From right, Saori Hara, Yeom Da-yeon and Yeom Ji-hoon pose for the camera at the Ballet West ballet academy in Jongno District, central Seoul. [JOONGANG SUNDAY]
At 17, ballerina Yeom Da-yeon is heading to the Boston Ballet as a full company member in late July, bypassing both the apprenticeship phase that typically follows a strong showing at the Prix de Lausanne and the arts-school pipeline that produced most of her peers.
Yeom placed second and won the audience favorite award at the 54th Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland in February. Past Korean winners include Kang Sue-jin, the recently retired Korea National Ballet director, who became the first Korean to receive a Lausanne scholarship in 1985 and joined the Stuttgart Ballet a year later at age 19. Yeom is skipping that one-year gap. Boston has offered her a full company contract at a rate well above the standard rate for a new hire.
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She has also never set foot in a specialized arts school. Yeom was homeschooled by her parents, both former ballet dancers. Her father, Yeom Ji-hoon, is a former Royal New Zealand Ballet soloist and former Korea National Ballet master, and her mother, Saori Hara, is a Japanese-born ballerina.
