Minjin Lee

Next to the Horizon

#dance #performance

You forget who you are, maybe where you’re from and what you do while a single question floating in your head,
“When should I go for a dip again?”

When we go to see a performance it’s hard to deny the fact that we expect something good to happen. Similar to when we go to the beach. Warm sun, a nice breeze, and just enough people so that you don’t feel alone. There everyone faces the same direction, the horizon, the end of the beach. Watching the scene in which most of the time nothing particular is happening except the waves rolling in. You forget who you are, maybe where you’re from, what you do, a single question floating around in your head, when should I go for a dip again?

Next to the Horizon is a dance that started from a personal research around the identity of a dancer. Simultaneously being a subject, a person and an object to be seen, consumed by the spectator’s gaze, admired and judged as a professional as well as aesthetically being both an individual and a part of an artwork. Questions arrive concerning the possibility of liberating the dancing body from the obligation to express, the dancer from representing something else than the dance or even worse, prove his, her or their existence and identity.

Choreography and performance: Lee Minjin
Dramaturgy: Yun Sangeun,  Guillermina Gancio
Music: Yang Sunyoung

Commissioning credits: Next to the Horizon was commissioned and premiered at Ob/Scene Festival. The production of the work was supported through a research grant from the Arts Council Korea.

The work was later presented at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) as part of the Performing Arts Showcase, a program that collaborates with international arts institutions to present a selection of contemporary performing artists from Korea and abroad. In 2025, the showcase was developed in partnership with Kyoto Experiment, through which Next to the Horizon was presented in Kyoto.

Performances:
24 — 25 October 2026 – ROHM Theatre Kyoto, as part of Kyoto Experiment, Kyoto, Japan
03 — 04 September 2025 – MMCA, Performing Arts Showcase, Seoul, South Korea
16 — 17 November 2024 – Arcade Seoul, as part of Ob/Scene Festival, Seoul, South Korea

Reviews:
Artscene, review by Min-gwan Kim
https://www.artscene.co.kr/2009

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Upcoming:

      2026
Next to the Horizon(Still)
ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Kyoto Experiment
October 16 — 17

FAN-TA
Ob/scene Festival (premier)
November 24 — 25

Contact
email: minjin.lee.dance [at] gmail [dot] com
instagram: @minjinlee.co.kr