Hyo Seoung Ye at the Korea World Dance Stars Festival.
Photo courtesy of IPAP.
Eun Joo Cho recalls the fortuitous circumstances by which she moved from Seoul to Washington, D.C., on her own, at age 12. She was one of three junior high students from the Sun Hwa Arts School chosen to attend the newly built Kirov Academy of Ballet in the U.S. capitol. Cho and her classmates didn’t even realize they had auditioned. The D.C. school’s principal, Yelena Vinogradova, known to dancers as “Madame B,” was a guest in Seoul (both schools are affiliated with the Universal Ballet Company founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon) and local teachers had arranged a demonstration. To their surprise, Cho and two of her class companions were invited to study on scholarship for the next six years. Among the friends it was decided: “Let’s go to America!” They convinced their parents to let them go.
Stories of seeking international experience were common at the recent Korea World Dance Stars Festival in Seoul, which invites South Korean nationals working abroad to dance in a gala performance. This year’s showcase took place July 24-27 at the Arko Grand Theater and Nowon Arts Center and included more than two dozen visiting dancers, many of them colleagues appearing as partners or ensemble companions of the Korean nationals. Created in 2001, the Stars Festival is now a popular tradition among professional dancers returning home, admiring students who are eager to go pro, and fans who cherish their country’s artistic talent.
For a relatively small country with only a short history of presenting dance on proscenium stages (prior to which, dance was either performed in royal courts or conducted as a participatory activity with a ritual or social purpose), South Korea is accumulating a significant presence in the elite percentage of the world's classical and contemporary dance companies. Choe Lina, daughter of Korea National Ballet’s artistic director Choi Tae-ji, ascended to the rank of prima ballerina of the famed Russian company, Eifman Ballet, earlier this year and Sue Jin Kang is a principal dancer with Stuttgart Ballet.
Principal Dancer Sue Jin Kang of Stuttgart Ballet. Photo by Bernd
Weissbrod.
The country boasts a rich traditional dance culture of its own, springing from the peninsula’s 5,000 year-old history. It is also home to two major professional ballet companies, the Korean National Ballet Company (KNBC) and the Universal Ballet Company (UBC), as well as the smaller and more contemporary Seoul Ballet Theatre, along with a budding modern dance scene. Both KNBC and UBC follow Russian models with a largely classical ballet repertory, and I asked a former UBC dancer in the audience at the festival whether the two competing companies were similar in style and repertory. She replied, “No, the styles are different and the repertoires are different; for Nutcracker, we do the Kirov version and they do the Bolshoi version.”
At the Kirov Academy, Cho and the other students went on tour with Nutcracker, joined by guest artists from the Kirov Ballet. In addition to (and perhaps facilitated by) rigorous academic study and ballet schooling, students at the academy were trained for excellent corps de ballet work. Cho thanks her strict Russian teachers for her solid Vaganova technique, which her body can recall as though it were instinctual. Upon graduating from high school in the States, Cho joined UBC and quickly ascended to the rank of soloist.
While UBC and KNBC do employ Russian-style teachers, the dancers do not possess uniformly Vaganova training. Each company has a contingent of foreign dancers on its roster and frequently engages in world tours. In addition to strong classical repertory, both companies perform some 20th and 21st Century work. For Cho and her husband Joo Hwan Cho, a versatile and charismatic dancer formerly with KNBC and then UBC, interest in the work of present-day choreographers led them to audition outside Korea. They landed at the Sacramento Ballet, performing works by George Balanchine and a number of new dances by rising and established choreographers—and a different version of Nutcracker.
In recent years, an increasing number of Korean dancers are spending at least parts of their careers abroad. Dancers share information about auditioning, obtaining visas, learning new languages and situating themselves in foreign countries. Many of those performing in the Korea World Dance Stars Festival mentioned in program interviews that they hoped their participation would inspire courage in young Korean dancers to do the same.
The Korea World Dance Stars Festival.
Photo courtesy of IPAP.
It was an appropriate welcome for the visitors that advanced students from the Sun Hwa Arts School opened the weekend, performing the Enchanted Princesses garden scene from a production of The Firebird choreographed by Cathleen Andrew and reworked by Yoon Hee Ahn. Firebird’s line-up of talented youth looked to be a promising next generation of Korean professionals, even if the magnificently danced Flower Festival in Genzano pas de deux which followed provided a reminder of how far talent can develop and how much room the young dancers have left to explore within traditional repertory.
