As I still feel fairly weak, so fortunately I didn’t have to leave the house except for a short trip to the bakery (Wing!) and the nearest market. I worked on my presentation for the EPIK (English Program in Korea) orientation on Exploring Korea, uploaded three of Karjam’s songs to Youtube (Nighttime in Lhasa, Tserjih Tsomo and A Nomad Boy from Amdo, all recorded 9/25 in Andong, the 9/30 performance videos will get uploaded eventually). Please visit the videos and comment on them (pretty please).
경진 Kyungjin came for dinner, I made lots of veggie side dishes including really awesome mushrooms and super duper soup.
October 28th, 2010
In the morning I woke up early and traveled across town to present to the EPIK teachers. The presentation went fine, except the group was so varied, it was hard to hit the right note (some people have been in Korea a few years, most 4 months then about 30% of them arrived a week ago, so how do you talk about exploring Korea?). At any rate there was something new in my info for everyone, of that I am certain.
Came home and Karjam and I went to 경희대 Kyunghee University to see Desang, Iwan and Koong who were attending a function there.
After that I headed to 봉산탈춤 Bongsan Talchum class. Today class was taught by 장용일 Jang Yongil again. It’s awesome when he teaches, but I was walking to class promising Georgy that I would take it easy, maybe just sit and watch. But I can’t do that when Jang is teaching! I had to go full out (and both knees killed, plus I felt pretty sick, so worn out Karjam came to meet me at the bus stop and walk me home). He didn’t talk a lot today and ended class 15 minutes early, but he did teach us really steadily. We worked particularly on 5먹중 (the fifth dark faced monk’s solo) and on 사상좌춤 (the dance of the four Sangjwa), but I mostly avoided his eagle eye when I screwed up. He also agreed to drive me to 양주 Yangju after the performance on Saturday (awesome!) and promised to teach us all the 사자춤 (lion dance) on Monday, when he’ll be teaching us again. The lion dance is usually for men, but I’m dying to try it. He also worked with us on our 대사 daesa and our entrances. He insists we need to know the daesa for the fourth monk by Monday. We had two extra people today, Jang’s students who he brought along. One of them is learning to drum to accompany mask dancing, today Jang would often start drumming with the other guy shadowing him then Jang would stop and the other guy would continue to drum on his own. Sometimes he just instructed him from the start without demonstrating, and he was constantly turning to him and saying “it speeds up at the end of this rhythmic cycle” and such. He made a few mistakes and went too fast a few times, but overall he did pretty well.
2 comments:
That a cappella song got their attention I bet. Last week I discovered a large collection of traditional MP3 recordings here: http://203.252.231.26/index.html and downloaded the Chunhyang Pansori performance about 3/4 down the index page. Song website done by http://hcilab.cju.ac.kr/sangcho.html.
Keep up the great work you two are doing,
Joe COA '83
Thanks Joe! Totally appreciate your stopping by (and the song site tip). Where do you live? In Maine? Perhaps someday we'll come to the East Coast if we can get together a little tour... either that or maybe I'll get hired by an east coast school after this Ph.D. is done.
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