with • 같이

When music is gesture, and gesture is sound, the pianist and the dancer can enter into wordless conversation. The performance stages a meeting between the two veteran performers, Jarosław Kapuściński and YoungDoo Jung, each of whom brings a different culture and a different art into play.

Entitled with, the collaboration is a continuous hour-length piece of nonverbal understanding, unadorned sincerity, and parallel play. The performers establish a complex counterpoint between motion and stasis as piano and dance react to each other in real-time.

Jung explains: 'Sometimes music is the environment for dance, and dance is the environment for music, and so I’ve often wondered whether music and dance can be composed together as opposed to one ornamenting the other.' Although elements of the piece are choreographed, Jung still sees it as free, flexible, and expressively elastic. 'With time passing, everything is reborn. I think there’s no such thing as repetition. The sun rises every day, but it's never the same. The river flows continuously, but the water changes.'

One of Kapuściński's inspirations for with was the Korean art of Pansori, a theatrical form featuring a single singer and drummer. Though the singer performs facing the audience, they often turn as if to address the drummer in conversation. “I try to do the same from my perch at the piano, addressing Jung with my notes and my eyes, deepening our long friendship and mutual appreciation.