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| south korea |
| danoje 2004 |
| The Gangneung International Folklore Festival took place from June 13th to 27th in 2004 with the last week being the actual Danoje Festival. The Danoje Festival is an ancient Korean tradition, an agricultural celebration. It's a huge deal in Gangneung, people come from all over the world and hundreds of thousands of Koreans come to see the festivities during the two-week period. There were performers from Kenya, Belarus, Russia, Australia, China, Thailand and even as far away as Canada and the United States. It's meant to allow people to learn the history and culture of Korea and other countries around the world, through a number of different exhibits and performances. |
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| These two pictures were taken by Soutthida. These dispalys covered the walls on either side of the entrance to one of the pavillions. They are supposed to show the area and mountains around Gangwon province. |
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| Since I was working on the opening day, I missed the ceremonies. Christa and I went by late one night and saw the area surrounding the actual festival. All the pavillions were closed and were being guarded by an army of security guards in black suits. The area outside the festival was filled with tents, mostly selling cheap souvenirs, food and the kind of stuff you'd see on infomercials. We were accosted by a group speaking of the virtues of meditation and had our auras red by a computer. The monitor showed a graphical representation of our aura. Mine was green with a warm spot of orange. I was told that it was fairly typical, but that meditation could still help me. Christa's was blue and purple. The lady kept asking her if she was cold. Then they showed us what our auras could look like after only 15 minutes of transcendental meditation. They took our phone numbers, gave us some free books and told us to come to one of their weekly meetings. |
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| Glyn and I finally got together about a week later to see all we could see. It just happened to be raining that day. I met him around 10am with a couple of beers and we went and checked out some of the shows. The Kenyan Safari Cats were amazing, but we were really there to see the Russian Young Stars, whose performance was decent, especially the spandex-costumed tango dance to Aqua. But back to the Safari Cats, yes, amazing. I saw the performance three times. I'll never forget the zebra costumes: one leg in, one leg out. The beers turned into Soju and we spent a good portion of the morning parked on a bench doing Soju one-shots. |
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| From left to right: China, Thailand and Kenya. |
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| Inside one of the pavillions we got to "bang some ddeok." Being the sexy foreigners we are, we were allowed to forgo a huge lineup, filled mostly with children and were escorted right to the front to slam gigantic wooden mallets on a big slab of green rice. Ahhh...goodtimes. Afterwards we used these traditional wooden stamps to make flower shaped rice cakes. |
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| By this time, we were tanked. Our friends started showing up. We found this area in one of the pavillions where you could paint masks for only 1000 won each. It was just after the whole "Red Mask" scare at my school and I decided to make a Red Mask mask. After, we sported our masks around the festival in a failed attempt to scare young children. Most of them hardly noticed us, and those who did just laughed. I don't know, I think we look DAMN scary! |
| I lent my mask to Allison and started singing "dong, dong, dong, dong." She wrapped a scarf around her head and did this creepy dance. We thought it would be really funny if we all stood back in a circle as if she was a performer. We even threw down Glyn's cap in front of her. At the time, it was hilarious. A few Koreans stopped by and started watching, but it wasn't the turnout I had hoped for. She made 500 won. |
| I actually didn't take that many photos of the Festival. Later, that night we all ended up at Kate's house in the pouring rain. After dinner, we went to Liverpool, then the Warehouse. Of course we were sporting our masks all the while. My mask will forever be immortalized on the mannequin inside the Warehouse. |
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| Clockwise from top left: Paul and Allison at Liverpool, Ryan and Ras at the Warehouse, Melvin and Dan with their soju-spiked watermelon at the Warehouse, Glyn in Kate's apartment, Dylan and Levi at the Warehouse, Glyn dancing up a storm. |