The mandate of SooRyu is to offer a stage for the highly artistic dance performance of both established dancers and emerging artists of diverse cultural backgrounds in order for the audience to experience something unique and exciting to enrich diversity and multiculturalism.

The overall goal of this festival is to provide the audience with visually rich and emotionally enlightening experiences by showcasing dance as the means towards expression and movement. The performances include Korean Dance Studies Society of Canada’s own members, as well as various guest artists: invitees of diverse backgrounds including Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, Indian and Tibetan cultures. Invited guest artists and performers have included: Little Pear Garden Collective, Kozakura Japanese Dance, Newton Moraes, Yves Candu and Vivien Scarlett’s Dance Immersion, plus many more!

Mi Young Kim Dance Company Performance, 2nd Edition

The performance will feature new choreographed work by Mi Young Kim and her company, including traditional Korean dance to Westernized music, a creative monk’s dance, and the SooRyu drum dance.

SooRyu Festival 2010, 7th Edition

More information to come nearing the performance.

The name SooRyu was bestowed on Mi Young Kim by Kum Sil Lee, the award–winning poet for Holding Hand In Hand – Quest for Harmony. The title and poem were given to Mi Young Kim in dedication of her fifty years of work in Korean dance.

Holding Hand In Hand – Quest for Harmony
Written by: Kum Sil Lee
Translated by: John U K Lee

Swiftly lifting up the soul
To flutter about, shivering with colours of seething yearning,
The drum is suspended in midair with such brilliance –
Spirit of Korean race gushes forth upon the Lake Ontario!

Oh! Should you be created through my death?
Or else, should I be created through your death?

Father raised the tender bones with the compassion of an indigent, while
Mother opened the eyes of a needle to clothe with each drop of sweat –
Grasping the brethren’s hands
To lay out a path of fire onto the Korean peninsula,
The longing movement of dance of her heart’s desire
Fluctuates between this world and the world beyond

Rise up, all you races!
Holding each other’s hands of various skin colours,
The dazzling movement of dance corralling multitudes of evil spirits from
hundreds of races –
You, the Apostle of Multiculturalism!

Boom, boom, tum–de–dum–de, boom, boom –
Striking forcefully with a fiery ball
The drumming resounds onto the heart of the living!
The reverberation propitiates the spirit of the dead!
Piteously lifting up the soul –
As if the yearning of the living permeating the grave,
As if the thunder toppling onto the blade of grass –
Like a ray of life wandering this world,
The movement of dance plays homage to the Heavens.

Upon each town and village
Where you have lightened with such devotion,
You have raised them with brilliance of all your might.
May your quest of spreading the vision of
The diverse races mingling harmoniously under one roof,
Holding each other’s hands, and dancing oh so round about,
Be boundless –

Raising the five oceans and six continents,
The waters and trees with exhilaration –
To uncover the world where peace reverberates –
May your quest be everlasting!

Oh, the exuberance of the waters!
Oh, the splendour of the fields!
You, the holy Apostle of culture
Embroidering stitch by stitch upon heaven and earth!