As a dance artist, my choreographic research is rooted in my cultural identity. Through embodied storytelling, my contemporary dance work explores the body as a site of cultural embodiment, a corporeal nexus where movement emerges from personal narratives, histories, memories, and language. My choreography creates a path for embodied subjectivity and meaning-making through autoethnography.
My research explores how transracial Asian American adoptees express their stories of identity and experiences through the realm of contemporary dance performance. When directing collaborative autoethnographic performance projects and choreographing my own solo works, I examine the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of belonging, the intersectionality of adoptee and Asian American identities, and adoptee sovereignty. In my choreographic process, I develop my movement language from personal narrative writing, translating the words on the page into choreographic writing in the body through gesture and fully-embodied movements.
Bringing in my personal experiences as a transracial Korean adoptee, I utilize dance as a vehicle to reclaim my Korean identity while performing in predominantly white dance spaces and create a bridge to find my sense of place between two cultures, the place where I was born and the other where I was raised. Through dance on film and live performance, I seek to amplify the voices of other adoptees and BIPOC dance artists by creating a consistent platform for them to share their stories, form special bonds, provide a sense of healing for themselves, and unearth who they are. My work has become a catalyst for connecting with other individuals who share similar experiences while fostering a sense of belonging, community, and artistic kinship.
As an artist-educator, the mission of my pedagogy and embodied dance practices is to create a space that comprehends, acknowledges, and values each student and artist as an integral aspect of dance history and practice, centers their experiences, and nurtures a place of belonging where individuals are no longer “othered” and they are empowered to bring their full humanity to the table. Their identity, story, and creative dance practices become embedded within new modes of dance curriculum. Based on the culmination of my experiences as a Dancer of Color, I offer support to all marginalized artists to let our true selves feel authentically seen, accepted, and valued. Dance expresses transformation and transmission of the stories that we hold and carry in our bodies. We engage through this lens as an act of resistance against colonial erasure, creating visibility and representation, reclaiming our identities and cultural heritages, and creating meaningful change through our art in the world of dance studies, performance, and academia.
Identity is a part of who we are and who we are matters.
Elisabeth Roskopf 이지영 