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Last night I attended a performance at Korea House followed up by one of their delicious royal cuisine banquets. As a succinct introduction to traditional Korean performing arts the show is perfect and has very high production standards, with accomplished performers dressed in beautiful costumes. Over the course of an hour you get to see a fluttering fan dance by a troupe of female dancers; a dramatic rendition of Korea-style opera known as Pansori; several more dances and  a piece played by an ensemble using traditional instruments – this started out sounding like unconnected noises to my Western ears, but gradually became more musically harmonious. Best of all were the Ohgo-mu – dance with five drums in which energetic and amazingly co-ordinated female drummers banged out rhythms within a frame made up of drums and the Nongak Nori (Farmer’s Music) dance by the males who flick their heads to fling out a long ribbon in swirling circles.

No photos are allowed during the performance which is just as well since, in what seems to becoming a regular feature of my attendance at such events, I was asked up on stage to join the dancers in one of their routines – my inept handling of a hand drum earned me a pair of souvenir drum sticks. Afterwards I joined the line of Japanese tourists to have my photo snapped with some of the dancers in the courtyard of the Korea House before heading back inside for a sumptuous banquet enjoyed in the lively company of Ms Won Bok Jang, an intern at KTO. Here you can see just the initial set up of banchan (side dishes) surrounding Gucheolpan –  an assortment of nine different foods that are DIY spring rolls. LOTS more followed.