Part 1:

Then Dance with Souls

premiere

Direction, Composition and Scriptwriting: Wongi Jeong

Wongi Jeong is a composer, musical theatre music director, and producer who is building a unique artistic world. He began his fieldwork on Jeju Island, where he captured the memories of individual and community life through songs. He focuses on the value of humanity’s heritage, which encompasses the principles of culture generation and creative transmission, as well as the lives of people. Based on traditional Jeju Island rituals according to the worldview of life and death, he released <Purification X Ritual>(2019). And <Post Memory: Ritual Laments of Korea’s Jeju Massacre>(2021) and <Genocide and Testimony>(2022), reading the Jeju 4.3 incident and the contemporary history of the Korean Peninsula. Gradually, his attention turned to the diaspora. <The Field, An Undiscovered Legacy>(2022) focuses on the reality of the division of the Korean Peninsula through the life of Zainichi Korean. Wongi Jeong also launches the alternative band PUNK DAZE’s <Don't Be Misled>(2023), which asks the question “Why are we playing?” and is attracting attention in the Korean independent music scene. He was the music director of the Jeju 4.3 Eve Ceremony in 2023 and 2024, and the musical <The Great April>(2023-2024), which he composed, has been receiving great reviews as a representative work of the people’s uprising of Jeju 4.3. Currently, he is based in Jeju and is fieldworking in East Asia, focusing on sonic narratives in Korea, Japan, the Yaeyama Islands, and Taiwan.