However, the world seems to be richer with impossible dream and fantasy. A fish and a tree live in different spaces that can suffocate them once their spaces change, but they happen to long to reach each other. A pond can make the two meet through the shadow on the water. In the piece, the body becomes the medium that brings them together like the shadow on the water. The shadow sways and undulates as it is not rooted in reality but an illusion. Unachivable dream still makes the life beautiful.

Premiered on Mar 10-11, 2012
Performed by Young Sun Lee
in Young Sun Lee's Solo Dance Collection Homemade & Organic
Arco Theater, Hanguk Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Music from Wind Chime Orchard by Calmsound,
Joy of Being by Ernestine Faux
Photo by Woo-Hee Kim

Solitary Room Talks To Me

My major creative process is to leave myself alone in an empty room. Then, many things inside me are permeated into the space like an osmic action. My lost memories stimulate my senses and consciousness, and I transform these to tangible and publicly accessible forms. I further integrate these materials into an artwork following my mind's logic. My work, Solitary Room Talks to Me was born out of this process.

Premiered on Oct 16, 2011
Performed by Young Sun Lee
For 2011 Seoul Dance Collection & Young Sun Lee's Solo Dance Collection Homemade & Organic
Arco Theater, Hanguk Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Music from Fore by Takagi Masakatsu,
Forest Ambience by Shockwave-Sound
Ancient Woodland by Calmsound
Photo by Woo-Hee Kim

Young Sun Lee

Young Sun Lee is a dish prepared for the taste of gourmet audiences. It is a highly personalized and refined movement piece abstracted from the properties of Young Sun Lee, which is an inseparable medium from the choreographer.

Young Sun Lee was selected out of over 530 pieces to be performed for the National Gala of the 2010 American College Dance Festival in the Kennedy Center, Washington DC. The piece was again invited by the DreamDance Foundation in LA and the Dance Charlotte Festival in NC, the USA..
Premiered in Mar 2012
Performed in; Studio Theater, Kranner Center for Performing Arts, IL, USA; Tryon Festival Theater, Kranner Center for Performing Arts, IL, USA; Kennedy Center, Washington DC, USA
Ford Amphitheater, LA, USA; Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, NC, USA; Arco Theater, Hanguk Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Performed by Young Sun Lee in Silence
Photo by Daniel James
http://charlottedancefestival.org/Dance_Charlotte%21.html (My dance photos featured)
http://www.dance.illinois.edu/ (My dance clip in the main page and dance photos featured in the gallery))

Wallpaper

I tried to unfold a three dimensional Wallpaper on stage. The piece was inspired by my childhood memory of playing with patterns on the wallpaper in bed. In my sleepy imagination, the patterns came alive, moving all around the room along with the stories that I created. For the piece, I made movement patterns from diverse sources and played with them like in my childhood fantasy, following my mind’s logic. This random play and association generated stories that I could not grasp literally but certainly with a clear logic. They must be my fractured parts that my subconscious mind threw out on the surface of consciousness. During the process, I let my mind reside in the intriguing, odd, elliptical, and mysteriously relentless status of mind like at the moment of falling asleep.

Premiered on Mar 8, 2010
Performers: Andrea Chim, Caitlin Miles, Anna Clarke, Kristen Walterman, Melissa Pillarella
Costume Concept & Selection: Young Sun Lee
Studio Theater, Krannert Center for Performing Arts, IL

Homer & Apple

Homer and Apple was initiated from a memory of a conversation with someone, which I transformed to a poem. Then, I worked with a performer with a hearing loss who took my ballet class in order to transit the idea to a performance. I was interested in realizing the abstracted ideas that were contained in the original poem, using the body trained with a different“physical technique”, ASL. I transformed ASL to the abstract movement by specifying the concepts of time, space, and energy and trying to eliminate the main function of ASL as a means to communicate literal meanings. I used the poem as a movement score. Then, I transformed the performance to a flat screen through the camera lenses. The creative process can be likened to a liberal translation between mediums, which is far more difficult than between verbal languages, and I as a translator.

