On the evening of May 24, Jungwoong Kim presented an hour-long performance at Studio 34 as part of his monthly improvised performance series, What We Have, That’s Enough. Kim is the first artist-in-residence at Studio 34, a queer-owned yoga studio and community art space in West Philly. The studio occasionally hosts theater, concerts, stand-up, and film screenings.
For the final installment of a five-part performance series, Kim expanded the scale and invited ten performers—Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews, David Brick, Juan Castrillón, Germaine Ingram, Sarah Konner, Juliette Lee, Kendra Portier, Bhob Rainey, Dan Safer, and Stephanie Turner—to join him. Some of them are professional dancers, poets, and musicians. Many had never met until two hours before the performance, during the single rehearsal.
The yoga studio was dimly lit with a dark orange glow. Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews, the manager of Studio 34, set up a cooking station in the corner. The performance began with the sound of Andrews snipping and chopping various ingredients. Juan Castrillón, a Colombian ethnomusicologist, played the Turkish bendir and Iranian daf—frame drums rooted in traditional folk music. Beside him, Bhob Rainey played the saxophone. The studio quickly filled with rhythmic yet off-beat drum patterns, buzzy saxophone textures, and the irregular footfalls of the performers. One performer stretched their arms while another kicked their feet. Some sat on the floor while others leapt. One paused to witness while two stepped forward. All eleven seemed to intuitively know when to stand out and when to recede.
Juliette Lee, a Korean American poet in her 40s, walked through the moving bodies, reading her poems and layering spoken word into the collective rhythm. Then Germaine Ingram, a 78-year-old African American dancer, joined her, echoing the phrase: “What we have, that’s enough.” The atmosphere shifted when Dan Safer let their body wriggle across the knees of audience members seated in chairs. The room’s attention snapped back as Kim called Safer back to the stage. The disruption passed quickly. Soon all eleven performers were once again breathing together, folding their limbs back into the shared current. At the cooking station, the food began to boil and steam. Something fragrant and “healthy” cut through the damp air. The audience laughed when Kim reluctantly ate a piece of orange offered by Safer.
One image lingered in my mind while watching the shadows of the eleven bodies on the wall is Henri Matisse’s “The Joy of Life.” Not just because the painting by one of the most celebrated French Fauvist artists of the 20th century centers on dance, but because of its gender-indeterminate bodies, freely moving and resting on their own terms. That same sense of vibrant liveness is what What We Have, That’s Enough conjures through improvisation. The performers continuously negotiate their presence while responding to one another. No one dominates; each becomes a spice, trying out different degrees of tenderness, saltiness, or sweetness in their movements for a collective recipe. There might have been three tablespoons of “long arms” when someone thought two would suffice. But what keeps the cooking going is the act of witnessing with care.
The responsiveness of improvisation raises an ethical question: How does one relate to others? Without a predetermined structure, each must observe the others to know when to enter the flow. This horizontal relationality makes collective effort possible. In fact, the political dimension of improvisation is historically linked to jazz and the Black Arts Movement. As an aesthetic practice, improvisation has long served as a method for dispersing power and generating alternative narratives.
In Jungwoong Kim’s work, improvisation is not simply an aesthetic strategy for collaboration but a method of intensifying proximity to himself, to others, and to the temporal realities of the present moment. Kim came to the United States over twenty years ago as an immigrant from South Korea. Every day, he negotiates some form of anxiety, struggle, and frustration that requires him to compromise, to adapt, to remain present. The reconciliation of each moment results in attentiveness, risk, and co-embodiment, which are visible in his performances and in the way he brings people together while allowing them to be on their own. To relate to others, Kim witnesses, listens, and responds, not by mastering the moment, but by entering it vulnerably. In doing so, he reveals that connection is not built through certainty, but through shared attentiveness to what comes into being.
One might say improvisation is an irresponsible form, unpredictable, discordant, lacking polish. But does a form always need to arrive at something? Can it move toward? Kim’s improvisation draws him, his collaborators, and the audience close to the unstable edges of the moment, where rehearsed identities and outcomes fall away. To respond to what’s happening in real time, performers instead bring their memories and lived experiences. What Kim offers in What We Have, That’s Enough is the possibility of expressing desire as it emerges in everyday life before meaning is fully formed, before it settles into coherence. What we may be left with are desires without closure, desires to relate. Kim reminds us that’s enough.
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Jungwoong Kim, born and raised in South Korea, has worked as a dance and performance artist, choreographer, curator, actor, theater movement director, and arts educator for over 25 years. His aesthetic is deeply shaped by his training in Korean martial arts and the traditional dance and ritual practices of Korean shamanism. His work spans a wide range from improvisational solo and durational ensemble performances to site-specific collaborations with visual and media artists, as well as movement work for both mainstage and experimental theater. Kim has performed with renowned Contact Improvisation artists including Karen Nelson and Christine Simpson. His performances and projects have been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Independence Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and other major funders.
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