Bak Myeongsuk's "Hwanggeumgaji, Honja Nunddeuneun Achim II"

My friend Chae Haeri, an awe-inspiringly well-connected scholar of Korean dance, invited me to go to a  modern dance performance today. Generally speaking I have had quite a few experiences with Korean modern dance that left me disappointed (and a few, almost all choreographed by Ahn Eunme, that left me stunned and grateful to have eyes in my head). This has generally taught me to save my dance watching for traditional dance, and leave the modern dance choreographers(except Ahn Eunme) alone. But I went because there were reasonable expectations that it would be good on Haeri's part, at least.

The house was nearly packed, with a large number of people milling in the lobby (Haeri introduced me to some of them). Tickets were 20,000 (at least where we were sitting) but Haeri had been gifted with them, thanks be.

The show was uninspiring to say the least.

I was irritated by two issues:
1. the music, esp. in the first half was extremely over-powering. It included well known French chanson as well as well known Western songs (one was by the Beatles). The easily recognizable music dominated the performance, esp. at the volume at which it was played. Also the cuts from one song to the next were done with no finesse, they simply ended and then started at the beginning of the next song-- no blending or editing involved.
2. the female dancers were in many cases obviously instructed to use hairography-- they were whipping their hair around-- but not artfully as a punctuation, or frenetically for effect, but as if all big movements were supposed to also include a hair whip.

But by far the largest problem (aside from a lack of any conceptual through-line in the 1 hour 20 minute show) was that there was NOT ONE dancer who was eye-catching/mesmerizing/charismatic/highly skilled in such a way that you were drawn to watch them and ignore the others on stage. In a cast of over 20 dancers (only about 5 in the first half, the rest in the second half), there should have been at least some people so clearly talented that even with lame choreography they would shine. But no. Perhaps talented dancers detract from an effort to seem entirely mediocre.

There were moments when I found the lighting and background video images interesting, and a couple of movement sequences (never lasting more than twenty seconds) that I enjoyed, that brought me to momentary hopefulness... but this was never sustained.

After the show I went out to dinner with Haeri and a friend of hers who is a scholar of drama.

Writing an Article Eats all my Time

May 15^th, 2011

It doesn't feel accurate to say that the day of the 송파산대놀이Songpa Sandae Noli full length performance had come at last because in fact last year we did the full length performance in October, so it had only been about seven months. At any rate, we had the full-length performance.

Observations:

1) So many members from other groups showed up to congratulate the Songpa Sandae Noli folks, including people from Bukcheong Saja Noleum, Yangju Byeolsandae, and Hahoi Byeolshin'gut Talnoli but I couldn’t do more than bow, I was busy stuffing 떡 (a Korean dessert) into bags and boxes. Then during the show I never saw any of those people (I think they all left). 전경욱교수님 Professor Jeon Gyeong-uk stuck around until perhaps halfway through in his guise as a 무형문화재위원회원 – government evaluator.

2) We used the ground as seating to reduce the size of the huge 서울놀이마당 Seoul Noli Madang space. That was great. Everything went off very well.

3) After the show I learned a bunch of cool upcoming stuff.

Then I went home and kept working on the KOREA article.

May 16^th, 2011

For the KOREA article (after a whole morning writing) I went to meet 이정윤 Yi Jeongyun, one of two principal male dancers from the National Dance Company of Korea, and a photographer, 박정로 Bak Jeong-roh who does work for KOREA magazine on a regular basis. I was really impressed with Bak- I immediately felt comfortable with him. Perhaps I just like photographers.

He took photos of Jeong-yun outside, then inside, then we sat on a rooftop there at the National Theatre of Korea and I did a two hour interview.  It was at times hard to come up with what to say-- I don't really think like a magazine reporter and I didn't really have enough background about him-- it turns out he's a real star, but even that I didn't know until I got home and did some more background checking based on having learned that he'd done this major featured performance in early April. Wish I could have seen it. The interview went so long that either I'd be late to Bongsan Talchum or I'd go home and get to work, I opted for the latter. The interview took me until about 5 a.m. to finish translating and editing, although I did take some time off to talk to Kim after she returned to my house (she spent Sunday night with another friend).

