Friday, July 15, 2011

Last Songpa Sandae Noli Practice


July 9th, 2011

In the morning I worked on the computer in Starbucks with Lisa Kim Davis, an awesome UCLA professor currently doing some fieldwork in Korea.


We had our last 송파산대놀이 Songpa Sandae Noli meeting for the first half of the year, first with a rehearsal and then with a meeting moving on to an early dinner. The entire day was not what I had expected.

When I arrived in the room it was half full of an extended family from Vancouver (two sisters and their families) all of Hong Kong descent. 함완식 Ham Sr. had met them outside and they'd been sad there wasn't a Saturday show (they stopped having Saturday shows a couple years ago) so Ham brought them in, he lectured them on Songpa Sandae Noli and when I arrived made me translate. Then he taught them some of the dance motions. It was all very awkward as other members kept arriving and they were NOT amused by the presence of random foreigners. This clearly illustrates Ham's personality, though. That and the kind of things he was saying to them (many of which I changed in translation because in English they just sounded like bragging) and his push for them (random people not connected to performance) to find the group an opportunity to perform in Vancouver.

So by the time they left we didn't really have any time for us to practice (I used a few minutes to get some info from the office manager). The meeting was started around 4 and over in 10 minutes, most of what was being discussed was a big all-mask-dance-group meeting in Andong in August (which has now been changed to Incheon in July). So it was 4:20 and people were leaving to eat, but they were going to a type of food I don't eat and dislike the smell and it was only 4:20 and I wasn't remotely hungry. So I didn't go.

Instead I had coffee with 이경호 Yi Gyeongho, an awesome friend of the last ten years or so since I first met him in Thailand. 

No comments: