This study aims to identify the artistic sociological aspects of Choi Seung-hee’s dance philosophy by comparing and analyzing it with Arnold Hauser’s theory of the sociology of art. As a research method, I analyze Choi Seung-hee’s magazine article, focusing on “The Korean People and Dance”, and examine conceptual similarities with Hauser’s theory. The findings reveal strong correlations between the two theories, particularly in the historical and social natures of art, the concept of alienation, the dual structure of popular and fine arts, and the critique of formalism. Considering the socio-cultural context of the 1930s, this study suggests that Hauser’s theory may have influenced Choi Seung-hee’s dance philosophy. This research presents an integrated approach combining practice and theory and emphasizes the need for further in-depth studies on the sociological aspects of Choi Seung-hee’s dance philosophy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and reflect on the pro-Japanese activities of Choe Seunghui, also known as Sai Shoki (1911-1969) during the Japanese colonial period. I reviewed literature including the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Figures and documents from the Investigation Committee on Pro-Japanese Collaborators, as well as newspaper articles. Choe Seunghui's pro-Japanese activities from 1937 to 1944 included: first, donating large sums of money to national defense funds and pro-Japanese organizations; second, performing numerous consolation shows for the Imperial Japanese Army; and third, receiving the National Cultural Award for her pro-Japanese work Muhon. Immediately after liberation, Choe exhibited a process of denial, acknowledgment, atonement, and justification regarding her pro-Japanese actions. The study discusses her own stance on her pro-Japanese activities, the positions of South and North Korea, and the perspectives of the South Korean dance community after the lifting of restrictions on her works, highlighting the gap between 'facts' and 'acknowledgment.' In conclusion, the study emphasizes the importance of remembering both Choe Seunghui's pro-Japanese misconduct and her contributions to dance. As Hannah Arendt insightfully noted, the phenomenon of 'thoughtlessness' leading to immense evil can occur not only in past instances like Nazism or pro-Japanese collaboration but also in contemporary contexts. This study aims to assist the dance community in existing as reflective individuals, aware of these historical lessons.

This study aims at reevaluating the artistic realism of Choi Seung-hee’s works not only in her full-length dramatic dances after her defection to North Korea but also in her early modern dances with the theme of social participation. The kind of realism that she had pioneered in dance field in 1930 continued into her proletarian dance but discontinued between 1933-1945 due to severe criticism from home and abroad. This study ascribes the undervaluation of her activities in this period to the male mainstream perspective of the society and the decline of proletarian literature. f After her defection to North Korea, Choi’s proletarian dance developed into full-length dramatic dance, which can be referred to as the stage of her completion of socialist realism. The full-length dramatic dance has great meaning in the Korean dance history in that: first, it elevated “dance as art” to a higher level; second, it held a feminist perspective; and third, it achieved a high degree of completion in terms of choreography. Henceforth, Choi Seung-hee’s activities as a pioneering realist dancer in Korea deserves reevaluation in the Korean dance history.

This study has considered focusing on the patronage environment of the process where Choi Seung-hee dance had settled down as the pioneer in modern dance ahead of its time based on her performance of current 105 research in 2011 including books, master’s and doctorate degree theses, academic and symposium journals. The patronage environment of Choi Seung-hee dance has been limited to Asian region while classified into domestic and overseas. The domestic patronage environment includes Choi Seung-il who has played the most important role in her family members, cultural artists and association surrounding An-mak (An Pil-seung), and media organization and so on, developing a positive patronage environment. In overseas environment, this study has concentrated on the formation of ‘the White Cross Institute’ which is an official title of the Choi Seung-hee supporters association in Japan, and based on the political culture and supporters’ environment in North Korea and China, the performance that described overcoming the wartime condition and the period of political tumult could be staged. Among the initiators of White Cross Institute (白十字會) who had begun the patronage activity at the onset of ‘the Second Recital of New Choi Seung-hee Dance,’ many artists, politicians, presidents of magazine publishers, and cultured individuals who are chosen as the top-notch in Japan such as Baku Ishii or Yasnari Kawabata. Especially, many of the nationalist leaders who had worked for the independence of Joseon Dynasty were included and gained public attention. As a result, at the base of the fact that Choi Seung-hee dance has become internationally famous, the supporters’ association, politics and media, and military support involving progressive and literary foundation starting from the open and modern education in the literary family background have formed a dynamic structure in the background. At the groundwork of such patronage environment, one could figure out that more solid philosophy of dance was founded to establish the system of creating works and the performance environment. In a personal aspect, the most meaningful result from this study is that this research is the first to disclose the fact that the title of the Choi Seung-hee supporters association is ‘the White Cross Institute (白十字會)’ and the title of the well-known photograph in which a woman is jumping into the air with a transparent veil on her hands in the field in autumn is ‘Jeokgu Heunmu (赤丘欣舞).’

