This book is about K-pop dance and the evolution and presence of its dance fandom on social media. Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, choreography, and participation-observation with 40 amateur and professional K-pop dancers in New York, California, and Seoul, the book traces the evolution of K-pop dance from the 1980s to the … [Read More]
Booklist: Dance
Songs for “Great Leaders”: Ideology and Creativity in North Korean Music and Dance
Publisher description: Famously reclusive and secretive, North Korea can be seen as a theatre that projects itself through music and performance. The first book-length account of North Korean music and dance in any language other than Korean, Songs for “Great Leaders” pulls back the curtain on this theatre for the first time. Renowned ethnomusicologist Keith Howard moves … [Read More]
Salpuri-Chum, A Korean Dance for Expelling Evil Spirits: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of its Artistic Characteristics
From the publisher’s website: This book is a study of Salpuri-Chum, a traditional Korean dance for expelling evil spirits. The authors explore the origins and practice of Salpuri-Chum. The ancient Korean people viewed their misfortunes as coming from evil spirits; therefore, they wanted to expel the evil spirits to recover their happiness. The music for … [Read More]
Performing Korea
This book offers an exploration of the intersection of Korean theatre practice with Western literary theatre. Gangnam Style, K-Pop, the Korean Wave: who hasn’t heard of these recent Korean phenomena? Having spent two years in Korea as a theatrical and cultural ‘tourist’, Patrice Pavis was granted an unparalleled look at contemporary Korean culture. As well … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Ballet: Scenes and Stars
From the publisher’s website: Contemporary Korean Ballet introduces today’s Korean ballet with concise yet sufficient, detailed explanation. Today’s ballet is divided into romantic and classical ballet popular during the 19th century and a variety of creative ballet pieces since the 20th century. Ballet of Russia, Europe, and the US have long positioned themselves. Japan and … [Read More]
The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global
From the publisher’s website: Since the late 1990s South Korea has emerged as a new center for the production of transnational popular culture – the first instance of a major global circulation of Korean popular culture in history. Why popular (or not)? Why now? What does it mean socially, culturally and politically in a global … [Read More]
Choreographers in Motion: Retrospective and Perspectives
From the publisher’s website: Choreographers in Motion explores the lives and works of representative contemporary dance choreographers of Korea, primarily based in Seoul. The artists selected are examined in detail through interviews by thoroughly investigating their education, influences, and creative process that determines their aesthetic inclination. The artists are presented in chronological order, and are further … [Read More]
Dancing Korea: New Waves of Choreographers and Dance Companies
From the publisher’s website: Koreans have always enjoyed and appreciated dance. In the past, Korean dance was intimately rooted in people’s everyday lives, and the ideas that governed everyday life in turn greatly impacted the form and content of dance. However, with the turn of the modern era, Korea began to adopt Western culture, and … [Read More]
Consuming Korean Tradition in Early and Late Modernity: Commodification, Tourism, and Performance
From the publisher’s website: Contributors to this volume explore the irony of modern things made in the image of a traditional “us.” They describe the multifaceted ways “tradition” is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean life and how these processes are enabled by different apparatuses of modernity that Koreans first encountered in … [Read More]
Music of the Korean Renaissance: Songs and Dances of the Fifteenth Century
From the publisher’s website: Koreans of the fifteenth century recorded for posterity a large body of music which has been preserved to the present day. This book presents that music in transcription, with an introductory section providing detailed background on the music itself and on the sources, the song texts, court dances, musical instruments and … [Read More]
Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity
As Korea has developed and modernized, music has come to play a central role as a symbol of national identity. Nationalism has been stage managed by scholars, journalists and, from the beginning of the 1960s, by the state, as music genres have been documented, preserved and promoted as ‘Intangible Cultural Properties’. Practitioners have been appointed … [Read More]
P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance
From the publisher’s website: Composed of a core set of two drums and two gongs, p’ungmul is a South Korean tradition of rural folk percussion. Steeped in music, dance, theater, and pageantry, but centrally focused on rhythm, such ensembles have been an integral part of village life in South Korea for centuries, serving as a musical accompaniment … [Read More]
Korean Mask Dance Dramas: Their History and Structural Principles
From the publisher’s website: The Korean mask dramas have been performed by professional or non-professional players from among the common people over a long time. To correctly understand the mask dramas, both historical investigation through research materials and folkloristic investigation through field study are necessary. The author, an initiate of Bukcheongsaja-nori, a representative Korean mask … [Read More]
Perspectives on Korean Dance
From the publisher’s website: The first comprehensive English language study of Korean dance. Winner of the Congress on Research in Dance’s (CORD) Outstanding Publication Award (2003) From palace to village street to international stage, Korean dance is a vibrant and complex art comprised of many different forms. In Perspectives on Korean Dance, Judy Van Zile … [Read More]
Korean Shamanism: Revivals, Survivals and Change
Publisher description: A thoroughly readable collection of critical research from prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, religion, history, and the arts. Koreans, virtually alone in the world, have kept the ancient traditional religion of shamanism alive at a time of massive industrialization, modernization and Westernization. SOAS adds: Chapters developed from presentations at the symposium … [Read More]
Traditional Korean Theatre
From the publisher’s website: A translation of the contents of the manual used for the masked dance of Korea. Readers will delight in the wit and liveliness of these dramas that depict human errors as well as the redeeming virtues of social bonds. “…a pioneering collection of Korean mask-dance and puppet plays… a fine introduction … [Read More]