London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Lee Byung Yoon on Yuwol: The Boy Who Made The World Dance

Join Lee Byung Yoon for an online talk on his series of spectacular dance shorts, part of the KCCUK’s Korean Film Nights – Short Film Innovators season:

Lee Byung Yoon

Wednesday 5 May 2021, 12:00 – 13:00 BST
Register via EventBrite

Yuwol

Part of our Spring edition of Korean Film Nights, we present two short films from innovative director Lee Byung Yoon. In the era of Coronavirus we have witnessed the film industry shifting online, and in our latest KFN season we showcase the rising stars who have continued to draw audiences of thousands to view their imaginative, dramatic and artistic works.

After registering via Eventbrite, you will be emailed a week in advance with a Zoom link to join our discussion. We highly recommend watching Lee Byung Yoon’s Yuwol: The Boy Who Made The World Dance and Yuwol Universe: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (links below) before attending. After the live talk, audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions in a Q+A.

Yuwol: The Boy Who Made The World Dance

At the heart of this short is a phenomenon akin to tarantism, a medieval dancing mania associated with the Italian province of Taranto and the bite of the tarantula. Here, though, the setting is a contemporary school and its surroundings in a Korean city, where dreamy young misfit pupil Min Yuwol (Sim Hyeon-seo) wakes up in class with an irresistible rhythm luring first his eyes, and then his whole body, into motion. As his strict teacher Miss Hye-lim (Choi Min) imposes discipline on the class, Yuwol finds himself at the centre of an outbreak of compulsive twitchings and zombie-like convulsions among his peers which he, through the exuberant force of his presence, choreographs into dance around him. Recognising Yuwol as patient zero in this rapidly spreading infection of resistance, Hye-lim and the other teachers pursue the boy, only to succumb to the craze one by one, and to abandon themselves to the subversive, addictive rhythm. It may all be just a dream of rebellious freedom, but Yuwol’s sense of wayward joy proves irrepressible, even in reality.

This is a spectacular extravaganza, taking Yuwol through a wide range of routines and locations, from pop in the school corridors, to tap in a Youtube studio kitchen (with BEFF himself playing a dancing director), to an intimate pas à deux in the school’s staff room, to a Grease-style outdoors ensemble number in the playground. Its message, articulated by Yuwol as “Who cares? Let it out”, is an ecstatic plea against the forces of repression, even as, with a certain irony, the beat of the music imposes an order of its own, if different from the prevailing conformity.

Watch the film here.

Yuwol Universe: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Made two years after Yuwol: The Boy Who Made The World Dance, BEFF’s 10-minute follow-up short I Wanna Dance With Somebody sees Yuwol (now played by Kim Jong-woo) as a grown-up, headband-wearing ‘loser’ in college. Amid a rash of mysterious infections that have kept the teachers from class, Yuwol gets the dance bug again, but fails to finds a partner in this university environment, and so, alone in a gym, he dances solo to the strains of Whitney Houston singing “I wanna dance with somebody… who loves me” around a mirror, until his younger self (Sim Hyeon-seo) emerges and joins the lonely student in an enthusiastic duet.

It is a peculiar fantasy, showing an adult still very much in step with the rhythms of his inner child, while also capturing a moment of narcissistic longing and self-love as dance. The credits declare it part of the ‘Yuwol Universe’, leaving us wondering where BEFF and ‘Team Yuwol’ will take this chorophile character next.

Watch the film here.

Lee Byung Yoon

Lee Byung Yoon was born in Seoul, was raised in the United States, and returned to Korea to study film directing at the Korea National University of Arts. There he discovered a love for dance, and, between commercial shoots and dance classes, made the 25-minute short Yuwol: The Boy Who Made the World Dance in 2018 under his working name BEFF.

Links:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.