Seo Yeon Yu of Dutch National Ballet demonstrated infinite capability in August Bournonville’s technically and musically complex play between a pair of dancers who have equally difficult choreography to cover. The detailed and delicate footwork in her variation’s petit allegro was coupled with easeful port de bras in the 19th Century Danish style. Jan Zerer, the other half of the pair, also embodied the work’s pastoral tone. He completed a gracious and understated romantic connection in the dance. It was thrilling to watch the pas de deux’s choreographic surprises unseen in Russian ballets of the same era. In one instance, Zerer partners Yu while he is balanced on one foot, rotating in a plié attitude position while she circumscribes him with bourrées; the male figure is simultaneously showcased and supporting.
Flower Festival was the preeminent ballet performance of the night, even among numerous sensational classical male variations and typical gala fare. Among contemporary works of varying ingenuity, a solo by Hyo Seoung Ye of Alain Platel’s Les Ballets C. de la B. was the standout.
Ye inhabited a space shaped by a spare selection of unusual objects, most prominently a clothing rack with garments hanging on it. Surrounded by a collection of stuff that seemed to have no natural order, he appeared himself a stray—a forgotten member of society, isolated in his own strange world. He alternated eccentric tasks such as tearing paper and drinking from a squatting position, suggesting mental illness or a substance addiction. Movement seemed painfully restricted at times, as though he were trapped inside his own body with physical limitations, and possibly disability, then erupted into spasms that bounced him off the floor horizontally. A repeated gesture of an index finger placed inside his slack mouth added to the confusion as to whether this character was a helpless victim of outside forces or his own self-destructive ones. The gesture could be read as a toddler’s crying and fearful plea or a masochistic inducement of vomiting. The dancer would repeatedly fall to the floor from loose ankles, then rock to soothe himself. Finally, the emotionally charged dance exploded as Ye tore down the clothing rack, drank something out of a flower vase that caused him to spew bubbles—was the figure trying to poison himself? —and sank into his loneliness, drowning in the mysterious liquid.
Yong-in Lee's UBIN Dance in The Void Congestion. Photo by Sang-Hyun Bea.
It ought to be heartening for young dancers to see such possibilities of content in today’s choreography as it was to witness the excellent dancing throughout the program. Modern dance is still emerging in South Korea. While a number of groups have organized out of university programs or through individual choreographers’ initiatives, even dancers of exceptional quality are not regularly paid. Yong-In Lee, founder and choreographer of UBIN Dance and returning Festival participant who performed a duet in this program, hopes that a modern dance audience will develop in Korea. She believes that the obstacle is getting people in the door and that, once introduced to the form, they will come back and be involved. Lee started her own company in 2004. “Unofficially,” she says, because she had been making pieces on a project basis, only finding grant money for production fees. Now she has opened a studio where she can teach classes to pay for a space that also houses her company. Having transformed the former office herself—painting walls, installing mirrors and a dance floor—Lee acknowledges, “It means something.”
Lee was a rhythmic gymnast competing on South Korea’s national team before she studied dance, and her dances demand exceptional coordination. As a choreographer, she is interested in movement’s essential value even as her work is infused with subjects she studied at Ewha Women’s University, where she was a dance major. Her own flavor of modern dance requires knowledge and application of ballet technique as grounding, but it is sincere physicality rather than an ideal of beauty or proper classical line that drives her. Her dancers come from various backgrounds; among them is Eun Joo Cho, who has transitioned to modern in her own dance career while simultaneously holding the position of Ballet Mistress for Universal Ballet’s second company. Joo Hwan Cho has chosen to pursue contemporary ballet as a new member of Dwight Rhoden’s Complexions, and Eun Joo will soon join him in New York.
The pathways that this generation of Korean dancers have taken—or forged—are numerous. Some Korean traditional choreographers, including San Francisco transplant Kyoungil Ong, are infusing their work with elements of contemporary dance and ballet. Within the Festival the juxtaposition of raw, experimental work with German tanztheater influences and accomplished ballet technique of the European variety worked fine; with fifteen pieces an evening, however, many segments of larger works would have benefited from more stage time for the audience to get inside them. Overall, the evening delivered a wonderfully rich and varied sampling of what Korea’s dancers are currently creating and a hopeful glimpse of what’s to come, as dancers travel and return and choreographers gain exposure on the world scene.
Emily Hite is a freelance writer based in San Francisco, CA.
