Korean performing arts
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What are Korean performing arts?
Korean performing arts encompass dance and theatre deeply rooted in religious beliefs and customs dating back to 1000 BCE. Early forms involved magnificently costumed shamans who sang and danced to musical accompaniment to draw heavenly spirits to earth.
Traditional Korean performing arts include ritual court dances, masked dances, and puppet plays. Masked dances have rich traditions, with archaeological evidence suggesting mask use to impersonate and placate animal spirits from at least the 3rd century CE. Over time, these performances transitioned from religious functions to entertainment, with masks retaining magical associations.
Other notable forms include pansori, a sung narrative accompanied by drumming. Traditional folk dances like the crane dance (hakchum) are preserved as intangible cultural properties. The National Theater in Seoul hosts resident companies for drama, musical drama, dance, and traditional music.
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What types of traditional music are popular in Korea?
Korea boasts a rich tapestry of traditional music, deeply rooted in its history and culture. Vocal music is significant, with genres like kagok, consisting of 26 five-section solo songs and one duet, and sijo, a three-line form of classical Korean lyric poetry. Kasa are narrative songs accompanied by flute and drum.
The dominant narrative folk genre, p’ansori, features a singer-narrator (kwangdae) and a drummer (kosu) who use spoken narration, songs, body movements, and fan gestures to unfold epic dramas.
Instrumental music also holds an important place. Court music was divided into hyang’ak (Korean music); tang’ak (Tang and Song Chinese music); and a’ak (Confucian ritual music). The kayagŭm zither is regarded as Korea’s favorite native instrument.
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What is traditional Korean dance like?
Traditional Korean dance encompasses a rich variety of forms deeply rooted in Korean history and culture. Distinctions are made between court, folk, sacred, and modern concert dance.
Korean folk dances, performed during festivals and celebrations, are lively and earthy, exemplified by the farmers’ dance where male dancers move in a circle playing drums while wearing distinctive hats with long streamers. Court dances, in contrast, are dignified and refined with a slower tempo.
Many uniquely Korean gestures and body movements characterize all Korean dances (except for modern concert dance), regardless of classification. These characteristics include the sliding of each foot forward on the floor to end in an upturning of the toes (echoing the shape of the dancers’ slippers), the lifting and lowering of the shoulders, and the frequent use of triple metres in the music.
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What is pansori and why is it important in Korean culture?
Pansori is a Korean narrative song performed by a vocalist and a buk (double-headed barrel drum). The singer uses a fan, song (chang), narration (sasol), and dramatic gestures (ballim) to tell a story, while the drummer provides rhythm and interacts with the vocalist through improvisation.
Pansori emerged as entertainment for commoners in southern Korea in the 17th century and gained popularity among the upper classes in the 19th century. Pansori is thought to have originated from muga (shamanic songs). Pansori declined in popularity during the Japanese administration but was declared an "intangible cultural asset" by the South Korean government in 1964. Since the 1970s, there has been a resurgence of interest in pansori, with films and museums dedicated to its history.
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How does Korean theater differ from Western theater?
Korean and Western theaters differ significantly due to distinct cultural and historical influences. Traditional Korean performing arts, deeply rooted in religious beliefs and customs, often feature masked dances and puppet plays. These performances include singing, dancing, pantomime, and dialogue, with stories that vary by village but commonly include satire of authority figures and rituals.
In contrast, Western theater, particularly after the Renaissance, emphasizes increasing realism in character and setting. Unlike the integrated nature of East Asian performing arts, Western traditions often separate musical performance, spoken drama, and ballet. While Asian drama often involves stylized performances and symbolic representations, Western drama leans towards moral probing, character psychology, and social criticism.
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How have modern K-pop and contemporary performances changed Korean performing arts?
K-pop's emergence in the early 1990s has grown into an international phenomenon, becoming one of South Korea’s most visible cultural exports. Contemporary K-pop integrates elements of electronic dance music and hip-hop with synchronized choreography.
Traditional Korean performing arts include folk dances, ritual court dances, masked dances, and puppet plays. The government supports and promotes some ancient folk dances as "intangible cultural properties". Social problems and the integration of traditional and modern ways are common themes in contemporary plays. K-pop has also had a global impact through social outreach and activism.
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Korean performing arts, the dance and theatre arts of Korea, tied from the earliest records to religious beliefs and customs. These date to 1000 bce, and they describe magnificently costumed male and female shamans who sang and danced to musical accompaniment, drawing the heavenly spirits down to earth through their performance. Virtually all have complicated genealogies.
