Final In-depth Post

Leadership

Grace Lee’s In-depth

Hello! This is Grace Lee and for the last few months, I have been learning about Traditional Korean dances, focusing on Korean Fan-dancing. I chose this topic to experience new types of dance and to explore my own culture. One of the major goals I had before starting my in-depth was to improve my self-confidence. At the beginning of in-depth, I struggled to find a mentor and a topic to pursue but we soon found a skilled mentor who was extremely passionate about teaching. Miho was my mentor for in-depth and here are some things that she taught me. 

There are many different traditional Korean dances. For example, there is salpoori dance which was the type of dance I was going to learn during the planning stage. Looking at different types of traditional Korean dances, I think traditional Korean dances are one of the dances with the most beautiful gestures. The body movements are very delicate and elegant, even small movements like breathing and the movement of the fingertips. When I watch traditional Korean dances, I can find myself forgetting all the other thoughts and feeling comfortable. 

All the movements in traditional Korean dances require a lot of practice and effort because you need to look like you aren’t even trying. It may look very easy, if you look at the dance carefully there are challenging moves that took me a quite bit of time to master such as spinning twice in one spot, spinning once in the air, turning the fan to resemble a flower, and opening and closing the fan. 

Photo from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRHvpeuAl4

 

Here’s me practicing different moves!

Now that you know a bit about my in-depth, sit back and enjoy my performance!

(make sure your sound is on! the quality of the video is not the best due to some file size issues)

Thank you for watching! Leave any questions or comments you have down below!

58 thoughts on “Final In-depth Post”

  1. Wow! I love how you incorperated modern music with traditinal dance. Great job!

      1. Luckily, my dad was in Korea near the start of the In-depth planning, so he was able to buy me one!

  4. Great performance! You did an amazing job of making these difficult dance techniques look nice and effortless.

  6. This was the best choice of project and skill for you to learn. It took a while to figure it out, but it paid off. What was the hardest aspect of learning the dance with the fans and why?

    1. The hardest aspect for me was trying to match the timings correctly and trying not to speed up and making every move clear. It is easy to make the choreography look really messy if you have the fans flying around in your hands. It was also hard trying to match my mentor near the end of the performance. Near 3:00 of my video, I had to spin around with the fan spinning as well. I struggled to even spin once while my mentor was spinning three times. With enough practice, I was able to achieve a good outcome! Thank you for asking!

    1. Aw Catherine! Thank you for commenting on my in-depth post! Hope you enjoyed it!

    1. Thanks Tyson! For me its the skill near 3:15, when you turn mid-air and open the fan right after.

  13. The video was great, I could see that you practiced a lot on the dance, and your moves looked very fluent. The song was also quite nice to listen to!

  15. HI,

    I was wondering if you learned much about the history of this type of dance as well? If so, what was the most interesting thing you learned?

    1. Hello Ms. Chambers,
      I did learn the history of the dance! Some interesting things I learned was that this dance was made to entertain the nobles and the kings in the palaces. The commoners weren’t able to enjoy watching this beautiful dance which is a shame. The other type of dance that I mentioned I was thinking of doing, Salpuri Dance, was meant to be danced after someone dies to let the spirit go off into the afterlife without any regrets. However, I decided I wanted to do something a little more positive and pursued fan dancing.

  18. Hi Grace!!
    Great job on your in-depth project! I wish to learn fan dancing as well, whether it be Korean traditional fan dancing or Chinese traditional fan dancing. I like that you posted a full video routine!

    What are some key techniques of Korean fan dancing that are essential? What was your favorite part of the learning process with your mentor?

    Thank you for sharing! Keep dancing!
    Kailey

    1. Hey Kailey!!
      Thank you for enjoying my performance! One of the major techniques in fan-dancing is breathing. Korean fan-dances always have this up and down movement throughout the whole dance. You breathe in when you move up, you breathe out when you move down. This ensures that your dance is more natural and smooth. My favourite interaction with my mentor is getting to know each other a bit more every meeting. Before we start dancing, we fill each other in on how our week went and get more comfortable with each other.
      Since you have brought up the topic of Korean fan-dancing and Chinese fan-dancing, there is one thing that my mentor told me the two. She said that Chinese fan-dancing tends to be more open (?) and Korean fan-dancing is more on the shy side, so I had to work on restraining myself from being too excited when dancing.

  20. Wow Grace, your dance look really cool! I really enjoyed watching them. I hope you continue to learn about traditional Korean dancing! 😀

  21. Amazing performance! I like that you decided to pursue Korean Traditional Dance which is not as well known to many people.

  23. Amazing work Grace! I can tell that you put a lot of practice into this. You make the moves look easy but I know they’re challenging.

  25. Your project is so amazing! I loved watching the videos! They are absolutely incredible!

  27. This is so creative Grace! Such a unique topic! Are you planning to continue with this style of dance?

    1. Aww thank you Makenzie! I think I will continue exploring new types of dances! I really enjoyed this one! 🙂

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