Jee-Ae Lim
- Fellow 2024
- dancer and choreographer from Berlin, Germany
- cooperating partner: Hyemi Cho (Kobe, Japan)
Jee-Ae Lim (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer based in Berlin, originally from South Korea, who studied Korean dance in Seoul and completed her MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the HZT/University of Arts Berlin. Jee-Ae has developed a distinct choreographic practice straddling the two languages of contemporary and traditional dance. Her artistic interest lies in observing the body as a repository of cultural experiences and memories that span tradition and contemporaneity, individual memory and cultural remembrance, mobility and home. Her work derives from her personal experience of diaspora, which she reflects corporeally in dance.
During her fellowship, Jee-Ae will collaborate with Hyemi Cho, a fourth-generation Zainichi Korean dancer based in Kobe, Japan. Through careful research and interaction with her, Jee-Ae plans to explore Joseon dance (also known as North Korean dance). It has been transmitted and preserved by Zainichi Korean communities and is a form which she finds familiar and yet also distanced. The research will follow personal and collective narratives of the dance rooted in lived experiences and embodied knowledge. Jee-Ae seeks to understand how dance expresses emotional connections to a place no longer accessible – and yet still provides a sense of belonging.
"Jee-Ae Lim is an artist whose work speaks to larger issues of location, cultural identity, and representation. Her practice is intrinsically both quiet resistance and resolution to these complex issues. She eschews stereotypes or the aspirational, offering instead a subtle and considered example of the politics of aesthetics and presence. She has chosen to cooperate with Cho Hyemi, a dancer trained in Pyongyang who shares Jee-Ae’s diasporic experience, albeit very differently as a fourth generation Korean Japanese living in Japan. We feel that the time in Japan with Cho Hyemi will allow Jee-Ae Lim to deepen her approach, specifically immersing herself in a historic form, its transmission and transformation. For Jee-Ae Lim to embed herself in the politics, narratives, and context of the country she originally trained in may broaden her own artistic and personal journey."
- Jury Statement