May 17^th, 2011

I worked on the KOREA article all day, including doing a two hour interview with 안은미 Ahn Eunme who is a personal friend and a very remarkable modern dancer. In fact the pieces of hers that I like the most are the best modern dance pieces I've ever seen in my attending-far-too-many-dance-performances life. I'd say my list of top modern dance pieces has two of hers as 1 and 2, and then probably 4 and 5 are hers, too. The interview was partially to get ideas for the KOREA article (since it's on use of Korean elements in modern dance and ballet) and partially to see her and partially to see if talking with her stirred up ideas for other stuff I should write in my dissertation.

Promo photo of Ahn Eunme from the internet

After that Kim and I went back home and I eventually headed to 상모 sangmo though I had totally spaced that we now start at 7 (we haven't started at 8 since December) and so I was a good half hour late. Then after a solid diet of coffee all day I was so out of it I couldn't spin properly. Went home, write until 4 a.m. on the article. 

Kim Yongcheol's Dance Performance

April 29^th, 2011

On Friday I went to meet Prof. Hilary Finchum-Sung for lunch and good solid academic discussion. She had tons of awesome advice to help me with nuts and bolts of this dissertation project. Actually some of it was being reminded of things I know but others were rather scary. They made me feel as though I have much more still to do than I thought I did and a bit of panic is setting in, particularly since what with mom here (and our packed schedule) and various other confluences of events (like the high concentration of performances in the spring) I have gotten very little writing done lately.

In the evening Karjam and I went to see 김용천 Kim Yongcheol (from my Bongsan Talchum class)'s dance performance. It was actually a concert with a total of 5 pieces—one Japanese, one Chinese and three Korean. The first Korean piece, the Japanese butoh piece and Yongcheol's piece were good, the other two were pretty lame. Yongcheol's piece has three primary dancers, 병호 and 정현 plus a guy I only met once. They were all in dresses, but 정현's character was still a male character. In addition there were about 9 other dancers, including Yongcheol, 산산, 윤희, and허세준. It was pretty amusing and I took a few photos though we were seated so far back in the hall I wished I'd had something other than my 50mm fixed lens. I'm spoiled by small halls like KOUS and Pungryu Geukjang. The dancers used 한삼 hansam (sleeve extensions) and some Bongsan Talchum motions, but it was far enough away from Bongsan Talchum that I think most people wouldn't have felt it was at all derivative. 

Ahn Eunme

February 18th, 2011
I had an amazing day. I woke up and all that stuff, then at 2 I went to meet 엄승용, Eom Seungyong, the Policy Director of the Cultural Heritage Administration. He is tied with three others as being the third highest ranked person in the Cultural Heritage Administration, the CHA is the governmental body that administers the law that designated and protects the traditional culture I study. Meeting him was great for three reasons 1) He's open-minded and speaks amazing English, and so he was able to share information with me like no other bureaucrat I've met in the course of my research. 2) He shared specific information on plans to amend the law which is the backbone of my research, and was open (and taking notes) when I stated some of my tentative (and not so tentative) conclusions about this law based on my 8 years researching the topic. 3) We are going to cooperate. I am going to facilitate him meeting opinionated artists to help him understand the law the way I do, and he even asked me to draft a very interesting proposal. We talked for two hours, which seemed to pass in a minute, because I had so much to say to him and everything he said to me was so valuable.
Screen capture to show you where this guy is in the scheme of the CHA:

I was able to go home for long enough to eat dinner before going to see my favorite modern dance choreographer of all time in the first night premiering her new work at the Doosan Art Center. Ahn Eunme is out of this world. I know a lot of modern dancers and choreographers. But she is peerless. I found an excerpt from my favorite of her pieces, the first I ever saw (ten years ago): Sky Pepper. I also found an excerpt from Chunhyang, freaking most awesome interpretation of that story –ever- (but obviously not shot at the two locations in Korea, both of which I watched the show at, because some of those scenes used full nudity and body paint). Tonight's show, "Dancing for Grandmother" contained the same strong musical score (she always uses the same guy, he's scored dozens of top films, but he always finds time for Eunme), the same love of color (but in light of the grandmother theme we had more prints and less solids), and even a bit of nudity (but nothing like some of Eunme's pieces which have full male and female frontal nudity including bouncing body parts). The dance, however, took the motions of grandmothers and brought them onto the stage, followed by the grandmothers on ethnographic-style film, followed by the actual grandmothers boogeying on stage! It was awesome. Okay, I just have to give you this one more link, to a performance of Louder which must have happened in Germany (at any rate my friend Clint who is American but dances in Germany (and Korea) with Eunme is the guy is sparkling pink).

I went to find and upload some old Ahn Eunme photos, but they're all TIFF files and it's 3:30 a.m.