Thursday, June 11, 6:30–9PM
FCCW: 3053 Rosslyn St. LA, CA 90065
Info on our space here
Max participants: 100
Free
6:30PM — Arrival
7PM — Performance begins
8–9PM — Q&A + Reception
Please join us for this 30-minute, itinerant, ensemble performance in the garden at FCCW! We invite you to arrive at 6:30PM, the performance will begin at 7PM, and will be followed by a Q&A with Sharon Chohi Kim and curator, Chloe Flores, as well as a reception in the FCCW space.
lean is a performance work of voice and body. Through acts of leaning, carrying, resisting and releasing, six performers form adaptive structures of support that echo the dynamics of family systems. Weight redistribution becomes a language passed between bodies tracing how grief, joy, care, anger and addiction move through kinship networks. Resonating through matrilineal gestures and Korean bathhouse practices, the work unfolds through interwoven vocal and movement canons, like echoes across generations. It invites an embodied experience of interdependence where support is constantly negotiated and in flux.
This is a voice-based performance with amplified sound, featuring performers, Mikaela Elson, Sharon Chohi Kim, Ianthe Marini, Divya Maus, Molly Pease, Rachel Steinke.
Performance Documentation
Text by Patty Gone, Photos by Amina Cruz
The stage is pre-set with three large silver bowls filled with water. Six performers enter gradually. They wear light colored, loose-fitting clothing, not matching perfectly, giving each dancer a subtle individuality. All their hair is up, in buns or braids, off their shoulders.
Divya Maus walks to the center, tilts her head and shoulder to the left. Sharon Chohi Kim approaches. They touch fingertips, then hands. They let out a hummmmmm as they lean towards each other that ends in a groan, then a sustained, harmonized note. Kim makes a bee noise, buzzing as she wraps her arm around Maus’s back. Soon, they’ve embraced. They hold the hug and breath. Kim looks away, then leans away, and Maus supports her weight. Kim’s sound: haaa-ughhh.
A synthesizer drone matches Kim’s note through the speakers as two more dancers, Mikaela Elson and Rachel Steinke, move towards center and push into each other’s hands. Their sound: zhhhh. Steinke plants her left foot behind her body to take Elson’s weight. Now they all vocalize operatically, back and forth between harmonizing and clashing.
Molly Pease and Ianthe Marini sit on the ground. Marini leans on Pease’s shoulder. Steinke leans far back, as if Elson is dipping her in a slow dance. They sustain the dip, their voices long: a keeeee sound with the hard k cutting. Pease and Marini lock arms on ground, back to back. They struggle to stand. Kim and Maus split. Kim joins Elson and Steinke, hugging them. Maus, Pease, and Marini all lean back. Marini’s face, which had appeared so upset, now seems comforted. A steady beat enters on the backing track, adding a steady rhythm. The performers cluster in four and two, on either side of the bowls. Kim and Elson, hunched and entwined, move as a unit, their feet in a messy sync, flopping left then right, until they meet the others. All six huddle, then teeter off balance, and come to stasis. All six let go and sit in a circle in the sand around the bowls, facing each other’s backs. Kim lets out a long low eeeeee and the rest join, layering more shrill and high pitches over top.
The sound morphs from guttural to verging on full laughter. Oooooo oooooo ooooo, moving down the scale. In unison, they each place a hand on the back in front of them. As an electric click keeps time, they fill the space with sharp ha’s, then oooos and ahhhhs, some land into harmonies, others bend their pitch. The voices crescendo. A beat. Elson solos: an ahhhh followed by a hiccup, a long breath in, tongue flittering. Everyone’s hands point towards the sky and wiggle, ecstatic. Pease seems to be suffering so they observe her. She emits a long groan and they imitate her. Next, Marini looks to heaven and wails, her note ending with a bite. Oh ah oh woooo ahhh, and they return to hands on backs. Maus whips her voice, approximating a musical theater trill. On Steinke’s turn, she lets out high pitched bird calls, punctuated with a grunt. They pet each other’s heads. The drums end.
Following a moment of stillness, just synth, they all face in, scooping water from the bowls into their hands. Since the bowls have mics, the liquid sloshes in the speakers. They swat the outside of the bowls. They rub the water up each other’s arms, then slap the bowls in unison. Mmmmm sound, slap. Mmmmmm, slap. The first melodic and rhythmic repetition emerges, as if they’ve arrived fully into sync. Now the notes slide, become dissonant. With joy on their faces, their hands move haphazardly, swatting at the bowls, reaching an animal frenzy. Marini drips water on Steinke’s hand playfully. Bowl slap. They all look at each other. End.
During the Q&A, Kim talks about the joy and agony of remaining close, of holding suffering for a family, “a see-saw of emotions,” exemplified by vocal harmony and dissonance. She rehearses some with her dancers, but not too much, to preserve intuition, encouraging them to treat their voices as a toy. Marini describes the process as the “ultimate theater kid trust fall,” with others nodding in agreement. Elson remarks that when your hand is on another body, you can feel the other’s emotions. Prior to the dance, Kim had asked each person to brainstorm words to channel, to make the basis of their actions. “Vulnerability” was Marini’s. Steinke chose “Dependence.” Kim turns back to us and says, “Words are too small sometimes.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sharon Chohi Kim is a Los Angeles–based performing artist and composer whose work spans experimental opera, performance art, improvisation and sound installation. Described in Fjord Review for creating a “journey into worlds, physical, spiritual, philosophical and otherwise,” and praised for evoking “otherworldly sounds, seemingly bubbling up from deep within,” Kim brings an expansive, multidisciplinary approach to performance. Through voice and movement, she creates immersive, site-responsive works that explore human and nonhuman collectivity and feminist ecologies of care. Her work and collaborations have been presented by MOCA, REDCAT, LA Phil Insight, GYOPO, the Getty Villa, Hammer Museum and Long Beach Opera, among others. She is a recipient of the 2026 Creative Capital Award. She has performed in projects by Meredith Monk, Yuval Sharon, Raven Chacon, and Du Yun, among others. She is a Company and Board Member of The Industry Opera, singer at LA Master Chorale, and composer-performer with the ensemble HEX.