Performing Modernity in Korea: The Dance of Ch’oe Sŭng-hŭi

Abstract

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 premodern 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 kinds 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.