This research has been carried out to examine the relationship between the Korean folk dance and the Japanese folk dance and its propagation channel.
The manner of movement, costumes and the lyrics of the Yowon-Mu (Women's Circle Dance) of Korea and ...
This research has been carried out to examine the relationship between the Korean folk dance and the Japanese folk dance and its propagation channel.
The manner of movement, costumes and the lyrics of the Yowon-Mu (Women's Circle Dance) of Korea and the Garaco dance of Japan have been compared with each other. The writer has made conclusions that the Korean dance has been propagated to Japan through Korean envoys during the Chosun Dynasty.
Yowon-Mu is a folk dance that has been handed down from generation to generation at Jain-myeon, Gyeongsan City, Gyeongsang Buk Do Province. It is said to be originated from Shilla or from the Choson Dynasty.
On Tano Day, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the people in this village play folk music and perform Yowon-Mu. A boy is disguised in female attire and dances wearing a colorful wreath.
There are 5 kinds of flower decorating the wreath with 500 flowers. The wreath measures 60cm in diameter and 3m in height, and carries 8 flower twigs. The skirts made of cloth and hung down from the edge of the wreath boasts 5 colors, and its length is approximately 1m. Reasons for utilizing the 5-colored paper or 5 kinds of flowers seem to be based on the concept of Five Elements, while the top decorated with lotus flower seems to be related to Buddhism. The bottom of the wreath has been made in the form of a large cylinder so that the upper body of persons can easily be put in, while the edge of the cylinder is ornamented with a 5-colored skirt that hangs down to cover up the lower body of persons..
In fact, when a man wears the wreath, there is no trace of a person, and as explained by the villagers, the enormous wreath looked like a Flower Demon. The figure of a person dancing with this Water Demon does look rare.
The dancing in most cases is performed in the form of a circle. The dancer mainly uses arms and shoulders, and the basic movement includes Pyongsawi (standing with both arms stretched). The dancer would hold flower twigs while dancing, sit down and stand up in the midst of merriment between the 2 large wreathes, and circle around the wreath.
Accessories include the long flower twig having yellow, red, and pink flowers attached thereto which is held by the dancer during performance, and tabors held by boy dancers during their performance.
Musical instruments are gongs, hour-glass-shaped drums, d겨ms, small gongs and large bamboo flutes jointly owned by villagers.
In some aspects, this Yowon-Mu or women's circle dance is similar to Japan's Garaco dance. In the Garaco dance, two boys dance facing each other. This was originated from the face-to-face dance performed by small children who had accompanied envoys as attendants.
For Garaco dance, dancers wear costumes, which are similar to the uniforms worn by the warriors of the Choson Dynasty. The trousers resemble those of Korea. Dancers wear paper hats measuring 32cm in diameter with the background colored in dark blue. The hat had in its center a drawing of auspicious clouds in silver, purple, white, pink and yellow. A horn measuring 15cm long is attached to the center of the hat, and a decorative tassel made of hemp cloth is connected to the tip of the horn. To prevent the hat from being taken off, the strings hanging down from both ends of the hat are tied at the bottom of the chin.
The sleeve-less jacket looks like a combat uniform. Clouds are drawn in golden color on the vermilion background measuring 70cm long and 35cm wide. There are 3 buttons on the front and a wire has been put in the edge of the jacket so that the collar can be slightly folded towards outside.
The trousers had a waist band attached colored in dark blue. The dancer wears white socks and wears a 4cm wide pink-colored band around the waist.
The boy dancer applies white powder on his face, draws a cross in red on the forehead, and applies light red over the edge beneath the eyes.
Among the lyrics difficult to understand, there are some words meaning 'is coming' or ".is in Korean.
The dancers are the 2 boys in the age of 6 and 7 selected by the village. They learn the dancing techniques from the strict instructions given by their fathers and other senior persons, and they retire when they are 11 and 12 years old respectively.
The characteristics of the Garaco dance include an act of stretching out long and a motion of moving the knee up and down at right angle from the standing posture, in addition to a motion where the dancer stops movement with one leg opening wide sideways and the other remaining bent in a fixed position. In another martial motion, the dancer stops movement after opening legs as wide as possible, and face the palm towards outside after stretching both hands forward and bending the wrists. Of these motions, the scene where the dancer treads with the heel first and move arms slow is frequently seen in the Korean dance.
As the dancers perform on a narrow straw mat, there is no significant change in the formation of their movement.
This paper has attempted to analyze the style of the face-to-face dance, musical instruments used and the dancing motion, the common characteristics of the Yowon-Mu and Garaco dance.
The Garaco dance has been propagated to Japan from Korea. This paper is meaningful in that it examined the process of transmitting culture by the envoys during the Choson Dynasty and the Era of Edo.