A new experience awaits the audience of the Flora Theatre Festival. For the first time ever, we will have a look outside the European continent and discover a new theatre culture. The Festival introduces dramaturgy section called Focus: Korea, within which we will present six performances and two workshops dedicated to the contemporary dance of the Korean peninsula.

The productions that we will present to the festival audience introduce current trends of the contemporary Korean dance and are ranging from more conventional approaches to experiment. The spectators will see the results of collective work as well as single choreographer's work with clear vision of the young and middle artistic generation. We will be able to perceive a pronounced attitude towards tradition and drawings from various international experiences based on their touring abroad as well as international co-productions.

The Korean dance style at the 2019 Flora Theatre Festival will be represented by top-class performances of Korean dancers with remarkable movement techniques. It is a specific feature of the Korean dance scene to have a tendency to cloud one's own feelings and attitudes. On the other hand, this stereotyping claim is disrupted by the Goblin Party, who in their provocative performance called A Silver Knife, come to the stage with an unmistakable character and literally flares of energy. The creative duo Choi Kang experiments with external choreography tools such as cameras and video screens. They strive for a different perception of the stage image and they are clearly successful in their exploration. Choreographer Sung Hoon Kim presents pieces in which we dive into the dark sides of human beings on the stage. He uses wide range of scenographic approaches and he strongly appeals on human emotions. For a change, choreographer Bora Kim develops an intellectual choreographic approach and puts the language at the centre of her theatre exploration. Her deconstructivist piece playfully works with sarcasm and minimalist artistic gesture.

The work of the individual artists is often significantly based on the need to define oneself against the tradition. Moreover, it reflects social issues and it is not afraid to dive into the depths of the human psyche. We can wait and see to what extent we will feel emotionally close or distant to the concepts and ideas of the individual performances.

Jan Žůrek, dramaturg of the Focus: Korea section