Before It’s Lost: Documenting Dance

By Maria Lisak
Interpretation by Kim Se-ra
Photos courtesy of Professor Heo Soon-sun

Experts predict about half of today’s languages will go extinct within the next fifty to one hundred years. Language is an obvious element of culture, but what about the arts? The Korean Government has set up institutions and processes to help preserve Korean art and culture. Korea identifies seven types of cultural heritage. One particular type, “Intangible Cultural Heritage”, is a cultural icon such as a drama, a piece of music, a dance, or a special demonstration of craftsmanship which has great historic, artistic, or academic value.

떵 떵 떵더○궁따

This beat hits me every time. From my office window I can hear the drums keeping time to Korean beats. A professor, Heo Soon-sun of Performing and Martial Arts, provides free lessons to faculty at Gwangju University. She knows Korean traditional drumming and music, so much so that she has given Korean dance and music a legacy that will endure as strongly as King Sejong making the Korean alphabet.

Heo Soon-sun

Originally from Jeonju, Heo travels from there to teach her classes at Gwangjudae. She started dancing – Korean-style – when she was eight. Over these years of performance and teaching she has not only given audiences delightful moments of her movement and music, won awards for her work, and been recognized by Korea as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage”, but has written a vital book to protect the legacy of these endangered movements.
She is a living cultural icon of Korean heritage because of her dance performances. In our interview, she emphasized the method of learning to dance. There are four types of dance to master before being able to consider yourself a competent Korean dancer. These include: 아랫몸사위 – bottom, 윗몸사위 – top, 온몸사위 – both, and 바탕춤 – mix. While the English translation is descriptive of the general moves made (top meaning movements only of upper body, etc.), in Korean it has been Prof. Heo’s lifelong work to create names for each movement of these traditional dances that she has learned since she was young.
In doing this, she was inspired by the work of Park (Pak) Keum Seul (박금슬), who was the first to give names to pieces or sections – a series of movements – of Korean traditional dances. Park named the dancing gestures (춤사위) of the upper body and the lower body. She also arranged the terms which describe the steps (입밭춤). She also named pieces in the naked-hand dance (입맨손춤) and the towel dance (입수건춤).

Prof. Heo took it one step further. Naming each micro-movement, Prof. Heo, following in the footsteps of hundreds of years of Jeolla scholars, has devoted her time to documenting these cultural assets for posterity. By taking the movements named by Park Keum Seul and breaking them down into each step, each flick of the wrist, each breath as the body is lifted from hip to waist, Heo has made Korean dance more articulated for future generations than just watching a performance on Youtube. Each simple move, previously unnamed, has been documented, named and shared. She has taken each movement and made it a note, just like music, or a word, just like language. She has transliterated dance moves into sounds and words.

Korean Dance and the Notes of Movement

These naming devices have served Korea well. Heo’s book, 한국어 춤 사위와 무보틀 (Korean Dance and the Notes of Movement), is a key read for learners and teachers of Korean dance. She recently has given a demonstration workshop in Seoul. In this visual performance/training video, she plays her own prerecorded voice with music to name each movement, while she is on stage demonstrating each movement simultaneously with the recording.

In the 1970s, there was a resurgence of interest, practice and participation in Korean traditional dance and music. These days popular Korean music and dance are influenced by the West. Koreans’ interest in Korean traditional culture continues to vacillate. Is there an identifiable cycle: youth – no interest in things Korean; marriage – new interest; family life/raising children – bigger interest; senior citizen – strong interest? Or will it be like my mentor and friend Lee Young Seok (historian) says: foreigners will be the ones protecting and perpetuating things Korean?

Performing the Basic Dances

Professor Heo does two performances annually, usually focusing on sharing the most basic of dances and how to do them well. While the movements are often slow and small, and seemingly easy to mimic, her portrayal of these basic elements allows for a continuous realignment to the fundamental concepts of breath as well as movement in the Batang, Ip and Sukeon dances.

Batang Dance: This performance includes the moves of lower body, upper body and whole body as studied through the Keum Seul Park School of Batang Dance to the familiar Korean background tune of “시나위.”

Ip Dance: This dance, literally the “Basic Dance”, is the root of all kinds of Korean dance such as the Batang Dance. As a disciplined dance, it enables the performers to improve the emotion of their body moves.

Soogeon Dance: This is also known as the Towel Dance. A towel or kerchief is used. Traditionally this dance was used to show the emotions of joy, anger, sorrow and happiness through the movement of the dancer and the towel.

Maria Lisak teaches English at Gwangju University. Sera Kim, a Gwangju University student, interpreted in the interview with Professor Heo.