《VERTEBRA》 by Yeonju Ha
Contemporary Dance
Vertebra offers not a grand or dramatic form of consolation, but a quiet assurance: “It is okay to tremble like this.”
The work focuses not on a perfected shape but on the fragile and persistent process of holding, collapsing, and rebuilding the body. Through these continual shifts, the piece reveals how instability itself can be a place of truth and resilience.
The objects that appear onstage are closely connected to the dancer’s own body. They evoke fragments of structure, weight, and balance, functioning as extensions of the physical self. Rather than directly explaining their meaning, the piece invites the audience to imagine what part of the body each object might mirror and to find pleasure in tracing those subtle correspondences. These objects create an additional layer of sensation, guiding viewers toward a deeper awareness of how the body remembers, adapts, and reassembles itself.
Vertebra hopes that, upon leaving, the audience will look at their own bodies with greater gentleness—recognizing that every curve, bend, and trembling line carries its own accumulated time. By witnessing a body that continues to reshape itself, viewers are quietly reminded that uncertainty is not a failure but a way of being.
Choreography, Composition, Performer | Yeonju Ha
School of Dance,
Dance Performance
Contemporary Dance Major
Graduated with a bachelor’s degree (2025)
“Your body knows more than you say.”
Yeonju Ha is a contemporary dancer and choreographer whose work investigates movement through the body, sensory awareness, and inquiry. Rather than pursuing fixed forms, she observes how the body supports, collapses, and reorganizes itself, developing these real-time processes into a functional movement language.
Guided by the question, “When am I most fully myself?”, she studies subtle shifts in weight, balance, intention, and response that reveal movement as it emerges. Her analytical approach focuses on how the body organizes and adjusts under changing conditions, shaping a practice grounded in clarity, presence, and structural awareness.
Through this work, Ha aims to create an environment where audiences can relate what they see onstage to their own physical experiences, understanding movement through direct sensation rather than symbolic interpretation.