ABOUT

Berlin based Korean choreographer Howool Baek has established her own choreographic language by discovering faceless body expression through body fragments. And she proposes a different perspective on the body through the deconstruction and transformation of the body. By breaking stereotypes about the body, she allows viewers to gain a completely new body experience and gain a different perspective on our society today.
In her collaboration with sound and media art, she is interested in freeing the human body in motion from the constraints of time and space through a different medium. Recently she has expanded her stage concept to the digital space and carrying out new artistic experiments to transplant her choreographic method to the digital stage.

Her first choreography I want to talk with U, a duet danced in a 1.5 x 1.5 meter space, received awards at the CJ Young Festival Korea in 2007 and at the Chuncheon International Mime Festival Korea in 2008.
FADE, a duet on a chair, reached the finals of No Ballet competition Germany in 2009 and Yokohama Dance Collection Japan in 2010.
A solo work about the subjective perspective on others NOTHING for body was selected for Aerowaves 20 in 2012 and awarded second prize and the audience prize at the Erfurt Tanztheater Festival Germany. This work was extended to NOTHING for 60 min in combination with real-time media and won the Crystal Pestka at the Pestka Festival Poland in 2019.
The dance and sound performance DID U HEAR is a body and sound interpretation of the poem “the rose that grew from the concrete” by 2PAC. It won the choreography competition at 10 Sentidos Festival Sapin in 2016.
Foreign body_trio, also a dance and sound performance, raises the question of what an unknown body is in society. The short version was one of the finalists in the choreography competition Danse Elargie France in 2018. This work was expanded as a short dance film and released online in 2022. In the film, three dancers are multiplied by VFX and placed at different locations in the city of Berlin. The film won the Best Film of International Dance Film at Minimalen Short Film Festival – Multiplie Dance Film Norway in 2024.
The audiovisual dance performance BETWEEN, which talks about the cycle of life and nature, premiered in 2019 in Turin. It was expanded into an interactive web performance and released online in 2021. An expansion to the VR version was premiered in 2023 and awarded the Best Virtual Reality at digital media fest Italy in 2023.

She´s been participated Artist in Residency  for research and production_ Moving Space Project (Chuncheon) in 2008/2009, Artist at Resort (Vienna) in 2010, EN-Knap/Spanski Borci Cultural Centre (Ljubljana), Fabrik (Potsdam), International Choreographer’s Residency (Gothenburg) in 2012, Print Arts on Stage (Vilnius), Im_flieger Residency (Vienna) in 2013, Creative Residency (Fuerth), Platform InQ (Incheon) in 2014, Caos Residency (Turin), Seoul Dance Center (Seoul) in 2016, Interdisciplinary Inqubator (Zdar), Frankfurt LAB (Frankfurt), Choreographic Center (Heidelberg) in 2018, Derida Dance Center (Bulgaria) in 2019 and Borabora Residency Center (Aarhus) in 2021.
Also she’s been participated in Dance & Technology LAB in Seoul (hosted by Korea National Contemporary Dance Company) in 2022 and tanz:digital – Process-Dynamics-Discourse in Berlin (hosted by International Theatre Institute Germany) in 2023.

Since 2009, her works has been internationally presented in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy, Russia, Croatia, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Switzerland, Greece, Norway and Armenia, etc.

Her professional career as a dancer started with the company Dance On&Off in 2004. Then she worked as a dancer with Dance Theater Chang, YJK Dance Company, Sunny Kim Dance Project, Korea National Contemporary Dance Company and Tino Sehgal.
Also she was a founder and leader of the “Real Situation Improvisation Project”, which is a collective of young artists from various field of creative arts. They mainly did improvisation based site-specific work without boundary to the audience. The work “Bodies on the Ground” won the Challenge prize at Goyang Lake Arts Festival (Korea) in 2010.

The most important thing in her work is the communication between the audience and Performer. She’s been keep searching for her own body movement language and how those language can communicate to the audience like talking through the mouth.
Dance is another way to talk to people.