Mother Tongue Week at SWA

Buchaechum

Nahyeon Kim 10.1

Reflection on Korean Fan dance.

At SWA, we had a one-week festival where we celebrated different cultures from around the world. As a Korean student and as a person who loves the diversity of cultures, I was so interested in the performances and learning about the different cultures. Fortunately, I had the chance to perform and show other people something about Korean culture. So I decided to teach the Korean girls in Middle school the Korean fan dance. Also I was lucky because I have done it before so I knew that I would be a good dance teacher.

It was very hard to make the dance because it has no definite dance moves instead you have to make the moves according to the number of dancers in the group. I also only had a very limited time to teach the girls, but it was really fun! I enjoyed it! I hope the other Korean girls did too! We were very nervous about performing on stage and in front of many people who were just looking at our beautiful costumes and us. However, we tried our best and we successfully ended our performance without dropping any fans.

I am very proud of my Korean culture. I think by doing this performance I learned not only about other cultures, but also how to build good relationships with many people by introducing them to my culture and talking to them about Korea.

The Korean fan dance that we performed is called “Bu-chae chum”. Buchae means fans, and Chum means dance. So it is basically fan dance. Many Koreans perform this dance during

important celebrations. 

In the fan dance the dancers represent images using the fans such as flowers, butterflies and waves. We wear the Hanbok for the dance, a traditional Korean dress that comes in many different bright colors just like the picture above.