Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori (Mask Dance Drama of Hahoe)

Byeolsingut is a shamanic ritual held every three, five or ten years to pray to Seonghwang, the village's guardian deity, for peace in the village and a bountiful harvest. In Hahoe Village, Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, byeolsingut has been performed for about 500 years, once every ten years on the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month or on special occasions, for a guardian deity said to have been born in a dragon year of the sexagenary cycle; alongside the ritual, a mask dance drama was performed to entertain the deity. Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori consists of eight acts: the bride's child-dancer act, the Juji act, the butcher act, the old-woman act, the fallen-monk act, the nobleman-and-scholar act, the wedding act, and the bridal-chamber act. Before the performance begins, a rite called daenaerim is held to bring the deity down: on the morning of the second day of the first lunar month, performers climb to the village guardian shrine, hold a descent pole hung with bells, and when the guardian deity descends onto it the bells are transferred onto the seonghwangdae (the deity's pole), which is then carried down from the mountain. Once the seonghwangdae and the descent pole are set upright against the eaves of the village hall, the performance can finally begin. The characters include a Juji monk, a bride, a monk, a nobleman, a scholar, Choraengi, Imae, Bune, a butcher and an old woman, and the content includes mockery of the fallen monk and sharp satire and humour directed at the nobleman class. Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori has the character of a ritual ceremony. The bride's mask in particular is believed to stand in for the guardian deity itself, so it cannot be viewed outside of the byeolsingut, and if it must be taken out for any reason a ritual offering has to be made. The masks used in the performance number eleven in all across ten types, made of alder wood and coated with two or three layers of lacquer and pigment to intensify the colours; the original masks were designated in 1964 as the Hahoe Masks and Byeongsan Mask. The dance is accompanied by pungmulkkun (farmers'-band musicians) centred on the kkwaenggwari (small gong), and consists of movements combining everyday, improvised gestures with a touch of rhythm. A distinctive feature of Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori is that it has no closing rite in which the masks are burned, and it is valuable as important material for clarifying the origin and development of Korean mask drama.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Andong, Gyeongbuk

Designation

National Intangible Heritage · 국가무형유산