On 10 June, 2021, the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet (POB) named South Korean ballet icon Sae Eun Park as the danseuse étoile, or principal dancer. With this announcement, Park became the first Asian dancer to be given the highest title in the Paris Opera Ballet’s 352-year history.
When the 31-year-old Korean dancer was announced as the top ballerina following her performance as the female lead in Romeo And Juliet at Opera Bastille, Park cried with joy as the audience delivered a standing ovation.
It symbolised Park’s years of patience, skill, perfection and determination since joining the Paris Opera Ballet — the world’s oldest ballet institution — just over a decade ago.
Park was born in 1989 in Seoul to a pianist mother while her father was an executive at the Korean tech giant Samsung. Her inclination towards ballet developed at a very young age.
At the Paris Opera Ballet, she rose through the company’s ranks by winning its gruelling competitions.
Her achievement is also significant for those championing diversity, especially because she is one of the two foreign-born étoiles currently associated with the company.
As part of the Paris Opera Ballet, she has performed in John Cranko’s Onegin as Tatiana and Nureyev’s Swan Lake as Odette/Odile. Benjamin Millepied’s La Nuit s’Achève, Justin Peck’s Entre Chien et Loup and Alexei Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas are among her other performances.
Here are eight things you should know about Sae Eun Park.
Park was about to leave France when POB selected her
The Korean ballet dancer arrived in France from her home country to attend an open audition held by the POB. There was not much planning involved in her decision, and she candidly confessed in a Pointe magazine interview that she “didn’t have any expectations—or regrets—after finishing my audition.”
At the time, she hardly knew French and the hotel room she stayed in was so small that she could not even properly stretch her legs.
When she was about to leave the country, the POB called her, asking if she would accept a one-year offer with them, she added.
“I said ‘Yes!’ without any hesitation,” Park told the magazine.
She was called ‘Korean girl’ at POB
During a press conference at the InterContinental Seoul COEX in Seoul in 2019, Park revealed she was called “Korean girl” by people when she joined the POB, but they hardly knew anything about her or her country of origin.
It was when she started making progress at the POB that interest in her and Korea spiked among people.
“For example, people asked me what I think about North Korea, saying they saw the news on TV, or asked me if there is a Korean restaurant I go to often in France,” she said.
Park is not the first Korean at POB
She is certainly the best among the current crop of Asian ballet dancers, but there was a Kim Yong-geol before her who made it big at the POB.
In 2005, Kim became the first Asian soloist of the French ballet company. He was also Park’s teacher at the Korea National University of Arts.
Kim was so dedicated to his craft that the French already developed a positive image of Koreans as exceptionally hard-working — a fact that Park noticed when she joined in 2011.
“As Professor Kim Yong-geol showed his commitment as a dancer, French colleagues had an expectation of Korean dancers to be hard-working when I first joined,” Park said at the InterContinental Seoul COEX, adding, “They told me that they were convinced of the image of Koreans as hard workers seeing me.”
The first Korean woman to be given a permanent place at POB
In 2012, a year after Sae Eun Park joined the POB’s quadrille as a supernumerary, she was made a permanent member — the first Korean woman to get the distinction.
What makes her achievement more incredible is that she was the only one out of the 130 who auditioned to have been selected permanently. The simple reason was that she came first.
An injury led her to depression
During a practice session in 2015, a dancer accidentally kicked Sae Eun Park in the forehead. The injury was grave, and she had to undergo cosmetic surgery. Due to the incident, she failed to clear that year’s promotional exams.
Depression followed, and she entered into a state where she didn’t even look at herself in the mirror for a while because of the scar from the injury.
However, she didn’t give up on her desire to perform and succeed. She kept dancing, which helped her emerge out of her state.
“You have only two options anyway: You either give up or just keep trying,” AFP quoted her as saying in a 2021 report.
Commenting on her becoming an étoile, Kim Yong-geol underlined that the promotional system at the POB is “ruthless”.
“It can make you feel completely shattered. The very last survivors of that gruelling process become étoiles. I think she has accomplished something that’s impossible,” he said.
Park knows both Vaganova and French styles
Vaganova is a Russian ballet dancing style with a focus on the upper body while the French style is more about the feet.
Starting ballet at the age of 10, Sae Eun Park was initially trained in the Vaganova style in South Korea but shifted to the French style under Kim Yong-geol’s mentorship.
She previously told AFP that the French style “came naturally” to her.
She also recalled that her former Russian teacher told her during a performance at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg in 2015 that even though the styles are different, “the important thing is to express what is within you.”
Her skill at Vaganova helped her gain an edge over those who perfected only the French style because the Russian style emphasises more on expressions and flexibility.
The youngest dancer in Korean National Ballet to get starring roles
Before joining the POB, Sae Eun Park won a Prix de Lausanne scholarship in 2007 to join the American Ballet Theatre II (ABT II), now known as the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company. After one-and-half years at ABT II, Park returned to South Korea in 2009 and joined the Korea National Ballet, becoming its youngest soloist there.
Though she initially wanted to join the Dutch National Ballet, she changed her mind and went to Korea. An inspiration to do so was the videos of POB performances that were on her YouTube watchlist.
In fact, Park told Pointe that contrary to the general perception that watching others perform might affect a dancer’s personal style, she observed others to refine her skills.
Winner of four prestigious ballet honours
In 2006, a teenage Park won a silver at the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson. Since there was no gold for the year, Park was the champion.
At the age of 17 in 2007, she won the Grand Prix de Lausanne. Three years later, Park won gold at the 2010 Varna International Ballet Competition in Bulgaria, becoming the first Korean to have won three of the top four awards. Moreover, these were already in her bag before she joined the POB. It was then that fans popularly started calling her the “queen of concours”.
Eventually, she won the Benois de la Danse in Moscow, Russia — an award for the best female dancer in 2018, which she won with her performance in “Diamonds” from choreographer George Balanchine’s Jewels trilogy. The award made her the fourth Korean to win the prize.
(Main and Featured images: Joel Saget/AFP)