Andong Mask Dancing

Our trip to Andong was, to say the least, incredible.

I remember going to Andong once as a little kid with my family and running around carelessly along the little village paths and between the fields. I also vague have memories of visiting my the Ryu house there that was supposedly built by one of my ancestral grandfathers and tying my wish around the 600 year old tree in the centre of the village. It was weird being back there and doing all these things as waves of memories, that I thought I had forgotten, hit me. I found myself becoming really nostalgic, missing the careless days and it impacted me greatly considering all the struggles I’ve been going through lately with various responsibilities and just growing up and life in general. I thought that this trip allowed me to take a break from the outside world and just reflect on my life, whilst learning about my Korean origins and it’s culture with my fellow classmates who I have grown to care deeply about in just a month.

The night of arrival we all walked around the village in the dark and although there was practically nothing to see, we all bathed in the complete silence of the night absent of any sound of motors and filled with various chirping of crickets and croaking of frogs. When we got back to the small traditional Min bak in which we were staying, we change into our pjs and all sat around chatting and make music with George and Annie beautifully serenading all of us in the circle (I am massively jealous of their musical abilities). This last for about two hours, but it was probably one of the best two hours I’ve had in a LONG time and it was one of those sentimental moments that we will share as a class. At 11 us girls trudged back to our rooms and gossiped about life and (of course) boys before we very quickly fell to sleep.

Walking around in the early morning at 6am was just surreal. Fog concealed the entire village so that nothing was visible past about 5 metres. A small group of us walked together around the village, through the little forest and along the beach and sat there for a while just soaking up the serenity of everything. We even found a little old lady in her little garden tending to her crops. I mean who does the gardening at 6am?! I found myself sitting by myself on a rock overlooking the beach (whilst the others skipped stones on the river) thinking about how trivial all the things in my life right now seemed, and how I wished I could live as calmly as I was in that moment. I kept thinking about my family and how I wish we could be as close as some of the families in our school, perhaps all live in a little village like Andong together. We then walked back through the village to head back to out minbak and we walked past the Ryu house which I remember running around as a child. As I was standing outside the closed gates, I really wanted to go back inside and see how the place looks now compared to my memory of it, and introduce myself to my distant uncle who my mother says lives there. But, of course, it was closed so I couldn’t. We also yahooed at the top of a (kind of) mountain and I was one of the last to run out of breath. I think that was another indicator of how much stress I had all built up inside and it was AMAZING just letting all of that go after the struggle of getting up the mountain.

We then headed over to learn the traditional Talchul mask dancing. I felt as though I could’ve done a much better job at translating the Korean and felt quite guilty while we were being taught that I had a much better understanding than most of the others. The dancing itself made me feel VERY in touch with my Korean side. I have to be honest. I haven’t really embraced my Korean side as much as my British and after this I’ve realized what big of a mistake that is, and how beautiful the Korean culture can be and how fun it can be. The dance itself felt quite natural for me (whereas I could see others in the class struggling with coordination and moving the shoulders) and I think that that might’ve come from me having watched this kind of performance as a child and always reenacting Korean performances after watching them. There were so many things I learnt over just 24 hours about my mother’s culture. In my house in England, I have a whole wall covered in the very masks from my mother’s family village, but I never thought they had a meaning behind each mask until we were taught the different meanings. I also learnt about the spirituality of the Korean people that I have never known about before. The idea of the mountain spirits being carried down to the performances on a man’s shoulders. I can keep on going on for days about how much I have learnt about my Korean origins that my mother simply hadn’t been bothered to teach me. I really hope to go to Andong again with my family so that I can learn about it and share more experiences with my family and perhaps even show off my newly discovered mask dancing skills to my mother :P.

I’ve learnt so much in just ONE day and have gotten so much closer to the IBTA class we are literally a family. I really hope we have more trips like this in theatre and cannot wait for the Fab 5.

-Emma-