TENDENCY

BARINAMO

  • A scene from <TENDENCY>. Several performers in orange, grey and pale blue T-shirts press against one another with arms outstretched, their bodies entangled. Faces and arms fill the frame in close-up under warm light; one performer bows their head while another reaches forward.
  • A scene from <TENDENCY>. Several people sit around a low round table on a wooden floor. A candlestick, a teapot, paper and writing tools rest on the table; one person writes on a sheet of paper while another holds a round object in an open palm. Only hands and torsos are visible.
  • A scene from <TENDENCY>. Three people stand one behind the other in front of a bright white wall. The person in front, hair in a braid and wearing a green T-shirt, keeps their eyes closed and head slightly bowed. The two behind also have their eyes closed; the one at the back wears glasses and a red T-shirt.
  • A scene from <TENDENCY>. Several people stand close together in a bright space. The frame holds torsos, arms and touching hands rather than faces. Behind a person in a grey T-shirt, another in a green T-shirt with braided hair reaches out to rest a hand on their shoulder.

 

  • Director Joo Namo
  • Genre Dance
  • Date 10.9.Fri 4pm 10.10.Sat 4pm
  • Supported by Jeju Special Self-Governing Province Jeju Foundation for Arts and Culture
  • Rating 13 and over
  • Venue Daehakro Arts Theater Small Hall
  • Duration 100 min.
  • Tickets 40,000 won

 

A dance-music drama of expressions uttered by every being that is adrift

Introduction

<TENDENCY> questions the entrenched currents produced by a human-centered worldview and takes audiences on a journey in search of a world of multiple subjects without a single dominant tendency. Five performers move freely across the boundaries between the body’s inner perception and outward expression, between dance and the everyday, between sound and music. Their dynamic performance across dance, acting, instrumental performance, voice, and spoken text constantly dismantles the fixed ways of interpreting what unfolds on stage.

In this work, the performers become ‘a certain state’ of dancing and playing, attempting to exist each within their own singular time, or to enter into new relationships with objects. They seek to erase the fixed meanings of text, to encounter every phenomenon of the theater’s space-time as a living presence, and together, the work offers a liberated experience in which no scene is confined to a single meaning.

Within a world that constantly flows and dissolves, nothing can remain fixed or monopolized. <TENDENCY> suggests that every being comes into existence only through relationships and change. As audiences pass through this landscape of drifting expressions that refuse to be bound into a single tendency, they will encounter a world that cannot be preserved or possessed.

Director
Portrait of director Joo Namo. Standing side-on amid grass as tall as a person, wearing a black cap and a white shirt, he looks into the distance. Dense green trees rise behind him.

Joo Namo

Joo Namo is a creator who seeks to discover every form of dance and music that exists in the world. Deeply interested in discovering, through performance, the expressions uttered by beings of every kind, he has experimented with the research-based possibilities of the body and movement in all its forms, including directing, improvised performance, workshops, and exhibitions.

Drawing on studies in anatomy, anthroposophy, physiology, and embryology, his work embraces the animistic dimensions of environment, nature, and complex phenomena, with an expanded sense of the body. Through this, he continues to question and realize the many textures of expression. He is currently active as a director, performer, and producer with the creative groups BARINAMO, SHINBI BAND, and Q-PERFORMANCE.

His major works include <Deep Hearts>(2025), <Me by you>(2024), <Lake in the Lake>(2023), and <The Wilderness>(2023).

Production

BARINAMO

BARINAMO is an artist duo formed by artists Kim Bari and Joo Namo, whose collaborative practice explores the body through research and creation. In Korea and abroad, they carry out an in-depth inquiry into the body and movement while also continuing experiments across genres and across the boundary between life and art through dance, performances, live exhibitions, video, and workshops.

Their research investigates ‘the body as the body through an anatomical approach, the body as metaphor, the movement of embodied beings, and the expressive states of the body that has become aware.’ On that basis, they seek and put into practice the methods and reasons of expression. Building upon their long-running ‘Landscape’ series, which began in 2013, they continue to develop new questions and approaches.

Credits
  • DirectorJoo Namo
  • DramaturgKim Bari
  • Created and Performed byKim Bari, Kang Jinan, Lee Sunsea, Oh Seolyoung, Cheon Youngdon
  • Composer & Sound DesignerKim Dey
  • Lighting DesignerKim Byounggu
  • Stage ManagerKim Inseong
  • Sound EngineerHer Sunyoung
  • ProducerLee Boramie
BARINAMO

BARINAMO is an artist duo formed by artists Kim Bari and Joo Namo, whose collaborative practice explores the body through research and creation. In Korea and abroad, they carry out an in-depth inquiry into the body and movement while also continuing experiments across genres and across the boundary between life and art through dance, performances, live exhibitions, video, and workshops.

Their research investigates ‘the body as the body through an anatomical approach, the body as metaphor, the movement of embodied beings, and the expressive states of the body that has become aware.’ On that basis, they seek and put into practice the methods and reasons of expression. Building upon their long-running ‘Landscape’ series, which began in 2013, they continue to develop new questions and approaches.

  • Amid the active research on the body in Korean dance today, BARINAMO’s dance is a clear example of work that places its emphasis on the body as metaphor and on the movement of embodied beings… They ask how the many elements of theater and performance can mirror, support, reflect, and transform one another.
    — Jang Jiwon, dance critic, from a review of <Lake in the Lake>
  • BARINAMO experience moments of kairos in everyday life, and they wished to bring it onto the stage so that audiences might feel those layers of time… Their work is at once a study of dance and the body, and a practice of it.
    — Lee Danbi, dance columnist, from a review of <Deep Hearts>