Premiered in Feb 2010

Performed by Caroline Hernandez (in the photo)
Director/Choreographer: Young Sun Lee
Film Shooting/Editor: Young Sun Lee
Poem /Movement Score: Young Sun Lee

April 2010    Screened at the Moving Image Festival, Paulina Studio, Chicago, IL
Mar 2010     Screened at the ACDFA conference, Dance Administration Building in UIUC, Urbana, IL.
Feb 2010     Screened at the Dance Across the Board Conference with the oral presentation on the
                    creative process(the subtitle: Transition that Involves Transformation and Translation)
                    New York University Tisch, NY.

Afternoon Illusion

Afternoon Illusion was created in a similar way that a dream unfolds in time and space. "Illusion" is another word for a dream that I have when I am awake. In a dream, things happen without following logic of chronological orders or causal relatinoships between events. Time and space are entangled, flowing each in different directions. Sometimes, the same dream repeats. There exist all different kinds of imaginary figures that are not found in reality. These characters abruptly shif at an unexpected moment.

Like in a dream, the courtyard of the Education building at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign triggered images, memories, movements, and stories from my subconscious mind at random. These fractured times and images were created into seven installation pieces and a dance ensemble; Happy Lover, Little Bush Elf, Sleeping Ballerina, Cicada Elf, Tree Elf, Hairy Snail, and Jealous Snake.

Premiered: Oct 25-26, 2008
Site: Courtyard of the College of Education on UIUC Campus, IL
Artistic Director & Choreography: Young Sun Lee
Performers: Anna Marks, Amanda Krueger, Jessica Cornish, Jessica Perng, Joseph Hutto, Kristin Marrs, Leah Hutto, Sanda Saveanu, Young Sun Lee
Music Design and Performance: Young Sun Lee
Photo/Brochure/Image Design: Young Sun Lee

Snail III-Sexy Snail

The piece was made out of the imagination of a big banana slug
without a shell that looked sexy, sensual, sensitive, and subtle. Tyra Banks has once mentioned on TV that sexiness is not a certain pose but a way to present oneself. Lee integrated both the physical and conceptual sexiness and made it to a dance piece. The piece is versatile and can be performed on different spaces and surfaces.

Premiered on Stage: Mar 2012
Performed by Young Sun Lee
Performed at: Arco Theater, Hanguk Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea.

Costume Design/Concept: Young Sun Lee
Music: Silence/Relaxing Rain Ambience by Shockwave-Sound

Subsidence

The bottom of subconsciousness…the sea of abyss.
Water loses its reason to flow anymore but just exists in stillness.
Silence that transcends death…
Blurry sense of being…
The place where my extinct and lost memories touch my consciousness.
I stay in peace with a horror in my hands.
In the subsided hole of my life, I existed between death and life refusing to float on the surface of my consciousness.

Performed by Young Sun Lee
Music: Proiezioni sonore (I, II) by Franco Evangelisti
Premiered: Seoul, 2006
Studio Dance Festival, Seoul, Korea
Invited Performance by Mimesis Dance Company, Post Theater, Seoul, Korea

Snail II-Timid Snail

A timid snail is so hesitant and scared that it takes a long time to come out of its house and quickly receeds deep inside its shell only with a small stimulus. The piece was inspired by the biggest snail called an African Snail. A snail represents another aspect of Lee's self-identity. Still dreaming to be free, the indecisive snail finally takes its whole body out to the world. The fragile snail without its shallow shelter becomes freer and stronger than ever as it is put to the vulnerable environment since it is not aftraid of dying.

Premiered in 2005
Performed by Young Sun Lee, Joo-Won Seo (Piano)
Music Arrangement: Young Sun Lee
Music Source from Pishina's Technical Studies
Piano Sonata by Beethoven.
KNUA Hall, Seoul, Korea