Dance by Mary Helene Spring, Heather Cunningham, Steve Edwards, Bernt Christian Ostensen, Eric Handmann

Original Music Score by Paul D. Miller (a/k/a DJ Spooky)

Original Songs by Koosil-ja Hwang with David Linton

Video by Caspar Stracke

Fence design and execution by Michael Casselli

Lighting Design by Carol Mullins

This work depicts a Korean's experience during the Japanese annexation of Korea, which began in 1920. Koosil-ja Hwang created a Korean character named Masao, who is forced by the Japanese to surrender his Korean name/identity and replace it with a Japanese one. "During the early stages of the creative process, the character existed outside of me, but at a certain point I began to feel an identification with him. Koreans living in Japan today, the war-era alienation remains: unable to return to their ancestral home and unable to put down firm roots in Japan, they are destined to live in a place that belongs to neither one."- Koosil-ja Hwang

This sense of a forced cultural identity is conveyed through dramatic physical episodes and dances, involving interactions with props that include boxes as symbols for "packaged identities" and a fence as a metaphor for both physical and cultural boundaries. Both pedestrian movement and Ms. Hwang's unique choreographic style portray the psychological oppression and the suppression of the individual in this foreign society.