The Universal Ballet was founded in Seoul, South Korea in 1984. One of only four professional ballet companies in South Korea, the company performs a repertory that includes many full length classical story ballets, together with shorter contemporary works and original full-length Korean ballets created especially for the company. The company is supported by followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, with Moon's daughter-in-law Julia H. Moon, who was the company's prima ballerina until 2001, now serving as General Director.
According to the New York Times the Universal Ballet is considered to be one of Asia's leading ballet companies. Robert Black wrote in The Daily Telegraph:
- The company has 73 dancers, two-thirds Korean, many Russian, all dancing with that long-legged clarity of the Kirov but with a pearly, Asian softness of attack. Julia Moon herself is a lovely ballerina, a modest and gracious woman of 37, who seems overawed by her dual responsibilities as ballerina-in-chief and general director.
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or ballet:
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)