This paper explores the concept of 'Performing Body on Stage' based on the choreographic work Glory which considers the critical point of view on system and body in relation to Korean sociocultural context. Glory focuses on the physical experience of Korean male dancers, experiencing the military service and dance competitions, questions the system recreated in the body, and asks "is the body free in dance?" To shape this into work, the dancer’s reflective testimonies are used as the materials of choreography, and the conceptualized and contextualized structure is developed into the form of ‘choreographic documentary’. In this paper, I refer Judith Butler’s proposal on ‘vulnerability and resistance’ to construct the frame of this study. I analyze the choreographic approach to the dancer’s body and how a ‘vulnerable body’ can be transformed into a ‘political subject’ through the choreographer’s practice in Glory. When the apparatus which are invisible but attached to the body are visualized on stage, the body exposes the social and political form. In this sense, finding the index of precarity associated with physical vulnerability was not only the process of choreography but also becoming subject in this work. Having physical autonomy in dance is that one actualizes the potential of artistic creation latent in individual diversity, not the military body identity, which moves in an interminable manner with the same identity. This artistic act of the choreographer is political as well as aesthetic in terms of re-asking about the nature of the dance and contemporary arts at the same time.

This study aims to explore the performativity of dramaturgy with in the field of expanded choreography. I look into the concepts of expanded choreography after the 1990s and discuss Jeroen Peeters’s dramaturgy in the respect of performativity. The characteristics of expanded choreography are as follow. First, choreographers are capable of producing knowledge rather than an artifact. The knowledge that can be produced is not rigid but more comprehensive. Second, the choreographers carry out experimental choreography with the paradigm of interdisciplinary and meta-media performing arts. They All the collaborators can be considered as an author which used to be given to only choreographers. Third, many choreographers attempt to explore the relationship between the body and society. They consider the social engaging of dance into the choreography. To examine how dramaturgs elaborate their own performativity in the area of expanded choreography, I have chosen the physical dramaturgy of Jeroen Peeters. I found results as below. First, a theory can be discovered in the choreographic practice. Materials can be chosen not only body gestures and movements but also other media, philosophy, and theories. Second, the dramaturg should approach to the process of choreography with empirical research. The practice of dramaturgy is involved in embodied thinking, in structuring, and performative operation of whole process. Third, the role of dramaturgy is performatively changed in every individual work. In contrast with the classical dramaturgy, the new dramaturgy in contemporary dance not deal with the abstraction of knowledge but practice in the way of performativity.

This study aims to explore the critical approach toward media in contemporary dance, which avoids conventional understanding of dance and artistic media. After reviewing important contexts and debates concerning contemporary dance, this study discuss the matter of its ambiguous boundaries and expansion through the concept of intermediality.

The idea of performance and dance with its ephemeral nature and media being used to preserve it, has constituted a conventional understanding of its temporality. However in contemporary dance, the archive expresses the request for extended temporality that enables the simultaneous existence of what is remaining, what is captured, and what is progressing in the performance. In addition, these archives expand into living spaces so that performances can lead to theoretical, educational, or political discourses, and function as a mediating space where heterogeneous entities such as art, virtual reality, and real life meet.

Moreover through this study, I wish to illuminate the expanded understanding of media in contemporary choreography as a criticism on previous media conventions, by introducing certain examples of autobiographical performance pieces in which the performer tells his or her own story. These works show the blurred boundaries among verbal languages, documents, and corporeal performance. They also bring participants in communication with performers, who can be understood as a physical archive of memories and experiences, roaming the ambiguous space inbetween reality and arts. Accordingly, an autobiographical performance creates an intermediality that allows the body-archive to experience and construct the virtual identity of the body in a fragmented manner.

The purpose of this study explores the relationship between contemporary dance and feminism, and examines the influence of feminism on the aesthetic and practice of dance. This study was conducted through literature review and case study. I discussed the relationship between feminism and dance through the feminist’s movement and theory developed by Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, and Judith Butler.

The case analysis of this study, I choose two contemporary choreographers, Mette Ingvartsen and Jeremy Wade. Ingvartsen’s <69 Position> deals with the performances related to nudity and focuses on the socio-cultural environment in which the search for the relationship between politics and sexuality is mainly carried out over time. Ingvartsen’s feminist approach consists of exploring the relationship between the sexed body and society, capital, and politics. Wade propose the role of art as a sustainable practice through curation covering the political performance of queer, women, and people with disabilities in the project called “Future Clinic for Critical Care(FCCC).” Wade’s queering strategy means discovering social problems with minorities and driving political mobilization on them.

In this paper, I approach the knowledge of choreography in a way differing from the knowledge built on the patriarchal history. This research suggests that feminism is expected to exist as a source of undiscovered identities and opens up new possibilities for research and creation.