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- The 16th Korea Ballet Festival, Seoul 1 May - 21 June, includes Wise Ballet Company’s “Frida”
The 16th Korea Ballet Festival, Seoul 1 May - 21 June, includes Wise Ballet Company’s “Frida”
27 April 2026
The 16th Korea Ballet Festival (BAFEKO), the country's largest dance festival, will open on the first day of May. Leading ballet companies and major troupes will present a total of 14 performances through June 21 at venues including the Opera House at Seoul Arts Center, CJ Towol Theater at Seoul Arts Center, and Sejong Center M Theater in central Seoul. The festival offers a chance to experience the classical beauty of traditional ballet alongside the freshness and innovation of creative and contemporary ballet.
This year's theme is "Resonance," which includes performances in various scales and hues. Kim Joo-won, the festival's artistic director, said, "Like metronomes moving at different speeds suddenly falling into one beat through resonance, this will be a stage that reflects one another's differences through art and connects them with a quiet but profound echo."
"Frida" by Wise Ballet Company infuses modern ballet with the vibrant vitality and creative spirit of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. It reveals a resilient vitality that turned despair into art by reinterpreting in dance the many traumatic events of her life, such as polio, a car accident, infertility, and her destructive love with her husband Diego Rivera.
The events she went through are being recreated in chronological order in the ballet:
Chapter 1. Wondered Deer
Frida Kahlo, an enterprising female figure: The birth and growth of Frida Kahlo, who overcame the physical pain caused by a spine-piercing accident through art.
Chapter 2. The Embrace Love
Respect and love for my husband Diego. Marriage and happiness
Chapter 3. The Broken Pillar
The pain of losing a child, Diego's infidelity and betrayal, and emotional wounds
Chapter 4. Self Portrait
Over 50 self-portraits, ceaselessly depicting his painful self, sublimating the suffering of life into art.
Chapter 5. Viva La Vida!
The vitality life bestows at the moment of saying goodbye to the end of life. May life be eternal! The final exhibition and the final artwork.
The Wise Ballet Company’s “Frida” will be on stage on June 3rd at Seoul Arts Center CJ Towol Theater.
Info and logistics at the link below.
