The Korean National Dance Company will open its first new production of the year with "Homecoming" (Gwihyang), a dance drama exploring a son's longing for his mother. The large-scale original work distills Korean sentiment and aesthetics across choreography, music and stage design.
Ahead of the premiere, the company recently held a preview and press conference, unveiling excerpts from the piece. Artistic Director Kim Jong-duk, renowned for translating dramatic narratives into the language of Korean dance, created the work as his second collaboration with the National Dance Company following "Book of the Dead" in 2024. While drawing its motif from a poem titled "Homecoming" by Kim Seong-ok, the production weaves in Kim Jong-duk's personal memories of his mother, who suffered from dementia before passing away. "Even after my mother passed, the longing always remained in my heart," Kim said. "I thought of my mother and hometown as the most authentic subject audiences could relate to, and I have been developing the concept for two years."
The work unfolds in three acts built on a clear narrative arc. In Act 1, the mother looks back on her life from its final chapter, revealing regret and the full spectrum of human emotion. Act 2 portrays the heartrending feelings between mother and son as he faces the reality of placing her in a nursing home because of her dementia. The final act returns to the mother's youth, reflecting on her life and delivering a message of comfort and recovery that transcends memory and loss.
In the scenes unveiled at the preview, the relationship between mother and son was rendered with poignant intensity through Korean dance movement. Jang Hyun-su, in the role of the mother, captured the grace and warmth of a Korean mother with restrained gestures and profound expressiveness. Lee Seok-jun, as the son, channeled guilt, longing and anguish through impassioned movement. "I tried to express a mother's selfless love for her child truthfully, following the natural flow of the body," Jang said.
Music, staging, costumes and lighting all amplify the work's emotional depth. A score layering modern sounds over traditional rhythms heightens the narrative's emotional intensity. Stage designer Han Jeong-a used bronze-colored frames to create mirror-like spaces, visualizing a structure where past and present, inner world and reality overlap. Lyricism stands out in particular through delicate use of video and lighting to evoke distinctly Korean imagery — petals scattering across fields and landscapes framed by rows of traditional earthenware crocks.
"To fully convey Korean dance and sentiment, we set the dominant color of the stage to bronze," Kim said. "We used textures resembling traditional Korean mulberry paper to visually render hazy memories and recollections." The production runs from May 23 to 26 at the Haeoreum Grand Theater of the National Theater of Korea.
