About the Work
The volume of time and the singularity of bodily place.

Cheok is a work that seeks Asian values as a new key to opening the future in an era of crisis. While the metric system—an international standard unit of measurement—measures everything in the world, this work reconsiders the world of "difference" erased by logical efficiency, using the keyword cheok, Asia's traditional unit of measurement that still permeates daily life.

Derived from the shape of fingers spread wide, cheok is also called "body-measure" (身體尺) and serves as the basic unit of length and width. Although criticized as irrational because it is based on the body, measuring the size of the world with one's own body encapsulates the Asian worldview of measuring the world, reaching toward an open attitude that attends to values that standardization cannot accommodate.

Dancers measure their own pyeong (a traditional area unit) and experiment with relating to the world within it, soon extending into places where each individual's memory and time have accumulated. Now, the audience gazes upon what remains in the place the body has reflected upon and left behind.

By reflecting on the sense of place that is formed as different bodily experiences relate to one another and accumulate both within and beyond the body, the work contemplates a world of individualized singularities that emerge between similarity and difference. It reveals the paradox of the body: a body that constructs place while simultaneously being destined to disappear as it summons and calls that place into being.

Review
"Through body-measure, this work subtly gazes upon standardized systems and re-explores Asian values. It is a stage that boldly confronts absolute standards... The work does not merely follow melody but elevates movement into sonic action by encoding each gesture as a sign, maximizing dance's inherent expressivity."
— Lee Ju-young, ACC Webzine, January 2022