The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understandingt of Bae Gu-ja by reconstructing her early work The Death of Swan. First, the contents behind the records of the era were identified through the examination of photo materials and newspaper articles in which Bae Gu-ja appeared. Then, various data related to Bae Gu-ja were collected in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the world of her dance. Lastly, Bae Gu-ja’s The Death of Swan was reconstructed to induce an inner experience, felt in the body. This is a process of empathizing with what Bae Gu-ja must have felt while performing The Death of Swan.

The Death of Swan is an artwork in which Bae Gu-ja attempted to project herself and to express her inner self through a dying swan. While reconstructing and rewriting the performance, it was possible to reinterpret it and empathize with Bae Gu-ja’s experience. Furthermore, it also allows for the possibility of various interpretations of history, enabling a more open discussion. The objective of this study is to contribute to the Korean dance history description method by conducting a new type of historical research, and to highlight the need to conduct more diverse research.

This study was intended to introduce the modulation of somatic experience in Korean academic societies, which was one of the core concept of Soma Theory of Thomas Hanna. Although Somatics was introduced in Korea by several scholars and practitioners during recent decades, the concept of experiential modulations has remained vague on account of its difficulty. This study aims to eliminate the vagueness, tracing Hanna’s academic and professional background of his Soma Theory. For this study I visited Novato Institute to see Eleanor Criswell and other colleagues twice and I had chances to discuss with the Somatic Educators the vague area of Hanna’s theory. The first texts for the cross-analysis used in this study included his books, training manuals, and articles mainly written by Hanna and his colleagues in the magazine-journal ‘Somatics,’collected in Novato Institute and Myong Ji University Library. As a result, this study clarified three modes of somatic experience, in the first-person, second-person, and third-person experience, and the modulation of somatic experience. At the same time this study was able to find their relationships to the transformation of our material-based age and the significant position and role of Somatics raised by Hanna in the mobile revolution Era.

This paper analyzes the performance of “Connected” by focusing on the proprioceptive senses. Presented at Ewha Woman’s University Performance Hall 1, “Connected” was performed based on ballet movements and characteristics of post-modern dance and somatics. This research adopted a practice-based research methodology and followed five steps: research design → concept formation → composition and practice → performance and analysis → examination of the research findings. The researcher videotaped practice sessions and kept a journal of proceedings during the study. In order to analyze the dance work thoroughly, the researcher explored the role that an audience’s visual sense plays in a ballet performance as well as the performer’s senses in post-modern dance. The researcher looked inward with the concept of proprioceptive senses in somatics in order to analyze the researcher’s own ballet performance. The findings based on “Connected” can be summarized as follows. First, after stimulating senses in the first part of the practice, the researcher had a more delicate understanding of the soma. As the researcher gained more knowledge about one’s soma, including contraction and relaxation levels and range of motion, the researcher felt more comfortable, focusing more on expressing oneself. Second, the routine and habitual movements felt different because the researcher was dancing according to one’s feelings. The researcher was able to focus more on the performance’s qualitative aspects, indulging in dancing and performing more sensuously, rather than focusing on the quantitative factors, the mere connecting of different moves. Finally, the researcher was able to dance with more freedom when trying to stimulate the proprioceptive senses while remaining conscious of the audience. Rather than practicing and performing routinely and putting too much emphasis on the audience’s perceptions, the researcher moved with more freedom. This research demonstrates that stimulating the proprioceptive senses of the researcher was essential to the dancing. Through proprioceptive sense stimulation, dancers may produce more comfortable and seamless moves, which may also result in a higher quality performance. In this regards, this research suggests that performers can enhance the quality of their performances when they thoroughly understand their own soma through proprioceptive sense stimulation.

This dissertation investigates the way dancers experience the “personality of soma” while practicing. The purpose of this dissertation was to study the interrelationship between the personality of soma and the creation of unique dances. This study included dancers learning original movements and the entire process of practicing. The author used practice-based research and other academic resources for the study. First, major terms, such as “soma,” “somatic learning,” and “personality of soma” were defined based on other academic sources. The discussion of the concepts of soma and somatic learning is primarily based on the somatics of Thomas Hanna. The personality of soma discussion is based mainly on the concepts that Karol Wojtyla suggested from a theological perspective: origin solitude, origin nakedness, and origin unity. Practice-based research informed analysis of the entire process of constructing the piece, creating choreography, practicing, and performing. Somatic data was derived from the researcher’s first-person observation, and dancers were employed as the subjects of analysis. Experiencing the personality of soma consists of four stages: recognition, awareness, unity, and openness to soma. First, the experience of silence caused the dancers to recognize their soma and discover the potential within them. Second, the experience of origin solitude allowed the dancers to discover creativity and autonomy within their soma through an exploration of autonomous movement. Third, the experience of origin unity provided a chance to realize that soma has its own way of conducting communication and personal interaction. Fourth, undergoing the origin nakedness stage, the dancers learned how to dance their unique moves without the eyes of others, a perspective that they had internalized. The researcher who participated in the study gained self-esteem and recovered the personality of soma. They also created unique dance through a development of their own dance moves. By conducting this study, the researcher experienced transitions from passive, memorization-based learning to active learning, which allowed the utilization of somatic sensations.

Human beings think, study, and develop creativity and character somatically. However, at present, many people are pressured and stressed; as a result, they have lost this sense. The purpose of this study is to explore the principles and develop a program of movement education based on somatics through the analysis of literature on somatics as a practice plan for the recovery of the vitality of soma. First, the principles of movement education based on somatics are as follows: The goals of education are atony, awareness, awakeness, and abundance. The contents of education are soma and movement responding to temporal, spatial, and relational factors. The methods of education are composed of verbal methods leading to first-person experience, including description, comparison, explanation, and questions, and non-verbal methods leading to second-person experience, including touch. Second, the program of movement education based on somatics was as follows: The “Soma 4A program” was developed to reflect the principles described above. Specially, three programs were actualized with a focus on characteristics like totality, verticality and confrontation, balance and horizontality, and movement. Finally, we recommend implementing and evaluating this program, developing various programs, expanding movement education based on somatics, and connecting this to dance education. We hope that this study will represent a small steppingstone in movement research–based somatics, and that it will help dancers and ordinary person to understand the soma through the provision of valuable data.