For festival, silent sounds will be many

Some things are better left unsaid and often, silence is golden. Tired of empty words? How about some non-verbal entertainment?
The five-day Chuncheon International Mime Festival kicks off Wednesday in various locations of this medium-sized city, located about one and a half hours east of Seoul in Gangwon province.
This year’s festival will feature performances by more than 60 groups, both professional and amateur, including 10 troupes from the Netherlands, France, Japan, India and Germany. What began in 1989 as a mime festival to support the ideals of Asian traditional mime has grown into one of the biggest mime festivals in Asia.
The festival will wear strong Dutch colors this year with performances by two acclaimed mime troupes from the Netherlands and a “Hallo! Netherlands!” event. Warner & Consorten, an eight-member troupe, will perform two shows of their project Straatstaal, which won them high honors at the 2002 MIMOS festival in France. The second Dutch performance troupe is De Daders, led by Jan Langedijk.
Asian mime troupes include Theater Sadari’s “Lee Jung-seop and Stories from his Paintings,” translating the artist’s paintings with their bodies; and “Sharaku” by Sasaki Hiroyasu and his Japan Mime Studio.
The festival’s highlight will be Dokkebi Nanzang, a cheerfully eclectic get-together of mime, dance, video art, music and even gut performances held on the festival’s final two days. A dokkebi is a Korean goblin, ever ready to play mischievous pranks on humans, and nanzang means confusion. The aptly-named event will end, or never end, with an all-night rave.

by Lim Ji-su

Tickets for adults cost from 5,000 to 10,000 won ($4 to $8), depending on the performance. For more information, call (033) 242-0585 or visit www.mimefestival.com.