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| Sunday, 4 July 2004 |
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Reviews : Traditional Korean Dance - Transcending conscious control by Lakminie Jayanthi Liyanage For those of us, associating the concept of dance with the splay of arms, feet and body in sweeping bursts of vigour, Korean traditional dance comes as a pleasant surprise of revelation.
It is a revelation of the deep beauty of physical melody and music, which inner restraints of body and emotions could create, rising beyond consciously controlled movements to an almost unconsciously expressed pronouncement of spiritual joy. I am made to understand that this apparition of standing still, yet at the same time, appearing to move in rhythm - transcending conscious control - is a fundamental element of the Korean traditional dance art. When the Korean Traditional Dance Performance, presented by Sun Kyung Soun Dance Company flown from Korea, began at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall on a recent evening, I thought it entailed sitting down to quiet nocturnal pleasures of detained Eastern dance. But the more I watched, the more intrigued I became. And, as this all female dance troupe slowly graduated from one dance to another, making more and more pronounced spiritual poetry, my feeling of subdudedness gave way to a pleasant soaring of heights and an exhilarated realisation of the subtle artistic depths that awaited excavation from the shell of decorum feigned by the dancers. As, in the case of Chun-Ang-Jeon, a court dance symbolising a nightingale singing in spring time, graceful melody came through without even the dancers attempting to move the lower half of their bodies, confining their movements mainly to the arms and shoulders. Visually, the night was captured by Bu-Chae-Chum (Fan Dance) and Sul-Jang-Go, a farmer's dance with hourglass drums slung on the shoulder. In Bu-Chae-Chum, dancers, dressed in vivid colours, danced in circles, using the slow gait peculiar to traditional Korean dance, to form with fans the fluttering Rose of Sharon, or Bu-Chae-Chum, the national flower of Korea. In the other, Sul-Jang-Go, leisurely steps climaxed in spry, sideways splashing of feet and one could not help but compare its similarities and dissimilarities to our own drum dances. Certainly, there were different ways to make meaning and beauty, yet overlapping at some apex of universality, as the evening taught us. A commendable gesture in familiarizing us with neighouring cultures, organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and National Heritage. |
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