At age 17, Yeom Da-yeon heads to Boston Ballet as dancer parents offer words of advice

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At age 17, Yeom Da-yeon heads to Boston Ballet as dancer parents offer words of advice

Published: 01 Jun. 2026, 07:00

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

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.

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.

Yeom Ji-hoon and Hara met in New York in the early 2000s. He had moved to the United States to chase larger stages after a stint as a soloist with the Seoul-based Universal Ballet. She had trained at the Joffrey Ballet School and danced with the El Paso Ballet in Texas and the Connecticut Ballet in Hartford, Connecticut, waitressing on the side. Hara had trained as a child in Hokkaido alongside Tetsuya Kumakawa, the former Royal Ballet principal often cited as one of the greatest male dancers Japan has produced.

Yeom Da-yeon during her ″Giselle″ performance in 2025 [KOREA BALLET STARS]

Yeom Da-yeon has been performing at a professional level for more than a year. She danced the title role in "Giselle" with the Korea Ballet Stars last year at 16, the country's youngest dancer in the role, and has since taken central roles in the M Ballet Company's "Ahn Jung-geun, a Dance in the Heaven" and the contemporary work "Mondrian." The variation she danced at Lausanne, "Esmeralda," is the same one she first performed in the eighth grade, when her parents say her potential began to show.

Before her late-July departure, Yeom has five more performances to finish in Korea, including the "Seongnam Ballet Stars" gala. She is scheduled to make her Boston Ballet debut in a contemporary program in September and join a company tour to Paris in October.

The JoongAng Sunday team sat down with Yeom and her parents at home.

The following interview excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

From left, Yeom Da-yeon, Yeom Ji-hoon and Saori Hara pose for the camera at the Ballet West ballet academy in Jongno District, central Seoul. [JOONGANG SUNDAY]

Q. Were you aiming for the Royal Ballet?

A. Yeom Da-yeon: I had only ever dreamed of the Royal, so going to Boston was unexpected. But the offer was so good, and I thought I could gain more experience there, so I chose Boston.

Yeom Ji-hoon: The right place is the one that values her. I looked at Boston's recent repertoire, and the balance is ideal. They mix work by the hottest choreographers right now with the Ashton pieces Da-yeon has always wanted to dance and the Balanchine works that define American ballet. That's the biggest selling point.

You're going straight from homeschool to working as a professional abroad. How do you feel about that?

Yeom Da-yeon: I've been working with adult dancers on professional stages since last year, so going to a company actually feels more natural than going to school.

Hara: I'm worried, but I left home at 19, too. You only become independent once you leave, and her time has just come a bit earlier. Unlike the kids who go to school dorms, she's a professional, so we need to find her an apartment. Rent is so expensive. I asked the company to help find her a roommate.

What was it like playing 'Giselle' and its mad scene at 16?

Yeom Ji-hoon: Her partner, a Universal Ballet principal, was so busy that they could barely rehearse together. She struggled, standing alone in front of an imaginary partner. I brought in a junior of mine who studied theater to coach the acting for a while.

Yeom Da-yeon: It's a story about love, and I had no experience, so at first I didn't even know where to begin. I had to put myself in the situation, picture meeting my partner's eyes and stay inside the story moment by moment. When I finally met my real partner, sharing the choreography and the emotion was difficult. I can still see the gaps when I watch the video now.

Did Da-yeon show promise from the start?

Yeom Ji-hoon: When she was younger, I wasn't sure. She was short, and her physique wasn't great. She didn't have an obvious natural gift either, but I thought she shone when she did 'Esmeralda' in eighth grade.

Hara: At that competition, she did four turns onstage, which she had never even managed in practice. I was stunned. At her age, I couldn't even do two clean. Stage nerves usually make these things harder, but she just delivered.

Yeom Da-yeon: I think I had no fear when I was younger. That experience actually gave me fear afterward, but it's also the work that got me through to this point. 'Esmeralda' is the hardest and the best (laughs).

From left, 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]

Is it hard to teach your own child?

Yeom Ji-hoon: Part of it is that we didn't have the money to send her elsewhere, so I taught her myself. Ballet costs money. I grew up in a comfortable family in Masan and was able to study in Seoul and abroad, but after my father's business went bankrupt during the Asian financial crisis, ballet became a matter of survival.

A knee injury ended my dancing career, and I scraped by teaching and choreographing at an arts high school. I taught my heart out in working-class neighborhoods just to support the family. We've moved 10 times in our 20 years of marriage, and we're still struggling. After getting married, I have not enjoyed dancing once. I didn't want Da-yeon to do ballet at all.

Hara: People assume that because her parents are dancers, she was raised like a princess. Not at all. Mr. Yeom was even diagnosed with cancer at one point. The hardship would fill a book (laughs).

Are you projecting your unfulfilled dreams onto your daughter?

Hara: She's already moved so far past me that she's in a completely different world. It's not just technique. It's her star quality and her expression.

Yeom Ji-hoon: My eye is so demanding that I only criticized her and never recognized what she had. That changed after 'Giselle.' Once I admitted she was special, I decided I had to raise her to be even more special, and I pushed her hard. It bloomed at Lausanne. I told her, 'You are a child blessed by heaven. Give up your private pleasures and use your talent to bring joy to audiences.' I now feel a sense of mission to raise Korea's next world-class ballerina after Kang Sue-jin. It may be a burden for her, but I can't help it. I'm the one who discovered her gift (laughs).

From left, 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]

Yeom Da-yeon will debut at the Boston Ballet in September and join a company tour in October. Do you have any parting words for her?

Yeom Ji-hoon: Just escaping me will be a relief for her (laughs). But she'll be ambitious, and she has her own expectations, so she'll probably push twice as hard as usual. That's when you get hurt. I got hurt a lot. It won't be easy, but she has to let some pressure off. I'll keep nagging. Don't try to be too good. Give yourself some slack.

Hara: I'm excited because I think she's going to have so much fun. The veterans at the Boston Ballet are wonderful. She'll learn ballet and life from them. I'm jealous (laughs).

Yeom Da-yeon: I'll send my parents a video every day from there, the way they've watched me every day until now.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY YOO JU-HYUN [[email protected]]