ABOUT PURI ARTS
MISSION
Founded in 2004 by Dohee Lee, Dohee Lee Puri Arts is the producing organization of Guggenheim Award-winning performance artist, Dohee Lee. Our mission is to create and tour multidisciplinary, community performance rituals under the direction of Dohee Lee. We utilize art to heal fractured relationships in the urban environment – relationships between humans and the land and between individuals and their communities.
Dohee Lee began her career as a traditional artist in South Korea. 1993-2000 she toured with Sungnam Dance Company, Kwang Ja Jin’s Dance Company, and Onsemiro Korean Percussion Ensemble in Korea, Japan, and China. A USA tour in 2000 inspired her to immigrate to Oakland in 2001 where she began touring with many collaborators including – Dance Monks, Kronos Quartet, Anna Halprin, Degenerate Art Ensemble, inkBoat. After 20+ years of collaborative touring experience, Dohee was prepared to tour her own work. She formed Puri Arts in 2004 to achieve this vision.
Dohee's work arises from her intensive training in the practices of mudang (Korean shamanism). This tradition combines singing, dancing, drumming, costuming into village healing gatherings. Dohee Lee Puri Arts applies this ancient, indigenous approach to community healing to our urban village of the San Francisco Bay Area, updated with modern tools of post-modern immersive performance art.
WHY RITUAL?
In difficult times people have the tendency to congregate and find strength with each other and to free themselves from fear and doubts by participating in collective ceremonies. Rituals are complex and bring together different art forms into a cathartic experience. It carries the purpose of action and intention to form a link between the human, nature and spiritual realms. As a performer, connector and educator, I have committed my life and art to support and expand the connection with people, nature and spirits. So then we can be fully aware of ourselves in different forms of places and issues that we are confronting all the time to transform.
WHY DO WE NEED MYTH?
Myth connects us to our land and to each other. Myth connects us through time and space. From our homelands to our newlands. From ancestor time to the present, shining a light on how we may continue in the future.
Everywhere, the connection of original peoples to their land has been fractured or lost, and with that, myths and rituals disappear. Through this process of modernization we lose a body of wisdom accumulated over millennia that served as a blueprint of how to protect and sustain humanity.
