About

Artistic Director Young Soon Kim and The Company have appeared on many principal stages both in the US, Europe, and East Asia — BAM, Joyce Theater, Kennedy Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Festival, National Theater of Seoul (Korea), National Theater of Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts, Theatre de la Ville, Maison de la Culture in Le Havre, Festival d'Avignon in Avignon, France; Teatro Nazionale, Teatro Tendu Striscie (Italy); Schauspielhaus in Cologne (Germany), as well as 1988 Summer Olympics World Dance Festival, 1992-1996 Year of Dance Festival (Seoul), 2003 Seoul International Dance Festival (SIDance)— as well as at regional theater.

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Over three decades, Young Soon Kim has gained prominence as one of New York’s leading Dance curators as producer and presenter of large-scale annual dance festivals featuring performances by many companies' new works and repertory pieces. WHITE WAVE has also enjoyed wide press coverage over the years, including features for WWOR-TV Channel 9’s 10 O’clock News, Fox 5 TV’s Good Day New York, and PBS Channel 13’s NYC-ARTS.

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Starting in 2007 with landmark performances of SSOOT at Dance Theater Workshop’s Bessie Schönberg Theater, Ms. Kim developed a sequence of innovative works that integrated contemporary Dance with aerial choreography.

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Ms. Kim’s novel choreographic method was described by journalist Robert Kruse: “Young Soon began by visualizing the choreography and working with dancers and aerial artists to make a reality out of it. Through the use of harnesses and suspended loops of fabric, Young Soon choreographs without a bottom. This is unlike the circus style aerobatics you may be used to seeing… What makes it unique is Young Soon’s unification of her style with the aerial device. Her work is more of an abstract expressionist dance gliding through the air. This is also incorporated with her planet earth-based choreography.”

 

Kim’s SSOOT Series (2007-10) was chronicled annually in stunning productions at the WHITE WAVE John Ryan Theater. In August 2010, the Company presented an evening-length program at Steppingstone Waterside Theater, Great Neck, NY, including the world premiere of Shanghai Dream, set to a composition by Chinese virtuoso pianist Tian, who performed his commissioned score live. In June 2012, the 16-member WHITE WAVE Dance made a triumphant East Asia Tour to Korea, where the Company performed “Here Now So Long” and “SSOOT.”

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The original composition and live music performance was our newest collaboration with Marco Cappelli and included panoramic live video images by David Tirosh. The ensemble performed at the Arko Theater in Seoul, at the Sungnam Arts Center, and opened the Festival O! Gwangju. The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) captured 110 minutes of the critically acclaimed performances, airing nationwide in August 2012, on a program similar to PBS’s “Great Performances.”

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In November 2011, at The Museum of Art and Design (MAD), the company presented the première of our bold new contemporary work, “Here NOW,” ingeniously choreographed to simulate a three-dimensional stage. Our team used streaming videos of facets of the performance on the walls, while Dancers emerge from multiple focal points of the theater. In 2012 and 2011, WHITE WAVE Dance was invited to NY’s SummerStage where we wowed a packed house.

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WHITE WAVE Dance was selected for the 2013/2014 BAM Professional Development Program, which concluded with the première of Kim’s piece “Eternal NOW” at BAM Fisher in June 2014. The Company again dazzled a packed house, stunning audiences and critics alike.

 

WHITE WAVE was awarded a Jerome Robbins Foundation grant to document Eternal NOW at BAM. This video has been inducted into the permanent Dance Division Collection of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

 

With the première of “Eternal NOW”, WHITE WAVE Dance completed Ms. Kim’s four-part “Here Now” Series, which she sculpted in collaboration with her performers and a group she has worked with since 2010: composer Marco Capelli, video artist Kate Freer and dramaturge James Leverett. These utterly compelling multimedia dance-theater works are characterized by their remarkable versatility and choreographic virtuosity. With each piece, the audience experiences a deeply sensual expression of movement that perpetually affirms the now, in space and time, as it reveals the inner landscape of human emotion. In 2015, the Company presented a masterful compilation of works from this Series to new and excited Dance aficianados .

 

The world première of “iyouuswe” was featured at the 2017 LaMaMa Moves! Dance Festival, NYC. WHITE WAVE Dance was widely acclaimed by critics and standing-ovation audiences at the Canadian Première of "iyouuswe" at the 2018 Vancouver International Dance Festival!

 

2019 has been invigorating for WHITE WAVE Dance, including a highly successful tour to Korea & China! In August, we performed at the Opening Celebration of the ‘19 FINA World Championship Masters' Games, an international sporting event that rivals the Olympics. The Asian Cultural Center, one of the most prestigious arts complexes in Asia and Asia Culture Institute presented ‘Eternal NOW’ with 14-member casts. In China, we performed at Ningbo Cultural Plaza as part of a China-US Cultural Exchange program.

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In FY 2020-21, WHITE WAVE presented our two awe-inspiring festivals: our 5th Annual Virtual SoloDuo Festival and the 20th Anniversary DUMBO Dance Festival.

 

At our SoloDuo Virtual Gala on Nov. 13th, WHITE WAVE Dance showed my latest piece, “iyouuswe II" (read I-You-Us-We-Two), a Dance Film.  Probing the weight of human emotions, “iyouuswe II”, presents a vividly-colored vision where movement and mise-en-scène seamlessly meld. Especially during this critical time of the Covid pandemic, this piece challenges us to examine who we are, and how we relate to ourselves and to each other. It is a story of developing relationships by which we struggle to find a sense of ‘i’ as part of a ‘we.’

 

Our latest production, “iyouuswe II, A Dance Film” is selected to Finalist at Vancouver Independent Film Festival and an OFFICIAL SELECTION at the London International Short Film Festival 2021, 2021 Espoo Digi-Dance International Film Festival (Finland) and Experimental, Dance, Music Film Festival (Canada).