The purpose of this study was to investigate an aspect of dancing transformation and its social meaning in the late Japanese occupation of Korea. Japanese had strengthened a war footing immediately after the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and then they had controlled the daily lives of Korean people thoroughly by applying fascism to them. Regarding dancing, Japanese made Korean people be the actual new imperial citizens (Hwang-guk-sin-min) by calling it the national dancing, and Korean people couldn't help adapting to a new system of dancing. The new system of dancing was applied under the name of 'Emotional education for cheerful and rich life', but it was how to standardize Korean people. As for stage performing art, Japanese-oriented performances had appeared and there was A Song of Remembrance for Buyeo (Buyeohoisanggok) as a prominent performance. Buyeohoisanggok was created for 'Korea and Japan are One' policy by the Japanese Government General of Korea, National Total Chosun-Federation, and the Daehan-maeil-sinbo (newspaper), and it was a representative performance of propaganda. In addition, Japanese presumed upon Choi Seung-Hee's ability for Hwang-guk-sin-min and 'Korea and Japan are One' policy. In the early 1940s, she had advocated 'oriental dance' and created lots of performances under the influence of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Furthermore, she had donated profits came from performance to Japanese government under the name of contribution for nation, so she cooperated with Japanese half-willingly and half not. Akgeuk, which was the most closely related with the public, also accepted new changes through dance drama. The musical drama played a role of escapeway to forget the pain of the age for a little while through a peripheral stimuli. As the above, dancing in the late Japanese occupation of Korea had been transformed in sympathy with the stream of times.

This study seeks to interpret how femininity is revealed in Seung-hee Choi’s dancing body and how it was expressed in daily life at a time when patriarchy and the concept of the “new woman” collided. In early modern dance and in later works of Korean traditional material and Oriental images, we see aspects of bold, dignified women. These reveal a feminism that conforms to established male ideals and challenges classical femininity. In contrast, Seung-hee Choi practiced a progressive to her life and to marriage. The romantic relationship she shared with her husband was not like those of radical feminists. Instead, the couple forged a modern marriage that linked them as a mental partner and a mentor of life. The tendency of her work was also affected by her husband, so she created dance of proletarian tendency and then developed Korean dance. Seung-hee Choi succeeded at both her career and marriage. Seung-hee Choi was also a celebrity in her time for emphasizing femininity through her fashion. She retained her bob style hair and wore Western clothes indoors and out. The hats, coats, dresses, clutches, and shoes that she wore were carefully chosen to coordinate with the Art Déco style then in vogue in Paris and the U.S. This form of fashion reveals a graceful, sophisticated, and self-assured femininity.

This study traced Choi Seung-hee’s dancing career in Europe and the Americas between 1937 and 1940. Choi is recognized as a pioneer who built the foundation of modern Korean dance. Called “the dancer of the peninsular” and very popular in Korea and Japan, the celebrated dancer extended her career to Europe with the ambitious mission to introduce Joseon dance to an international audience in the late 1930s. As the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata put it, her dance was powerful and based on her ethnic roots, which became representative of her as a dancer. Meanwhile, most Korean intellectuals criticized her dance for failing to fully express their nation’s identity; this was because it was a mix of Western-style and traditional Korean techniques. Despite this criticism, her dance proved itself to be fascinating enough to attract an international audience, presenting the uniqueness of an ethnic culture in a dignified and fresh way. It also suggested that the legendary dancer’s work carries significance in that it created a new value system with a blend of globalization, locality, and democratic elements.

