The sun, the moon… and the star: South Korea's young ballet company begins its first U.S. tour this spring - Universal Ballet Company of Seoul's spring, 1998 American tour - includes related article

Dance Magazine, March, 1998 by Hilary Ostlere

Picture a Korean company with Russian roots, an American artistic director, and an East-meets-West touring repertory of two ballets, Swan Lake and Adrienne Dellas's Shim Chung. Funded by the wealthy Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, which aggressively proselytizes its faith worldwide (and is sometimes viewed as a cult), the Universal Ballet Company of Seoul will be seen in the United States for the first time this spring. The fifty-two-member troupe has honed itself for its current tour of several cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, and Las Vegas [see Presstime News, page 41]. But its most eagerly anticipated and challenging appearance will be its two-week engagement at Manhattan's City Center.

"Everyone's going to try to bring up the Rev. Moon issue, and this is something we're worried about," says Bruce Steivel, UB's artistic director for the past two years. "But the thing is, Universal Ballet is a company that is presenting beautiful art. We're just very lucky that someone with Rev. Moon's financial resources has the interest in ballet to give it his full support without any dogmatic strings attached -- no preaching, no mention of the church. None of that. Ever. Because it's our first time in the States, this tour's particularly important for us. We're hoping to dispel for all time the misconception that Asian dancers cannot do Western classical ballet." Steivel, who also does double duty as artistic director of Nevada Dance Theatre, shares responsibility at UB with Julia H. Moon, the company's prima ballerina and Reverend Moon's daughter-in-law. On a day-to-day basis, the company is overseen by Rev. Moon's close associate (and Julia's father), Bo Hi Pak, who, says Steivel, "loves ballet and is a tremendous help to all of us."

The company was founded in Seoul in 1984. From the start it set its sights on Western classics and leaned on Soviet masters, such as the Kirov's Oleg Vinogradov, to stage full-length productions of Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, and Swan Lake. These popular works, along with Steivel's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cinderella, have become mainstays of the company. Shorter ballets in the repertory include Balanchine's Allegro Brillante, Roy Tobias's Pulcinella, Choo-San Goh's In the Glow of the Night, and Daniel Levans's Concert Waltzes. The current tour will feature the popular evening-length Shim Chung ("The Blind Man's Daughter"), based on a Korean folk tale and set to music by Kevin Barber Pickard, which was originally commissioned for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

Repertory, however, is dictated largely by Korean tastes and Pak's preferences. "Unitard" ballets and sexually explicit works are out. So are works danced barefoot, including American modern and avant-garde.

"Bo Hi Pak, as well as Korean dance audiences, prefers classical story ballets," explains Steivel. "We couldn't do Four Temperaments, and Pak wasn't so sure about Who Cares? either, though we do it. He's not all that keen on Balanchine. Anyway, I don't think that Korean audiences are quite ready for some Western ballets, though things are changing gradually."

Familiar as he is with the subtleties and complexities of Asia's dance world, Steivel still found stewardship of UB an eye-opening experience. He had danced with such companies as Scottish Ballet, Roland Petit's Ballet de Marseilles, and the Houston and Chicago companies before becoming ballet master of Switzerland's Bern Ballet. He moved to Hong Kong in 1991 to direct Hong Kong Ballet. In 1995, deciding that the impending Chinese takeover would bring changes for the worse, he left to join UB.

Koreans, he soon learned, are totally different from the Chinese. "What struck me first was what a male-oriented society Korea is," Steivel says. "There were difficulties with partnering, getting the men onstage to back off and to properly present -- even to look at -- their partners. Company discipline was also very lax. The dancers come from the university, and the males are a special breed. There's no discipline out there. They couldn't understand why they had to do class. The first day, I walked into a Coppelia rehearsal where there were supposed to be fourteen couples. The women were all there, but no men! It took six months for me to drill into them that discipline is the main thing in ballet, and that if they have that, injuries are fewer. It's true. The injuries have decreased since I've been there."

Then there was the problem of Asian impassivity, the maintenance of a bland facade, whatever the dancers might be thinking. "I believe that I've given them a feeling of why they're dancing," says Steivel, "of what they want to do with their bodies. In Asian culture, children never hug. They're not allowed to show emotion -- truer of the Chinese, perhaps, but still true of Koreans. They can be taught mime, taught steps. But there's a difference between doing it and feeling it. It takes time to break down that restraint."

The most implacable problem facing male dancers in Korea, however, and therefore the well-being and maintenance of the company, is Korea's conscription policy. Any twenty-year-old male who is not in university must spend two-and-a-half years in the army. Says Steivel, "We have some guys doing the university and dancing at the same time." University students are exempt until they graduate, when they are inducted, usually at just the age that would wreck a promising career. The only way they can claim exemption is if a father was injured or killed in the war or, alternatively, if they can win a gold medal in one of the two dance competitions held each year. "Often it seems that the government's National Ballet Company -- which has a longer history and more influence -- dancers get the gold medals," Steivel notes. "There are claims that the competitions are unfairly run. It's hard to get the authorities to understand what's prime time for a dancer. We're trying to push through new laws allowing a few dancers from each company to stay out, but that will put the responsibility of choice on the company's shoulders -- not a very happy way of deciding things."