When Giselle realizes Albrecht has betrayed her, something in her gives way. Her gaze turns vacant, her body suspended between movement and stillness. Then she reaches out, as if trying to recover a memory just beyond her grasp. She makes a fleeting leap — and collides with Albrecht with a thud. In rehearsal, however, Lee Jae-woo is less the betrayer than a guide. As Lee Eun-seo works her way through Giselle's unraveling, he helps her explore the character's emotions and refine the smallest gest

Twice member Nayeon made a surprise appearance at Charlie Puth’s concert in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, joining the US singer-songwriter for a duet performance that has fueled speculation over a possible collaboration between the two artists. Puth kicked off the Asian leg of his “Whatever’s Clever!” world tour at Goyang Stadium on Sunday, marking his first solo concert in Korea in two years as well as his first stadium show in his 10-year career. During the show, Nayeon unexpectedly appeared onst

"People call me first generation only because they don't know. I'm actually not," said Saekja, 69, who is often described as one of Korea's first-generation transgender people, in an interview in Seoul on Sept. 30. There were others before her, she said, who wore makeup and entertained customers long before Seoul had bars that openly catered to them. "There were people before me, but back then there were no bars," she said. "They wore makeup, but there were no bars with signboards." Instead, the

About a year after pianist and educator Russell Sherman died, his widow and fellow pianist Byun Wha Kyung handed one of their students Sohn Minsoo a score Sherman had studied for years: Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier." "Take it home and have a look," she said, according to Sohn, 50, who is now on the faculty of the New England Conservatory, where Sherman and Byun taught for decades. The score was dense with Sherman's markings. There were "so many moments that moved me deeply" as he worked thr

GOYANG, Gyeonggi Province — Eight years was a long wait, but The Weeknd appeared determined to make up for lost time when he finally returned to Korea on Wednesday. For nearly two hours at Goyang Stadium in Gyeonggi Province, the Canadian singer rarely stopped singing. One song flowed almost immediately into the next as he powered through 39 tracks spanning more than a decade of his career, filling the vast stadium with a catalog that made him one of the world’s biggest pop stars. The Wednesday

The Jarasum Jazz Festival opens its 23rd edition Friday in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province. This year it has built its program around France, and its most unusual stage features artificial intelligence. The three-day festival runs over the Hangeul Day long weekend, with 64 acts from Korea and abroad performing on the small island of Jaraseom and at venues across the nearby Gapyeong. The main stage, Jazz Island, is situated on Jaraseom. In town, three free stages run Friday and Saturday: Party Stage

In 2008, a year after earning his master's degree at Juilliard, cellist Earl Lee found he could no longer play a C major scale. Focal dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions, took control of his left hand and brought his career as a cellist to an abrupt end. Fourteen years later, in July 2022, the 42-year-old Korean Canadian became the music director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. Last month, the orchestra announced it would extend his cont

At some festivals in South Korea this fall, a piece of paper can apparently do the waiting for you. A trail of A4-sized sheets of paper, each taped to the pavement, stretched for hundreds of meters along a sidewalk leading to the entrance of the Busan International Rock Festival on Friday, the first day of the three-day event. The sheets were marked with dates, phone numbers, the number of people in each group and notes indicating that the spots had been claimed. A similar scene unfolded in Inch

Classics and myths have a way of making us look at humanity and society across the ages. The buzz surrounding Christopher Nolan’s "The Odyssey," his adaptation of Homer’s epic, is a reminder that stories of heroes from thousands of years ago can still speak to urgent questions about the world today — including the fractures left by war and the sustainability of civilization. That is also why German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig reimagined ancient Greek mythology in "Anthropolis" (2023), a fi

Actors Choi Soo-jong and Ha Hee-ra, who have been married for 33 years, will share the stage for the first time in their careers. The couple will star in “Love Letters,” which runs from Nov. 5 to Dec. 27 at KT&G Daechi, Soo Company said. Written by American playwright A.R. Gurney, “Love Letters” follows Andy, a model student, and Melissa, a free spirit, through the letters they exchange over more than five decades, from childhood into old age. The play was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize

Korean theater-maker Koo Jaha received the International Ibsen Award at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway, on Saturday. He is the first Asian artist and the youngest person to win what is often regarded as the Nobel Prize of theater. Koo, 42, accepted the award and its 2.5 million Norwegian kroner ($263,000) in prize money from the Norwegian government before an audience of about 700 people. Established in 2007 in honor of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), the award has been pres

On the final day of a three-day conducting workshop in Seoul, Roberto Abbado had a message for the four young conductors standing before him: Stop thinking of yourselves as students. “I don’t consider you students — you are not students at all,” Abbado told them. “I’m just experience, that’s it.” It was a fitting summary of the approach Abbado, the eighth music director of the Korean National Symphony Orchestra, took at this year’s KNSO Conductor Workshop, held Sept. 14-16. Rather than trying to

The Seoul International Music Festival returns this year with a program that seeks musical connections across generations while bringing together leading musicians and overlooked pieces. Running Oct. 8-16 under the theme “Bravo My Life,” the festival will feature the Korean premiere of a work by Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909), the Korean debut of conductor Krzysztof Urbanski and a recital by 84-year-old Finnish cellist Arto Noras. For artistic director and composer Ryu Jeajoon,

For theater director Lee Jin-yeob, the stage is not a place where people simply sit and watch a performance. It is a place where strangers can meet. “What I want audiences to experience through my performances is the joy of being together,” Lee said in a group interview in Seoul on Tuesday. Her new participatory work, “Challa,” will be performed Oct. 17-18 at the National Theater of Korea as part of the Seoul Performing Arts Festival. The performance invites around 200 audience members onto the

Korea Herald correspondent NEW YORK — Since its 2024 premiere, “The Cherry Orchard” has traveled across Asia and Australia, but New York offers something the production has not yet encountered: a theater without a fixed stage. At Park Avenue Armory, the glass house at the center of the production remains much as it was in previous performances. But with the white walls and floor removed, the historic architecture of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall is now part of the view. “This stage has a differen