Hae Shik Kim, Jackson Juror representing South Korea

If any one walks away with a citation for elegance at the 2002 Jackson Competition, it is likely to be Hae Shik Kim, former artistic director of the Korean National Ballet and now Dean, Conservatory of Dance, Korea National University of the Arts, in Seoul.

Hae Shik Kim was the first Korean who studied at The Royal Ballet School in London, where she arrived knowing two words, "Thank you." After graduating form Ewha Women’s University and studying With Sung Nam Lim, the Korean ballet pioneer, Hae Shik was awarded a scholarship by the Dong-Ah Newspaper in South Korea. Following a year at the Royal Ballet school and auxiliary classes with Gillian Ward and Barbara Fewster, the late Nicholas Beriosoff invited her to dance in the opera ensemble he directed at Zurich’s Opera House in Switzerland. After advancing to soloist status, Hae Shik opted to come to the United States to be near her sister.

San Francisco Ballet, the closest company in California to her sister, was not hiring Asians or non-school trained dancers at that time and Hae Shik tried her luck in New York City. American Ballet Theatre was interested but the first thing that Lucia Chase asked was, "My, dear, do you have a green card?" Hae Shik did not, but this was not a problem for Fernand Nault and Hae Shik found herself dancing for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. As a soloist in the company’s home city of Montreal, Hae Shik made The Acid Queen in Tommy a signature role.

These two-year sequences were followed by a seventeen-year residency in Fresno, California as the wife of Professor Joo Ick Kim. There she danced in the Fresno Civic Ballet and taught at Cal State University, Fresno. Modern dancer Leslie Friedman met her during a replacement assignment in the early Nineties and wrote a sparkling article in Dance Teacher Now about the hidden gem in The Raisin Capital of the World. When Jana Kurova started her three-year presentation of World Stars Gala in Prague, I recommended Hae Shik as one of the Gala’s permanent artistic advisors.

In the interim between article and the 1995 inception of the World Stars Gala, Hae Shik was invited to become artistic director of The Korean National Ballet. Hae Shik’s understated determination wrought changes, which were supported and abetted by Joo Ick Kim, her husband. The first such change was a new floor. The Cultural Ministry underestimated Hae Shik’s persistence. "I sat in the office every day until they gave it to me." At the time of my 1995 visit, the Ballet company rehearsed in a building where the Korean National Folk Company practiced across the hallway. Occasionally, the sound of the hourglass gourd drum, the changgo, challenged the 19th century melodies coming from class or the piano in rehearsal.

The Korean National Ballet repertoire then included the full-length Corsaire and La Bayadere. Hae Shik also invited Fernand Nault from Canada to mount his production of Carmina Burana. The company’s season was comparatively short, but Hae Shik utilized Marina Kondratieva from the Bolshoi as repetiteur. In Bayadere, several young students danced who were completing their studies at the Bolshoi and the Kirov schools. One became Korea’s first Jackson medallist in 1998, Yi-jung Kim, the same year Hae Shik became the first Korean to serve on the Jackson competition jury.

Right after my visit, Hae Shik was named director of a newly formed Conservatory of Dance for Korea National University of the Arts (KNUA). She began to build the curriculum, which includes the gamut of Dance concerns; modern, choreography, and dance theory in addition to classical ballet and a familiarity with the Korean classical tradition. One of her points of pride in the new KNUA facility in the Seoul Arts Center is the exercise and therapy room for the dancers with virtually every major system available to support the strength of the students, and rehabilitation in case of injury. Jana Kurova was invited to teach at the Center.

By 2000, Hae Shik in her role as Dean, had also organized a World Dance 2000 Seoul for the Asian portion of The World Dance Alliance. The two-day Gala she organized. In connection with it included such artists as Manuel Legris of the Paris Opera; Yuan Yuan Tan and Roman Rykine from San Francisco Opera, along side the two Korean gold medalists from Paris, and principals from Reverend Moon’s Universal Ballet. Juhyun Jo, then with Washington Ballet, appeared in a singularly supple ballet titled Savannah. Jo left Washington Ballet to study at KNUA for a teaching certificate and is serving as the coach for the three South Korean junior competitors.

When Hae Shik made a brief visit to San Francisco Ballet in early March she informed me, "We are having another Gala in Seoul July 27-28, and I hope we are able to present one every two years. It is important that Korean audiences and our students get to see quality dancers from all over the world." This Gala, however, is only part of Hae Shik Kim’s long-range view for ballet in the one-time Hermit Kingdom.

Under Hae Shik Kim’s direction the South Korean reputation for building classical dancers is being shaped. Any one here at the Jackson Competition sees that the three junior competitors from South Korea are being measured against the strides made in western classical ballet by the People’s Republic of China and Japan. To solidify these gains, Hae Shik is currently contemplating models for a competition in Seoul, weighing the necessary practicalities of financing, practical logistics, frequency and duration against the models she has both observed and experienced as a relatively new, but seasoned international ballet juror.

Politically, Korea has sometimes been called The Shrimp Between Two Whales, i.e. China and Japan. With Hae Shik Kim in charge of the balletic version of that analogy, that watery crustacean is a mighty lively jumbo variety.

This piece is part of Ballet.co's overall Jackson Competition coverage. The competition runs from the 15th to the 30th June 2002 and we plan daily reports to keep you in touch:
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