For more than 700 years, until 668, in the kingdom of Koguryŏ, embracing what is now northern Korea and parts of Manchuria, court music and dances from Central Asia, from Han China, from Manchuria, and from Korea, called chisŏ and kajisŏ, were performed. In Koguryŏ’s neighbouring kingdom of Paekche, a form of Buddhist masked dance play called kiak in Korea (gigaku in Japan) was performed at court. The Aryan features of some of its masks clearly indicate Indian (or Central Asian) influence.
In addition to folk dances, the main traditional forms that developed in Korea are ritual court dances, masked dances, and puppet plays. Of these, masked dances and masked-dance plays have perhaps the oldest and richest traditions. Archaeological evidence suggests that masks were used at least by the 3rd century ce to impersonate animal spirits and thereby placate them. Various kinds of masks—demon masks, medicine masks, spirit masks—were worn by shamans as they danced to draw into themselves the spirit being addressed, in order to cure an illness or otherwise affect daily life. Magical properties continued to be associated with masks even after performances ceased to have religious or magical functions and became merely entertainment.
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Three Kingdoms period
The lack of written records makes it impossible to describe accurately dances and dance plays of Korea prior to the period of the Three Kingdoms (c. 57 bce–668 ce). Chinese, Japanese, and Korean accounts beginning in the 7th century give some indication of court arts in the Three Kingdoms of Koguryŏ, Paekche, and Silla. In Koguryŏ, encompassing what is now Manchuria and northern Korea, Central Asian music and dances were combined with local styles of music and dance. Twelve of 24 pieces in the repertoire were mask dances. So highly regarded were the arts of Koguryŏ that they made up a separate Korean component of the Nine Departments of Musical Art and Dance at the Tang court in China (25 musical and dance items were identified as Korean), and from the 7th century they were introduced into Japan, where they became the basis of bugaku (court masked dance). The strongly Buddhist state of Paekche in the southwest had been in contact with both China and Japan from early in the Common Era. Typical of Paekche was the above-mentioned Buddhist masked-dance processional (kiak), originating in southern China and taken to Japan in 612 by a resident of Paekche, Mimaji. No Korean account of kiak survives, but Japanese accounts make clear that it was performed as a Buddhist ceremonial for evangelical purposes.
Great Silla period
The third kingdom, Silla, absorbed Koguryŏ and Paekche in the 7th century, and during the Great, or Unified, Silla period (668–935) the folk and court performing arts of all parts of Korea intermingled. Several major types of masked dance are mentioned in Silla records. The spirit of a noble youth who died to save his father’s throne was memorialized in a masked sword dance (before this time, palace dancing girls had performed sword dances, but always unmasked). Masked dances called “The Five Displays” are mentioned in a Silla poetic composition of the 9th century. They included acrobatics, ball juggling, farcical pantomime, shamanistic masked dances, and the lion dance. The similarity of several of these dances to Japanese bugaku dances has been noted. Others believe “The Five Displays” derive from the “hundred entertainments” of China. Also, an important dance play honouring Ozoyong, the son of the Dragon God of the Eastern Sea, dates from this period. Ozoyong showed such generosity toward the spirit of plagues that henceforth the spirit promised never to enter a household where a portrait of Ozoyong was hung. Originally derived from animistic beliefs, the dance was modified by Buddhism and was developed in the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) into a spectacular dance play performed by a cast of 5 masked dancers and 16 unmasked dancing girls and accompanied by an ensemble of 37 musicians.
Koryŏ period
The two major court festivals at which performances were held during the Koryŏ period (935–1392) were Buddha’s birthday, or the Feast of Lanterns, in the second lunar month, and the midwinter ceremony honouring spirits of local gods. Dances and masked plays from Silla times were carefully preserved and performed on these occasions in a specially decorated and candlelit ceremonial room. New masked plays memorializing loyal warriors who had died in battle were added from the 10th century. Buddha was offered gifts of wine and food, and performance was dedicated to maintaining a reign of peace and harmony. From the time of King Munjong (1046–83), Tang-style dances and sung dramas were performed on other occasions; modified by Korean forms, they became part of Korean court dance in centuries following.
Folk dances and plays undoubtedly go back many centuries before this; in the Koryŏ period, professional troupes became part of urban life. The practice of court performers holding civil-service jobs in the major cities and in provincial towns probably accounts for the fact that knowledge of court performing arts began to reach beyond the confines of the court during this time. Popular troupes began the process of secularizing religious masked dances (such as the narye, which formerly was performed to exorcise evil). They performed acrobatics and shows of skill and at least by the 12th century were staging satiric dialogue plays that held officialdom up to ridicule. (The development of social satire is found in many Asian drama forms: the vidusaka jester in Sanskrit drama, the god-clown-servants of Indonesian wayang shadow plays, and the servants of kyōgen comedies in Japan are major roles in these forms.)
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