Fifth edition of the genre-crossing contemporary series runs July 3 to Sept. 5, with 10 programs by 16 teams of artists Posters for "Sync Next 2026," the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts’ contemporary summer program (SCPA) This summer's lineup at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, which the center bills as its most contemporary season yet, has it all: from a teen composer and a singer entering his 50th year onstage, to French medieval song, Korean mask dance and K-pop.The youngest, Lee Hanurij, is a 19-year-old classical composer who has claimed top prizes at international competitions. Lee reconstructs the folk tale "The Three Little Pigs" into a music-driven stage work on Aug. 15-17. Veteran Kim Chang-wan, 72, will celebrate his 50th debut anniversary next year. The singer and Sanullim frontman closes the season on Aug. 28-29, when his band recasts his songs as K-pop.At a media day earlier this year, Kim said he had questioned whether "contemporary" even fit a singer approaching 50 years onstage."Being contemporary isn't something that begins with me. It's a declaration that 'you are here with me,'" the singer said. For his closing show, he is filtering his own catalog through K-pop: "Watching it take over the world, I came to feel how far removed we are from it. Stepping even a little closer, I think, is how we recover a sense of being contemporary."Lee said his piece went further than he first planned. He had pictured little more than a composition recital, he said, until a producer told him he could do "anything except setting the stage on fire."The result is a music-led theater work that, in his words, takes "a story everyone knows and makes it so no one notices." A band comprising Remi Klemensiewicz, Kim Ye-ji, Olivier Marin, Sim Eun-yong, Christian Ploix and Cho Yoon-young takes part in an open rehearsal on June 24 at Suwon Museum of Art in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. (SCPA) The season's opening, which takes place from Friday to Sunday, is a collaboration among six Korean and French musicians staged to mark the 140th anniversary of Korea-France diplomatic relations.Co-produced with France's Musee Guimet, France's national museum of Asian art, it brings together sound artist Remi Klemensiewicz, medieval vocalist Christian Ploix and Olivier Marin on the viola d'amore — a baroque string instrument — alongside Korean traditional musicians Kim Ye-ji on haegeum, Sim Eun-yong on geomungo and Cho Yoon-young on jeongga vocals.Other programs extend even more widely: folk music paired with documentary film, a dance work imagining a near-future human's union with a superintelligent AI, contemporary circus that turns acrobatic apparatus into a shifting "playground" for the body, and a dancer's intimate meditation on death and mourning, mediated by a cat.The Sejong Center said it plans to use partnerships with arts institutions at home and abroad — among them the Musee Guimet and the Nam June Paik Art Center — as a springboard for Korean contemporary artists to reach audiences overseas."I hope Sync Next establishes itself, beyond Korea, as a centerpiece of the global contemporary season," said Ahn Ho-sang, the center's CEO.Now in its fifth season, Sync Next runs from July 3 to Sept. 5 at the Sejong S Theater, with 16 teams of artists presenting 10 programs across 28 performances. Devoted to genre-crossing, experimental work and produced entirely in-house, the series has drawn 24,000 people since it launched in 2022. Participants of "Sync Next 2026" pose for photos during a press conference on April 27 at the Grand Theater of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. (SCPA)