18 K-Arts & KNIGA Students Collect Awards at 2024 VKIBC

11 School of Dance students and 7 Korea National Institute for Gifted in Arts (KNIGA) students swept awards at the 2024 Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition (VKIBC), contributing to heightening the global status of Korea’s ballet. VKIBC, descended from the Boston International Ballet Competition, was named after ballerina Valentina Kozlova, who used to be a major dancer in prestigious international ballet companies, including Bolshoi Ballet. In this year’s competition, over 100 dancers from 13 countries went through 3 rounds of competition fighting for prizes, scholarships, contracts for admission to ballet companies, and opportunities to debut through gala stages.

The ballet directors who watched K-Arts students’ dancing, such as Sascha Radetsky (Artistic Director of the ABT Studio Company), Valentina Kozlova, and Era Jouravlev (Artistic Director at Joffrey Ballet School), mentioned, “Korea’s ballet education today is fit for excavating the world-class dancers. In this matter, K-Arts, especially, plays a significant role as it well preserves ballet traditions.” They emphasized, complimenting, “All world-class ballet companies should come and watch K-Arts’ performance. Their dancing sets the perfect model for showing trends in ballet around the world while the performance itself is of the best quality among all.”