From K-pop to traditional dance: the Korean cultural wave expands to theater and dance | Culture

Something was missing in the Korean wave of soft culture that has bathed the West for a few years. The musical genre of K-pop rides on it, with super-stellar bands like BTS or Blackpink; movie hits like Parasiteswinner of four Oscars; series like The squid game that sweep the platforms. The trend even reaches personal care, thanks to double skin cleansing and other healthy dishes like kimchi. But little has been known about Korea’s current performing and musical arts, at least so openly, in this contentedly devoured export of native culture. It was a matter of time and K-wave (Korean wave) or Hallyu, as the Chinese press calls it, has undertaken its international expansion in this field with a festival in Busan, the second most important city in Korea, after Seoul, is packed with international guests from all continents.

Busan Performing Arts Market It was born in 2023, but it is living in this second edition, which started on October 4 and continues until this Tuesday, its moment of explosion. A few numbers to understand everything better: more than one hundred performances, almost two hundred artists and one hundred and twenty international delegates (directors of performing spaces, festivals, companies and associations, some press…), from almost all countries and continents. And four scenic spaces in which to give rein to all this, but in reality there are more, because each building has several stages: the Busan Cultural Center, the Cultural Alley, the Gwangalli beach and the Kyungsung University. “Busan has had a large visual arts industry for a long time and we thought the time had come to publicize the performing arts and music,” explains Jongho Lee, artistic director of the festival, to this newspaper. “In the last ten years there has been an increase in the creation of dance, theater, music and circus here in Korea and we wanted to make it known in a mix of tradition and contemporaneity,” he concludes.

Precisely, the word mestizaje is what best defines this great exhibition of performing and musical arts. And in several ways, too. On the one hand, far from concentrating the programming on Korean proposals and aware of the importance of scenic bidirectionality, the festival also welcomes works from other countries. Without going any further, the person in charge of opening this fair was the Canadian group Machine de Cirque with the contemporary circus show The Gallery. And from Spain, the Glovo collective, a dance company based in Galicia, visited the fair and presented its piece Alleoand the Catalan musical band Always Drinking Marching Band, which has participated in the street festival that is also part of this exhibition.

The miscegenation also emerges from one of the most beautiful and interesting shows that have been seen at Busan Performing Arts, titled Youngnam Moo-Ak, which curiously is based on the most traditional Korean dance but at the same time, like all basic artistic manifestations, it ends up touching others at some point. The movements of the performers, ceremonious and warm, could well remind us of a certain flamenco in slow motion, but also of the traditional dances of Morocco or India, as programmers from these places commented when the show ended. “Everything talks about nature,” dancer Eunju Shin, legendary Korean performer of traditional dance, explains to this newspaper. “For this reason, dances from any point share a certain imaginary.” Asked about the situation of Korean contemporary dance, Eunju Shin points out something that is easy to identify in all the proposals that have been seen, most of them in the section of emerging creators: “A lot of care is taken in the technique, the finish end. There is excellent training and it shows in the interpreters.”

Of all the Korean performing arts that come together these days at the festival, dance is surely the best known outside of Korea. The universal language of the body without the need for translation lends itself to this and in Spain there are several groups that have been showing their work for years. Natividad Buil, director of the Dance Journeys Festival and member of the Acieloabierto network, which brings together festivals in unconventional spaces in the country, highlights this interpretive quality. “We were able to work with several Korean groups for some years showing their work at our festival and the echo that all of that has left us is that before seeing the result of a Korean dance piece, we know that the technical precision part is going to be there, no matter what is told,” he explains by phone to EL PAÍS. Something that the programmer Laura Kumin agrees with, the only Spanish presence as an international delegate in the exhibition, director of the Madrid Choreographic Contest. “They are very finished and careful shows that seek to please the public’s gaze through rigor and virtuosity,” he explains.

Live music, with performances such as Yeongyeol Ko and The Latin Touch, has also accentuated that round trip between Korean culture and that of the rest of the world, weaving connections and artistic closeness. “Connecting the Korean artistic tradition with the contemporary and connecting Korean culture with others around the world is one of the objectives of this festival,” says its artistic director in a close and hospitable speech sprinkled with phrases in Spanish. “I really like the language, I have studied it for six months,” he clarifies and smiles. The exhibition closes tonight with the dance show Gornishtby the Israeli company Roy Assaf Dance.