Korean Performing Arts
Music
Korean children traditionally grew up hearing percussion patterns all around them, from chopsticks being beaten on the wine shop table to the sounds of their mothers "ironing" clothes by pounding them with flat wooden sticks. and the drumming of will age musicians.
Percussion
In Korean music, percussion is a major element and was an indispensable part of nong'ak, or "farmers' music", a form of entertainment and celebration in rural Korea that was performed by touring bands of musicians and has recently been revived as an authentic Korean art form.
The Importance of Rhythm
Nong'ak is a form of folk music, a genre that includes folk songs that express the joys and sorrows of rural life in traditional Korea. Folk songs stress storytelling and melody, the rhythms of the folk songs have endured in a kind of national subconscious, being repeated and learned over and over again by successive generations. Some of the rhythms had to do with work, for example, cooperative projects like plowing and digging and pounding. Though vestiges of work songs continued into modern times, for example, the mechanization of work in Korea has made rhythmic singing and chanting less a part of daily life.
Younger generations of Koreans live in cities and have missed out on many of the opportunities their parents had to enjoy and learn the basic rhythms of Korean music through village rituals and celebrations.
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Dance
In ancient times, Korean dances were performed in religious ceremonies, so they naturally took on some ritualistic characteristic although they later grew into a form of entertainment.
Korean dancers tends not to stick to any specific. A dancer pursues master skills through the technique of "no technique." He expresses his inner mood by dancing freely and spontaneously. When he pauses for a moment, he suspends his breathing and maintains a static equilibrium. At that moment, his suspended breathing itself becomes part of his movement. There is great emphasis placed upon natural movements.
Korean dance seeks harmony, like the rounded shapes engaged together inside the great. A dancer extends mellifluous lines from his chest to his extremities.
Finally, Korean dance is closely related to folk performances. Traditionally, nong-ak, or performances by farmers' percussion bands, t'alch'um, or mask dance dramas, Chishinbalki, or a lunar new year's celebration, Chuldarigi, or tug of war as well as many other communal entertainments, express Korean's dynamic optimistic spirit. Korean dances are largely classified into court, folk, ritual, mask, shaman, and new dances.
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Drama
The early 1940s was a period of Pacific War, and the theater came to a standstill under Japanese pressure.
The tragic division of the land and the political cleavage brought chaos to Korean dramatic circles. Numerous groups, each with its own political color, sprouted one after another and folded as quickly as they came. With the establishment of the Republic of Korea Government in 1948 and the laying down of a definite political ideology, confusion ended, and in 1950, a National Theater was formed.
Following the Korean War, the New Drama Society, an organ of the National Theater, revived interest chiefly in Shakespeare and Yu Ch'i-jin, one of the foremost Korean dramatists. The boom of motion pictures and TV, however, deprived the stage of both talent and an audience, and decline set in.
Nevertheless, several groups courageously carried on, creating what is known as the "small theater" movement. They emphasized artistic presentations as opposed to the professional endeavors that sought large theaters and better financial returns for the producer. The more serious-minded supporters of Korean theater organized the Korean National Center of International Theater Institute in 1958, and engaged in international cultural exchanges.
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