DaEun Jung

Artist Statement

My work interlaces the forms, principles, and methods of folk and classical Korean dance and interdisciplinary performance practices. I rearrange, reinterpret, and transmute codified dance movements—their stylized forms, gestural essences, and somatic principles—to invite spontaneous grooves of the contemporary body. Chance procedure, Hangul (Korean alphabets), numeric patterns, irregular folk rhythms, and minimalist composition methods are my inspirations for algorithmic sequences which take shape on graph paper, Excel sheets, and floor grids for solo or ensemble. In my work, Pansori (Korean folk opera) vocals, Janggu (hourglass-shaped drum) rhythms, electronic beats, and groovy sound patterns are layered with the dancing body(ies) under the rigorous and playful rules in self-constructed systems. Where the past and present, self and other, system and play, and rigor and spontaneity coexist, the female Asian body, rooted in a non-western dance practice, claims singular authorship in contemporary choreography.

DaEun Jung Jakdu (in progress, dance, solo) Headlands Artist Residency (2025) Photo by Arthur Alvarez

Bio

DaEun Jung is a Korean-born choreographer currently based in Los Angeles. She interlaces forms, principles, and methods of her ancestral and contemporary performance practices within her self-constructed system. Jung’s work has been supported by New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), Jacob’s Pillow, Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP), Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), Movement Research at Judson Church, Korea Foundation, and New Music USA. Her residencies include Headlands Center for the Arts, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), Loghaven Artist Residency, UCROSS, L.A. Dance Project (LADP), and Santa Monica Cultural Affairs at Camera Obscura. In Korea, Jung toured Asia and Europe as a full-time dancer with the Gyeonggido Dance Company. Having six years of early conservatory training at the National Gugak School as a recipient of the National Theater of Korea Award, she completed a BA in dance and minor in Korean literature from Ewha Womans University. In the US, Jung holds her MFA in dance at UCLA where she was recognized as a Westfield Emerging Artist. She has taught at Santa Monica College, Loyola Marymount University, University of Nevada Reno, and Indiana University and currently is an assistance professor at UC Riverside.

daeunjung.com