The National Gugak Center Dance Company will stage the dance drama 〈Dance, Hwachan (畫讚)〉 at the National Gugak Center's Pungnyu Sarangbang on July 16 and 17. Taking the pictorial world of late Joseon painter Hyewon Shin Yun-bok as its motif, the work imagines the process by which a single 〈Portrait of a Beauty〉 came into being. The love between the painter Hyewon and the gisaeng Bobae forms the axis of the narrative. The performance plan was announced on July 1.
"Hwachan," which became the title, refers to the writing of appreciation and praise inscribed in the empty spaces of an East Asian painting. It is a method in which a later hand's brush is laid onto the white areas a painting has left unsaid. The dance company has moved that convention onto the stage, deciding to write bodily movement into the spaces the canvas left empty.
The genre paintings of Shin Yun-bok that run through the drama are 〈Nosang Takbal〉, 〈Cheonggeum Sangnyeon〉, 〈Mumudo〉, 〈Wolha Jeongin〉, 〈Yugwak Jaengung〉, 〈Ssanggeom Daemu〉 and 〈Sasi Jangchun〉. The dance movements include fan ipchum, hallyangmu, ssanggeom daemu, handkerchief ipchum, janggu dance and salpuri. A single painting is not transferred directly into a single dance scene.
The story carries the bond of two people who brushed past each other at a marketplace into love, then pulls that relationship apart as it collides with the order and conventions of the era. In the scene of Lord Kang's banquet, Bobae leaves her flower shoes behind and enters the room, and Hyewon faces the loss while holding the shoes left behind. That longing crosses over into 〈Portrait of a Beauty〉.
Direction is by Kim Chung-han, former artistic director of the National Gugak Center Dance Company. He said Shin Yun-bok's paintings carry a gaze that does not seize its figures head-on but seems to look at them from the side or from behind, and that the work began from that imagining. During his tenure he produced 〈Goryeo Gamu〉, 〈Sangseon Yaksu〉 and 〈Chunhyang Danjeon〉.
The choice of Pungnyu Sarangbang has nothing to do with size. Director Kim said the space is one where even a dancer's breathing reaches the audience, so rather than enlarging the scale he concentrated on the texture of emotion and relationships. Stage video that rereads Shin Yun-bok's paintings in a contemporary way flows along the beauty of curves and empty space.
An interview also released that day quoted choreographer Kang Yo-chan as saying that tradition is a culture reread through present-day senses instead of being seen only as something to be handed down. This work chose the method of leaving the original paintings as they are and borrowing their empty spaces.
Performance times were announced as 7:30 p.m. on the 16th and 5 p.m. on the 17th. Tickets are 30,000 won for all seats, and reservations are taken through the National Gugak Center website or by telephone (02-580-3300). In the same month the National Gugak Center will also present the audience-participation children's performance "Hello, Sleep!" in Seoul and Hwaseong.
