탈춤 (TalChum) -Korean Mask Dancing!



Cool mask, eh?



So last week on Wednesday, the day half of Seoul flooded, our whole NSLI-Y group learned a little about Talchum, Korean mask dancing!

We got to make our own masks and then learn some Talchum ourselves!



탈(Tal) is basically anything used for disguise. The masks the performers of 탈춤(Talchum) are called 탈 singularly, but 탈 can also refer to makeup, costumes, etc.



Abel and one of the dancers...Abel was supposed to be flirting with the male head of the house ;P



춤 (Chum) means "dance," so the effective translation of 탈춤 is "Mask Dance." Talchum, back in the day, were performances that usually told stories using dancing, miming, speaking, and sometimes singing. 



my mask!! Floam is the coolest stuff ever O.o



The folk dramas reflected the frustrations felt by the lower classes towards the Confucian literati Yangban. They were almost like performance-political cartoons, and the lower class used them to vent their frustrations to the upper class during their performances. Talchum also sometimes uses long sleeves, somewhat like the long sleeves in a lot of Chinese traditional dances.



One of our Korean teachers playing with the sleeves we got to keep



We got to see a rough, short Talchum, and then we learned a few moves of our own :)

It was some pretty cool stuff, despite being completely soaked through by the rain ^___^

Yay for Korean culture!

Signing out~

<3

~Kat