close/touch: Performance by Jungwoong Kim with Art Directions by Kris Rumman

*Please note, we ask that you wear your mask while inside during this event*

In collaboration with dancers Gabrielle Revlock, Anna Vomacka, Germaine Ingram, and musicians Vong Pak & Galen Passen.

Close, open, touch, separate, gather, distance, cover, unmask… all actions that have taken on special meanings in the COVID pandemic — meanings that are often fraught with emotion or politics. This performance channels the unsettled freight that these actions carry at this time of uncertainty and guarded optimism through activating the sculptural works of Kris Rumman's solo exhibition, Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown. 

Artist Bio-

Born and raised in South Korea, Jungwoong has been a dancer, choreographer, Contact Improvisation teacher and video editor for more than 20 years. He has extensive training in martial arts and Korean traditional dance and ritual, both of which strongly inform his artistic vision and aesthetic. He has worked as a soloist and in collaboration with artists of varied disciplines to excavate feelings of loss as expressed in varied geographies and cultures.  He led a multi-year collaboration, with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, for the creation of SaltSoul, a multi-disciplinary, multi-site creative/performance project that explored tragedies in his native South Korea and his adopted home of Philadelphia PA.  In 2018 he did a site specific performance for habitus, a large-scale, immersive exhibition by sculptor Ann Hamilton. He recently received a 2021 ART IS ESSENTIAL award from the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation for creation of Gather Together in Their Name, a public art project that speaks to the interruption of community memorial rituals in the time of COVID. Lately he has enjoyed working with Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater as a movement consultant for an experimental production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, directed by Dmitry Krymov and opening in April 2022.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.