After familiarising ourselves with the festival and spending a small fortune it was time to watch some dancing.

We got up early and headed for the festival site ready to catch Sri Lanka  on the Maskdance stage at 11:30am.

We entered the Maskdance arena and discovered it was set out like a small roman amphitheater. All the seating was on concrete steps looking down onto the stage below.

It wasn’t the most comfortable seating for hours on end – but the sun was shining and it was the first time since arriving in Korea we had been able to bask in the sun so we were happy!

Koreans don’t sunbathe partly because they have an obsession with making their skin whiter. White is beautiful here!! You can even buy skin whitening make up that bleaches the skin, which seems very strange to us sun worshipers from the western world.

Sat in the arena all the Koreans were covered up in long sleeves and sun hats, and there were me and Emily in vest tops thinking: “A bit of sun, just what I need!” Emily, braving the dirty looks, even tucked her straps into her top to prevent getting any strap marks – a very, very daring move in Korea!!

Also we soon discovered that we were to become part of the show! There was a big screen on one side of the stage and two guys were filming the dancing for the screen. Every time three was a gap in the performance the guys would turn the cameras on us projecting our image onto the big screen. Soon all the Koreans in the theater were looking around for the ‘weygooks’ in the audience! How embarrassing!

Despite this we still enjoyed the dancing, some of the costumes and jewellry on show during Sir Lanka’s performance was fantastic.

We also saw a Sir Lankan Maskdance, which was really good. It actually had a story line you could follow.

There was more too it than I can remember but basically….

It began with a man dancing around the stage; he was joined by a woman whom he obviously liked. He tried to talk to her and she flirted with him but then rebuffed his advances. Another woman appeared and he turned his attention to her, she was much more willing to accept his advances. This made the first woman jealous and the two women fought over him!!! Then a noble man turned up and the first woman went off with him, whilst the second woman went off with his slave leaving the man with no one!!

After the Sir Lankans finished we basked in the sun for half an hour before getting our first taste of traditional Korean maskdancing with Songpa…….

* Posted by j150vsc on 03/11/2006.