Choi Tae-ji calls, and Cha Jin-yup and Yoon Hye-jin answer

Life becomes dance. Behind the polished surface of a finished performance lie the moments that never make it onstage — decades of relentless effort stacked layer upon layer, deeply human stories tangled together, and the trust and mutual respect that made each artist grow. Now, more than 30 years of shared history between Choi Tae-ji — a towering figure in Korean ballet and former artistic director of the National Ballet Company — and two of her most celebrated students, Yoon Hye-jin and Cha Jin-yup, is coming to the stage.

"I wanted to go beyond presenting a perfect finished product and instead archive the lives and backstage stories of dancers who endured so much to create it," Choi said.

Speaking recently at a studio in Gangnam, Seoul, she explained the vision behind "Choi Tae-ji's Ballet Open Rehearsal," a series she hosts and leads as artistic director. The show, which premiered last year, weaves together candid conversations with artists and their performances. Last year's edition featured ballerina Kim Ju-won alongside Kang Gyeong-ho, Lee Eun-won and Lee Hyeon-jun. Choi said the event is meant to be "a space where people speak from the heart, honestly, as if talking in their own home."

This year's featured artists are Yoon Hye-jin — a former National Ballet Company member who also danced with the Ballets de Monte-Carlo under world-renowned choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot — and Cha Jin-yup, a choreographer celebrated as a star of the dance world and now regarded as a leading master of contemporary dance.

At the center of the three artists' relationship is Choi's vision and deep affection for her students.

Choi and Yoon's bond deepened during their years together at the National Ballet Company. Recalling the younger Yoon, Choi said ballerinas capable of character acting are rare in Korea, but Yoon already possessed unmistakable charisma and a singular stage presence during her time with the company. "Whether playing the mother in 'Romeo and Juliet' or Myrtha in 'Giselle,' she was a dancer who commanded every eye in the house the moment she stepped onstage," Choi said.

It was Choi who gave Yoon her principal debut, and Choi who encouraged her to audition for the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, ultimately placing her under Jean-Christophe Maillot. After a hiatus of more than a decade, Yoon's return to the stage also came down to a single sentence from her mentor.

"Hye-jin, don't you want to be onstage again?"

Yoon said she could not refuse after running into Choi at a performance venue and hearing those words. Widely known to the public as actor Uhm Tae-woong's wife and as a social media personality, Yoon had been a sought-after name in dance circles as well, with many invitations arriving at a time when star power was in high demand. She had turned them all down. But Choi was different. "Honestly, at first I agreed only to do a talk segment, but the director kept adding things one by one until she had me dancing too," Yoon said. "She is not simply a director to me — she is someone so close she came to pay her respects when my parents passed away."

"When she told me she would bring me back to the stage no matter what and let people know ballerina Yoon Hye-jin again, I forgot my fear and had no choice but to say yes."

Choi's connection with Cha Jin-yup — now one of Korea's most prominent contemporary dancers — stretches back more than 30 years. "She was like a baby student I started teaching ballet when she was in middle school," Choi said with a laugh.

Even after Cha pursued contemporary dance, Choi never let go of their bond. For Cha, Choi was the teacher who laid the foundation of her artistry and an object of deep, abiding respect. In high school, Cha entered the Dong-A Dance Competition — then the most prestigious contest of its era — and won the gold prize in the contemporary dance category, crediting Choi in her acceptance remarks. Later, while Cha was studying in the United Kingdom, Choi invited her to contribute choreography to the National Ballet Company's production of "Prince Hodong," steering the dancer toward a life as a creator.

"Just watching that quiet, practice-obsessed child grow into an unrivaled choreographer and artistic director in the contemporary dance world makes my heart race," Choi said. "I was also genuinely curious how she came to carry such charisma — I wanted to sit down and talk with her about it."

Yoon and Cha are well-known as close friends in the dance world. The two go back 30 years, having been classmates in the inaugural cohort of the National Ballet Company's culture school program during elementary school and later sharing the same dance hagwon as seniors and juniors.

In Yoon's memory, Cha was "the pretty, sharp older student who memorized choreography impossibly fast." Yoon said she idolized Cha from childhood, captivated by the sight of her sweating through practice. "Later, watching her expand into contemporary dance and choreograph primal movement connected to life itself, I came to hold a deep respect for her — a true artist with a depth that cannot be approached lightly," she said.

Through Cha's eyes, Yoon was a wild and stylish dancer who broke the mold of classical ballet. "Behind her dazzling star quality, Hye-jin is someone whose words and actions align with an honesty and sincerity that few can match," Cha said. "Her craftsmanship — training every day in private to sculpt her leg lines — is a profound source of both inspiration and self-reflection, even for me as a contemporary dancer."

The three artists' long shared history will be rewritten onstage. Yoon goes first, performing Saturday at Gangdong Arts Center, followed by Cha in November at the same venue. Yoon will bring the physical pain of lacing up pointe shoes again in her 40s — and the effort to overcome it — while Cha will explore the value of "the laborious time the human body passes through" even in the age of AI, drawing on her "Wonhyeong-haneun Mom (Archetypal Body)" series, a project tracing the essence of dance and the body. Both works grow out of three decades of witnessing each other's lives.

"Even when I was away from the stage, I never let go of the ballet barre — but the first day I put on pointe shoes after so long, I was devastated, thinking, 'This is a disaster, why did I agree to this,'" Yoon said. To reclaim the body and muscle definition of her performing years, she combined an hour of personal training, ballet and running every day.

The program will feature works associated with Yoon alongside "Dove la Luna," a piece choreographed by Maillot for the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Principal dancer Ahn Jae-yong will fly in from the Ballets de Monte-Carlo for the occasion. "When I started seeing the familiar line of my legs come back in the mirror as I practiced in pointe shoes every day, I was moved to tears," Yoon said. "There are moments when I think, 'Why am I doing this at nearly 50?' — but when the music starts, my body moves. I pushed myself as hard as I could to meet the minimum standard of respect a dancer owes the stage."

Cha's program is, in her words, "a time to retrace ballet — the root of my contemporary art — and look back on the arc of my life."

"In a rapidly changing digital age, there are values we must not lose and must recover," she said. "A performance is not something you can choose as quickly as a short-form video — it is a process of staying in that space, passing through and enduring the time that unfolds together. I hope that as audiences watch the open rehearsal — seeing the daily, unglamorous work of tending to one's body in places no one can see — they move beyond mere appreciation and find themselves asking: how carefully am I tending to my own life and body?"