June the 5th, 18,00 TEATRO BARAKALDO ANTZOKIA
22 After Hardship Comes Joy
Cia: Kim Siwon
Korea
22’
Dance
Choreography and Performance: Kim Siwon
Music: Yoo Harim
It is a work that holds the phrase “after hardship comes joy” inside the body and delays it. In the process through which life becomes dance, and dance returns once again to life, I seek to find the reason why this repetition can continue.
Artistic Intention
The goal I set for myself as an artist this year is to create prolifically. But what conditions make prolific creation possible?
I cannot yet call myself an experienced artist. However, while creating seven works in the latter half of 2025, I came to understand one thing clearly. Works that began from the need to release something, or from the impulse to express a powerful inspiration, gradually moved in a direction that exhausted me. A working method dependent on the intensity of emotion or the force of a particular trigger began, through repetition, to function as a way of emptying myself out.
In 2026, as I committed myself to creating many works, one method I discovered was to allow everyday life to become dance. Rather than beginning from a special event or heightened emotion, I began to search for the starting point of my work in the movements and rhythms of life that repeat every day.
If life itself can be offered as a work, then prolific creation is no longer a goal, but a natural consequence. The increasing number of works becomes a secondary achievement. What matters more is a state in which life is not depleted, but instead becomes more abundant. This work began from that attitude and direction, and stands as the starting point of a longer series of works that will continue throughout 2026.