Ghost Day: City Night

[Performance Introduction] There was a Halloween in Korea too! In the city night, humans and ghosts, office workers, and spirits mingle. A fantasy dance drama where tradition and contemporary circus meet. The most Korean fantasy dance drama. Ganggangsullae, Notdaribapgi, shamanism, and the city night. The new birth of a Korean-style Halloween. #Halloween #Korea #GhostDay #DanceDrama #CityNight #HaennimDalnim #LifeOfAnOfficeWorker Work Introduction <Ghost Day: City Night> is a large-scale creative dance drama that began with the imagination, "There was a Halloween in Korea too." It is an evolved recreation that expands the worldview of the 2023 premiere <Ghost Day> into the heart of today's city. Based on the breath and emotions of Korean dance, it proposes a new performance aesthetic where tradition and contemporaneity coexist by combining it with the physical language of European contemporary circus. While the premiere presented a festive stage for a "Korean Halloween" where ghosts and humans harmonize, this work intersects the life of a modern office worker living through the city with the narrative of the siblings and the tiger from the folk tale "Haennim Dalnim," more densely expanding the motif of "looking back at the living through the dead." Collective movements derived from Ganggangsullae and Notdaribapgi, a three-dimensional stage that moves between the air and the ground, and music where traditional percussion and electronic sound intersect, create a ritualistic space that traverses the boundaries between reality and unreality, humans and ghosts. <Ghost Day: City Night> aims for an intensification of narrative and emotion rather than an expansion of scale. Moving beyond simple spectacle-oriented circus, it deeply captures the emotions and relationships experienced by today's city dwellers, such as overwork, isolation, anxiety, and recovery, presenting a "Korean-style Halloween" stage that poses the question to the audience: "Are we truly living our lives, or are we just surviving?" Synopsis Where do ghosts live? People who commute, go home, and disappear again. In the repetition of daily life, modern humans gradually resemble ghosts. People who are alive but empty, Beings who have disappeared but are somehow more human. In the city night, invisible beings awaken. The ghosts who have survived by hiding in forests and cottages avoid humans, Connecting their own worlds, While the disconnected people of the city cross the subway of hell with expressionless faces. In the gaps, virgin ghosts and bachelor ghosts bloom, And the boundary between humans and ghosts gradually blurs. Meanwhile, the old folk tale "Haennim Dalnim" descends into today's city. The tiger is no longer just a simple monster. It is reborn as a being who hungered and desired to solve hunger and survive, A being who simply had to live their life as a tiger. The story of the siblings and the tiger is varied into the faces of today's office workers, crowds, fear, and desire, Blurring the lines of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, who is human and who is a ghost. The ghosts of the past are rearranged into new faces within the city night. The eye ghost that used to spy on people becomes the CCTV monitoring alleys and buildings, The dream ghost that used to pull people into dreams is varied into a water ghost harboring fears of water and accidents. The Dokkaebi is still a mischievous being, But appears as an energy that inhabits neon signs, signs, machines, and objects, causing chaos throughout the city. The bandage ghost, Chang-gwi, virgin ghost, and Grim Reaper Combine with the imagery of today's urban landscape, To be reborn as familiar yet strange contemporary ghosts. The city night eventually becomes a single ritual where everyone mingles together. Through movements derived from Ganggangsullae and Notdaribapgi, humans Step on and connect with each other's bodies, moving beyond disconnected relationships and isolated emotions. The sky and the earth, the living and the departed, humans and ghosts. On that boundary, we ask. Are we truly living now, or have we already become ghosts? Directing Intent Through the 2023 premiere <Ghost Day>, Kim Ju-bin attempted a modern reinterpretation using Korean subject matter and dance methods, and completed a large-scale production of about 70 total participants, which is rare for a private organization. At that time, the work was an experiment that gathered the language of the body and dance amidst the trend of "deconstruction" prevalent in the Korean dance community, questioning the difference between solo and group dance, and the form and function of dance from the very beginning. The focus was on the solo dance as a single sentence spoken by one person's body, and the collective energy gained as that sentence expands into a group dance of two, three, or many people. <Ghost Day: City Night> is a recreation that expands the worldview of the premiere into a narrative more closely connected to the reality of today's city, based on these formal experiments. In the AI era, amidst a highly developed social system, it places the daily lives and emotions of modern people—who live highly individualized lives instead of enjoying convenience—at the forefront, and poses the fundamental question: "Are we truly living our lives, or are we just surviving?" Based on the basic methods of Korean dance, such as rhythmic breathing and the explosive energy within restrained dance movements, Kim Ju-bin overlaps the senses of the individual and the collective, humans and ghosts, and the past and the present in a three-dimensional way through a structure where solo and group dances intersect. Aerial movements function not merely as technical spectacles but as metaphors for emotion, and the dancer's body becomes a living medium that connects the community and the world, the living and the departed. The directing and choreographic intent is clear. It seeks to call back the beings from past folk tales and ghost legends into the faces of today's urban landscape, office workers, and crowds, shaking the boundaries between humans and ghosts, victims and perpetrators. Through this, it hopes to allow each audience member to face their own daily lives, fears, and desires on stage, and to gain the small courage to tell their own stories to someone after the performance. Planning Intent JUBIN Company is an organization that has explored "open Korean-ness" through the body, centering on the breath and emotions of Korean dance while combining various genres such as contemporary senses, circus, and theater. <Ghost Day: City Night> is a question that begins from: "How can we again rely on one another and live?" in an era of extreme individualization where community and connection are weakening despite convenience. Through collective movements derived from Ganggangsullae and Notdaribapgi, a structure where solo and group dances intersect, and circus-like bodies that move between the air and the ground, the dancer's body functions as a medium that goes beyond the isolated individual to support each other's weight. <Ghost Day: City Night> is a Korean-style creative repertoire that intersects invisible beings and visible daily life, ghosts and humans, and past folk tales and current urban reality on a single stage, exploring how Korean traditional beliefs and body methods can reflect the lives of the audience living today.