The emergence of “new dance” is considered an important event in history of Joseon folk dance, from the ancient times driven by slavery through modern times. Choi Seung-hee was a pioneer of “new dance” and leader in “new dance” in Asia. In addition, she was a great contributor to change and development of Joseon folk dance and had great impact on development of oriental dance as well. In this paper, I studied Choi’s identity and her body, her performance, logics of her performance, and her performance notion, and her revelation which drove her to be dedicated to folk dance. This study analyzed Choi’s dance in three categories of identity, language, and revelation. In the category of identity, three subjects of janggyeong (場景) and identification, Choi’s identity, and her body were discussed. janggyeong (場景) is a concept I used to study dancing phenomena in different scenes. The word is a combination of jang (場), meaning space and gyeong (景), meaning sight. Therefore, the word refers to sight of a person doing something in a space, which naturally comprises elements of person, work, time, and space. When space, a person, and work exist at the same time, space is confined to work and a person’s identity is defined as work he is doing, and work is a determinant of the person’s identity. Choi Seung-hee was engaged in dance and related work in her whole life. This gave her multiple identities aside from a dancer. In the beginning, for example, she was a dancing learner and a person expressing things through dance, and when starting to create work, she was a creator of art work and finally she was a dancing educator, researcher, and manager. She obtained some of them simultaneously while others one by one over a long period of time. From the viewpoint of cultural and institutional norms, her identities represented a unity of Western and Eastern cultures, a unity of Western and Eastern dance, and a unity of traditional and modern dance. Despite this, her movement, as a dancer, stood for Joseon folks and modernity. In the language category, three subjects such as performance, performance logics and performance notions were discussed as a dancing language. For dancers, language means performance and Choi’s performance mainly concerned creating work of Joseon folk dance and developing teaching materials. Language is the logic of social activity and for dancers, it becomes the grammar of dance performance. The grammar served as the underlying basis of Choi’s work creation and developing teaching materials and the means of language turned into teaching materials for Joseon folks. The way the language was used became how Joseon folk dance was formed. Based on this, I concluded that Choi Seung-hee’s performance of Joseon folk dance and her teaching materials can be defined as use of a Western system by Joseon folk. Language is a concept and idea associated with social activity. Choi’s dance encompassed ideas of nation, people, creating new things and openness. The category of revelation detailed the great dancer’s revelation to development of Joseon folk dance, which concerned respect for fellow people, self-awakening, no fear of creating new things, and open-mindedness.

Rooted in British sociologist Anthony Giddens’s description of modernity as a historical and cultural space that is “in various key respects discontinuous with the gamut of pre-modern cultures and ways of life”, this study seeks to contextualize Ch’oe Sŭng-hŭi’s life and legacy in relation to evolving ideas of modernity. Here I continue my concern with Ch’oe’s actual dancing. I first lay a foundation for moving forward by summarizing related previous findings. I then look at Ch’oe’s emerging aesthetic philosophy and artistic development in relation to modernity as it was becoming defined in dance in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. I conclude that it was the diverse philosophies underlying the kids of dance with which Ch’oe became engaged that in effect gave her permission to develop artistically in the way she did, and that allowed for her changing embodiment of Korean modernity during the 1920s and 1930s.

This study aims to understand how the terms ‘muyong (dance)’ and ‘shinmuyong (new dance)’ were initiated, used, and established in Korea through newspapers in the Japanese colonial era such as the Maeil Shinbo, the Dong-A Daily news, and the Chosun Ilbo. The term muyong was first used in Japan, as suggesting a new formal characteristic of being not only Western and but also Japanese. It was simultaneously born with shinmuyong, a term indicating a type of dance newer than the existing one. Shinmuyong indicated an achievement of creation of new Japanese dance that was regarded as being compatible with that of the Western powers. It was an article on the Maeil Shinbo dealing with Yeki, a Japenese dance, on October 7, 1913 that introduced the term muyong to Korea for the first time under Japanese imperialism. In the Dong-A Daily news, muyong represented the term ‘Western dance’ when European tanz theater in 1920s was introduced; it was used to indicate a type of Western dance with philosophy and artistry. The Chosun Ilbo first used the term muyong in its article titled “Western Dance Nowadays” on October 7, 1927. Since then, both mudo and muyong had been used to refer to dance until early 1928, but since late 1928, the use of muyong had increased rapidly in the newspapers and then became generalized. The first article describing classical dance such as geom-mu (a sword dance), a Korean traditional dance, as muyong was the one written by Kim Dong Hwan dated May 12, 1927. The term shinmuyong was perceived as a creative dance that produced something new in 1930s in Korea. It was, in other words, used as a term similar to new-work dance, creative dance, or creative artistic dance with artistry and creativity on the basis of European modern dance.