Abstract

This article aims to trace the genealogy of Korean feminist dance since the 1980s and explores its contemporary topography. In Korean feminist dance genealogy, 1980s feminist dances were often performed at small theaters, rallies, and demonstration sites under the theme of women workers and democracy. In the 1990s, the focus of dance works shifted to themes of childbirth, pregnancy, the double-exploitation of women due to the burden of nurturing and working, and violence and oppression against women within the patriarchal system. Dance works also portrayed women who overcame hardships to live an independent life. Since the 2000s, contemporary South Korean choreographers have dealt with various feminist agendas, including subjectivity, femininity, physicality, motherhood, queerness, sexuality, and abject. In this context, the topography of Korean feminist dance can be classified into four key themes: 1) “adversity, sacrifice, and the motherhood of the earth” that depict the lives of oppressed Korean women in a patriarchal family and society, 2) “the self-awakening subject” who finds autonomy without staying as a victim, 3) “subverted gender and sexuality” that reveals and deconstructs the othered gender and sexuality, and 4) “the exploration of a body and a womb” that challenges phallogocentric discourse by sharing women’s physical bodies and embodied experiences.