The fact that she was born and grew up in Japan as Korean shaped her into a philosophical seeker and politically aware artist. Racism changed her forever. Koosil-ja came to NYC in 1981 to study with Merce Cunningham. She began creating work in 1986, which was also the beginning of her philosophical inquiry on Being, Identity, and Society's influence. Working in downtown New York, she found openings in Cunningham/Cage teachings and reflected her voices on the post-modern dance community. She continues to develop her thoughts through various theoretical and philosophical works. Being, Technology, and Society are the constant elements that she brings to the theater for her audience.
For each project, she asks how a body undergoes political conflicts and constraints? If Identity is confinement forced by Society, while the body is pure potential, how this body functions? These questions lead her and her collaborators to unpack politics from the body and create anew. The audience is often moved and engaged and always challenged and abandoned in thoughts. She chooses to work beyond genres of a style of dance and isms. She creates concepts and transposes them into Body and Movement, the transposition from something to think to something to feel.
She jumps 300 times in her previous work, I AM CAPITALISM and in the recent work, Open Data Story of Profit and Death, she turns all theatrical lights off to be in the dark but with her cellphone and the projected data on the video screen. Exhibiting the skills and excellent athleticism is not her aim, but forming thoughts and transposing them into a practice of destabilizing the norms and freeing the body and creating unique movement and time/space are her ultimate interests and passion.
Grants
Map Fund, New England Foundation National Dance Project, The Jerome Foundation, American Music Center Live Music for Dance, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD, Meet The Composer, Experimental Television Center, Department of Cultural Affair, National Endowment for the Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts Emergency Relief Fund, and the Dance Response Fund…
Commissions
New York
The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, Performance Space 122, The Performing Garage, Danspace Project, Central Park SummerStage, and Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria.
National
Theater Artaud CA, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, MA, The Contemporary Arts Center LA, and American Dance Festival NC.
International
European Dance Development Center the Netherlands and Germany
Awards
Awards (selections)
2009
The President Award from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the creation of a dance and interactive project, Blocs of Continuality/Body, Image and Algorithm
2007
Guggenheim Fellowship
2004
New York Dance and Performance Award “Bessie” in Choreography for the creation of mech[a], OUTPUT, and deadmandancing EXCESS