Choir meets ballet: Seoul Metropolitan Chorus pairs with Yun Byul for 'Carmina Burana'

If the Seoul Metropolitan Chorus' choice of dance partner for "Carmina Burana" is any indication of what — and who — is hot in Korean dance, then the answer this time is Yun Byul Ballet Company.

Fifteen years ago, when the chorus last staged Carl Orff's secular cantata, it worked with b-boys; back then, Korean crews were sweeping the international breaking circuit. This time, the chorus has turned to a young ballet troupe whose debut work, "Gat," named after the traditional Korean horsehair hat, marked its arrival on the contemporary ballet scene less than two years ago with striking youthful force.

That youthful energy filled the company's studio on Wednesday as dancers ran through sequences for their May 21 performance at the Sejong Center.

The choice of pairing wasn't incidental. "'Carmina Burana' with dance is, in a sense, the version that best honors the composer's original intent," said Lee Yong-man, the chorus's artistic director, after Wednesday's rehearsal, noting that Orff's full subtitle calls the work a "secular cantata for orchestra, stage settings, movement, choir and soloists."

Movement, he added, was part of the score from the start — even if most performances since the 1937 premiere have set it aside.

Lee's selection of Yun Byul Ballet, in particular, came after he saw one of the company's gala performances last year. What struck him, he said, was the breadth of its thinking.

"Most ballet galas lean on a few famous soloists," he said. "Yun Byul split the work across the whole company, and every section had ideas that really sparkled."

That ensemble-driven approach mattered for a work like "Carmina Burana," which puts nearly 90 choir members alone on the stage. "It's a massive piece, and audiences could easily feel overwhelmed," Lee said.

"But if the quality is there, you can give them something to watch and something to listen to at the same time."

For Yun Byul, the company's founder and namesake, the cantata had long been on a personal list of works he hoped to take on one day, alongside Ravel's Bolero and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.

Yun had danced to "Carmina Burana" once before, with a company in Uruguay. He said what stayed with him wasn't the choreography.

"There's this thing that comes at you from behind when you dance to choral music -- a shiver. I wanted my dancers, the dancers I love, to feel it too."

"Carmina Burana" is the company's second major project, following its debut "Gat," which paired classical ballet vocabulary with the distinctly Korean horsehair hat worn by Joseon-era scholars. The same fusion-driven instinct, Yun said, carries into the new work.

"If we had staged one of the ten great classics, the national company or Universal Ballet would have done it better," he said. "'Gat' was something we built ourselves, fusing the most Korean of things with the most Western of forms, ballet. That's something we enjoy doing, and something we're good at."

The collaboration carries strategic weight for the chorus, too. Choral music has its devoted following in Korea, Lee said, but that following has limits.

"If a hall seats 1,500 people, the same 1,500 keep coming back," he said. "Meanwhile, Seoul has nine million residents. That leaves 8,998,500 people with no connection to us at all. That's why I think about collaboration constantly and it's how we reach beyond our regulars."

Those two ambitions — the chorus's drive to expand its audience, Yun Byul's commitment to a distinctive reading of the work — converged in sheer scale.

The full production runs to nearly 200 performers. Alongside the Seoul Metropolitan Chorus and Yun Byul Ballet are the National Chorus of Korea, the Seoul Metropolitan Boys' and Girls' Choir and the Hankyung Arte Philharmonic, with soprano Kang Hye-jung, baritone Yum Kyung-mook and tenor Kang Dong-myung as soloists.

Once Yun understood what was being asked, he expanded the troupe from around 20 dancers to 30 and brought them on as permanent members rather than guests, so he could rehearse them in full.

Those 30 dancers, in the hands of the company's choreographer Park So-yun, the creative force behind "Gat," become small humans moving fiercely inside a vast wheel of destiny. "Some are turning the wheel," Park said. "Some are resisting it. Some are being swept along with it."

One of the more striking choices comes in the "roasted swan" number, where Orff's score gives voice to a swan being turned on a spit. For a ballet dancer, Park noted, the swan is the most sacred icon of the form -- Odette of "Swan Lake" is what every ballerina dreams of dancing. Watching that same swan end up on the grill, she said, was "very interesting."

"Even the most luminous moments don't last. I wanted to play with that irony," she added.

"Carmina Burana" takes the stage on May 21 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.