Shreds and Traces
初演 First performed October 1, 2010
@Hooyong Performing Arts Centre
照明 Lights： Dony Lee
音響 Sound：Heyong Soep Lym
振付、出演 Choreographed and Performed by： 山縣美礼 Mirei Yamagata
Duration: 25 minutes
Through the study of "Fear and Misery of the Third Reich" by Bertolt Brecht, reading Japanese newspaper articles on the history of World War 2, and visiting historical war museums in Korea, I have come to see how the war has taken away significant parts of lives away from civilians. People were suddenly placed in an environment far from the life they were originally in, and had to face the reality right in front of them. Many of these things did not make sense, such as all of a sudden, being forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army; in Germany, parents had to doubt their own children about whether or not they will report them to the Nazis; being sent to work in the military at the age of 15; or in Hiroshima, in a matter of seconds, the city turned into a fire field with the drop of the atomic bomb.
However, the civilians all had to try and make sense of what was happening to them, in their own way. The reality was what they had, and they continued to live in it, until they passed away, or until the war ended.
Such history remains in the past, and yet once experienced in people's lives, the history of war continue as an extension into their present. The explosion of a bomb can physically shred people's bodies to pieces, but war can also shred survivors' lives into pieces. A significant portion of their lives is taken over with pain, fear, and suffering. Knots are created in their hearts, tying them to the memories of their past. Even if the experience becomes history and the past, to those who have experienced it, war is always still lives in their present.
This piece was made to untie the entangled knots in people's memories, as form of release.
wasurebana...
