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.
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