Son, Won-hee

The heritage’ dance was as fast and furious as the

court ladies’ dance was slow and sedate.

The costumes were simpler but the rhythms more

complex, the movements almost acrobatic in their

intensity.

What musicians call polyrhythm and strive to record with

our inadequate modern notation, had the dancers’ feet

moving deftly in patterns, completely ignoring or defying

the intricate beat of drums and clatter of gongs.

There was sweat in these dances, but an infinite sense of

elation too.

A fleeting flash of white-straw sandals shuffling in the dust,

competing against complex cross-rhythms of drum, gong

and bugle; a slithering of airborne paper streamers from

the crown of a wildly gyrating head shape; wild acrobatics

mounting in a crescendo of frenzy; this is the Korean

heritage’ dance, a community orgy of seasonal triumph

over nature at the times immemorial of planting and

harvest.