Presented at the Busan Biennale 2024, Hail (2020) is a four-channel video installation by Seoul-based artist and choreographer Yanghee Lee. Consisting of multi-directional views of a performance on stage, the work brings together the body, pleasure, and form—three constituent elements of dance —to explore the limits of choreographic performance within codified space of a gallery.
Trained in traditional Korean dance during her youth, Lee gravitated towards the underground club scene during the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly the rave parties and techno culture that flourished around Hongik University in Seoul. These euphoric experiences challenged the rigidity associated with Lee’s traditional training. Hail draws from this body history and attempts to capture the collective energy and emotions—such as joy, rapture and connectivity—that characterise those moments.
Lee explores dancing bodies not simply as performers but as a key ingredient in the musical composition behind the work. The music is composed in collaboration with Mogwaa, Choseon Hong, and DJ SAL bringing drum and bass, house, and trance together in response to the rhythms and tempos of Lee’s dance movements. In Hail, the dancing body becomes an ingredient in language and in hearing – in the very process of pleasure and immerse elicited through the body’s vibration and absorption as a musical element. Hail represents a dream of coexistence, unity, and shared energy through the communion of bodies and sound.