An Aesthetic Tribute through the Combination between Grandmothers’ Movements and their Recordings

“Dancing Grandmothers” by An Eunmi Company, founded by choreographer and dancer An Eunmi in 1988, will be staged at the closing performance of the 2025 Sori Festival. An Eunmi and her colleagues have presented their artworks including “New-Chunhyang” and “Symphoca Bari” to international stages, proving that tradition is not an outdated legacy but a driving force for new creations. These works show that she is an artist whose work resonates with the Sori Festival's vision of uniting the root and the future, and the local and the global together.

“Dancing Grandmothers,” premiered in early 2011, is one of the troupe’s “dance trilogy.” This piece is a record of the movements of “dancing grandmothers” whom An Eunmi met while traveling around the peninsula, and a testimony to the 20th century through which these movements have lived. The documentary that records the individuals who have lived through a period of turbulence and the real movements on stage meet and blend together. Audiences will experience the gestures being passed on, hear the history embedded within them, and feel and enjoy them, becoming participants of an aesthetic tribute to all the bodies that have constructed the world.

This Sori Festival stage commemorates the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation, with the participation of elderly residents of Jeonbuk Province, including those born in 1945, alongside professional dancers. This collaboration will deeply convey messages associated to the sense of community and respect for life, all of which are expressed through the work.