Festival of Cuteness

Every year in January Tek's daycare puts on a show, an elaborate performance with sets, costumes, and choreography set to recorded music. They call it a Jaerong Janchi 재롱잔치, which I've translated here as "Festival of Cuteness".

On Tek's first day at the school, we saw his classmates practicing, but didn't really have a sense of what it would be like. There was no way Tek could have participated even if he wanted to, as there simply wasn't time for him to practice before the performance. We did go to the show and take him along with us.

What a shock we got. These are kids between the ages of 2 and 5. I can only try to imagine the amount of time, effort, and money that went into this thing. It was on the one hand impressive to see what these kids could do; at the same time distressing to know that this is where the school is expending its efforts. Most of the parents seemed to really be into it; many had brought fake bouquets with flashing lights in them, which they held in the audience during the performance.

The performance was scheduled for an hour and a half, but probably ran closer to 2 hours. We only stayed for the first half.

Here are a few still images from the show:

The set

The little ones

Three-year-olds

Four- and five-year olds (performing to "We will ... we will ... rock you!")

It appeared that the costumes were ordered as one-size-fits-all for each class; the taller children were showing a lot of belly.

I've prepared a 4-minute video of some of the highlights. It's too big for upload to blogger, you can view at Vimeo using password "korea" here . At 1:13, check out the prize-winning parental sign.

Anyone recognize the song at 0:51? It sounds so familiar to me, I wonder if it's a Korean-language version of something well known in America ...