This study examines the transition of artistic inclination of Choi Seung Hee, the great master in the Korean modern dance, in the ideologically divided social structure, based on the analysis of previous studies on her art activities. That is to say, ...
This study examines the transition of artistic inclination of Choi Seung Hee, the great master in the Korean modern dance, in the ideologically divided social structure, based on the analysis of previous studies on her art activities. That is to say, this study aims to infer the identity of her art activities under the premise that society and humans are in the relationship of coexistence founded on mutual influence, through the research into an artist and art activities of the artist.
This study is conducted using the following approach.
First, this study analyzes the art life history of Choi Seung Hee before and after the division of the Korean peninsula, the background of the clear separation of the nation’s ideology in Korean history, which is regarded as the social structure that had a direct effect on her artistic idea and activities.
Second, for her art life history, this study used such secondary data as published books, dissertations, academic institution papers, articles, artistic magazines, and critical essays.
Third, this study places the top concept on her art life history, looking into prior academic studies on her before and after Korea’s division as the sub-concept.
Fourth, based on the characteristics of previous academic studies, this study generates changes and traits of her art activities, which are displayed in a numerical graph.
Fifth, the identity of her art activities is reviewed using the numerical graph.
As the result of the above process based on academic studies, this study comes to the following conclusion on the identity of her art activities.
The survey on the earlier human studies on Choi Seung Hee demonstrates that the nation’s tragic separation affected the transition process of her art activities, forming an extremely dichotomous ideology. Nevertheless, without taking account of the social and cultural circumstances caused by the nation’s division, her achievements were examined from the same aspect and viewpoint, which led to the tendency that her accomplishments are focused on the North, where her artistic achievements reached the summit. This still remains as a problem when it comes to the lineage concerning her great fulfillment and art activities.
This study also shows that there is no enough research into her artistic contribution because current knowledge regarding her depends on the past and testimonies about her. In terms of her contribution to the art development, she tried the Korean modern dance first in the South, which paved the way for the stage dance, while she developed the system for dance instruction in the North. As for the information that may support her contribution to the art development, the South lacks basic historical records for identification of her art activities since the nation’s partition because of insufficient relevant documents and plenty of unidentified information. This requires the collection of unreleased information as well as continuous research, and the polarized stance on her should be clearly specified.
The aforementioned studies will serve as the direction and basis for the establishment of artistic genealogy from the standpoint of relation identification in dance history.