International
Mask Dance Festival - Andong
A slide presentation on Andong is in development. We will inform registered guests when it is available.
Kosung Okwangdae
Mask Dance
Kangrung Mask Dance
Tongyoung Okandae
Mask Dance
Kasan Okwangdae
“Only the open hearted will enjoy themselves during the great feast of the festival. You are invited to come and play here with the abandon of knowing the festival is itself created with an open heart. It’s an ideal place to enjoy each other’s company. Thus, an open heart in an open place will have room to fly like the kites that dot the sky over the festival grounds.
The Mask Dance Festival is a dynamic place that enables spectators to mix with performers, and juxtaposes many sorts of people and things. Performers often play impromptu with spectators, participating them in the jokes and fun of the show.
Spectators are not only participants, but also other performers of the best kind: honest and inventive. We are against the conventional style of performance which divides spectators from performers and stage.
We try to inspire new vitality and variations in our tradition, and hope to open new avenues of the spirit of the Mask dance. As a visitor you are also seen as a participant in the Mask Dance Festival. We require you to expose your own excitement to add to the overall energy of this, place and time.
A "maskdance" is a compound of two words "mask" and "dance”: - Mask is a kind of cultural device which helps shed hypocrisies and escapism while dance is a live motion expression with the body. We need to throw out hypocrisy with masks and create our excitement with dynamic dance. Participants in the festival will reply to the performers without the hesitation as strangers adding new lines and flexibility to the mask play. The maskdance is not the play of performers only, but the collective work of all of us. In the last stage of the play participants are asked to dance together with the exciting rhythms of Pungmul (Korean folk percussion instruments).
Though we are people separated by age, gender, mind and thoughts, the festival resolves many of the differences between us. To be hero/heroine of the maskdance Amongst the many different kinds of mask dance and performance from foreign countries, we are able to dance together with the world and in the rhythm of Pungmul drumming. Our festival slogan, "Hearts bursting with excitement; feel Exuberant" expresses how dance, passion, and the variety of humanity are brought together in the open hearts of visiting participants. In this festival, you are a hero or a heroine. The way to enjoy the festival is not difficult. Just remember we are all one and the same as the heroes and heroines at the festival.”
From the Official site
with thanks to the
Andong Festival Committee
Korean Onggi