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영어

While it is a general understanding that the modern history of Korea has begun with the open door of the country in 1876, Korean modern dance is considered to be started from the Seoul performance by Ishii Baku in 1926. Ishii, the famous Japanese pioneer of modern dance, brought huge impact on the Korean community, including Choi Seung-Hee and Cho Taek-Won, who ended up following Ishii to Japan to study under him. Korean modern dance is represented as Shinmuyong, which is originally derived from “Neur Tanz” or “New Dance” against the ballet in the West and was imported into Korea as its Japanese translation. Thus, Japanese New Dance, standing for “a movement that refreshes and modernizes traditional dance”, has widely influenced the Korean dancers. Among them, Choi Seung-Hee (1911∼1969) was a leading artist who began to study the Western modern dance in earnest and applied its style to the Korean tradition for the first time. As a rare case of highly-educated intellectual dander in those days and international figure beyond the East Asia, she contributed to enhancing the social perceptions on the dance arts, and encouraged self-esteem of the Korean people during the Japanese colonial era. Choi, born to upper-class family, had to endure the conventional prejudice against professional dancers usually from the low class and eventually became an female icon of the age as one of the most successful personalities from the field of arts. Korean dancers of Shinmuyong, following Choi, started to be disciplined at an institute and presented a performance at public Theatrical stage. Instead of being an apprentice and a performer for courts, private houses, restaurants or fields, Shinmuyong dancers established a way of commercial performance in the modern Korea. This paper aims to present how Shinmuyong has changed social perception on dance and dancers in the modern period of Korea during the early 20th century. Shinmuyong, typically represented by Choi’s modern dance, enthusiastically embraced the modern Western style within the Korean traditions and then advanced towards individual artistic creation. Choi, therefore, is one of the most outstanding pioneers who embodied contemporary modernization of arts and artist in Korea.