A Real-Life Korean Billy Elliot

If there is one artform that I’m very distant from, it’s dance. Not to say that I’m particularly close to music, paintings, architecture, designs, sculptures, and what have you, the art of dancing never entered my boundary of interests. My most profound experience in dancing prior to this past year probably was watching the wonderful Billy Elliot years ago, a story of a young boy wanting to become a ballerino in a rural British town. That should tell you how ignorant I am about the artform.

My wife isn’t into dancing either, none of my or my wife’s parents, and neither of my grandparents, on either side. Yet, my middle child is into it, hard core. She’s never had any formal training, and she started with K-pop dancing like many early teens would, but it evolved into an *elevated* form, dare I say. My first and youngest child? Er… not so much.

Recently, she performed at a local production with her dance friends at Santa Monica College’s (Eli) Broad Stage. She also choreographed a piece—a modern interpretation on the traditional Korean dance to the music of an indie Korean singer songwriter Lim Kim (김예림). Here’s her 6-minute piece if you’re interested (she’s the one in the middle at the beginning and at the end).

Naturally, because of my daughter, I started paying a tiny bit more attention to the world of dance. And right on cue (funny how some things happen serendipitously), I got introduced to Kim Ki-min (김기민), a principal ballerino at one of the top five ballet companies in the world, the Mariinsky Ballet of Russia.

Uhh… an Asian, no, a Korean principal ballerino at a world-renowned ballet company? Either he has connections like no Russian ballerino does (not very likely and not the type of position where connection matters, I reckon), or he must be really, really good. This is one minute long—you might as well watch the whole thing.

As great a feat as this is, he’s NOT the subject of this post.

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Years ago, there was a TV program called 영재발굴단, something like “Searching for the Next Genius.” It wasn’t just about the academics, though. The show featured prodigies in music, fine art, foreign language, literature, athletics, and etc.

You could probably guess that there were a lot of crazy Korean parents who put undue pressure on their own kids after watching the show. Deservedly so, it was under constant criticism for making kids feel inferior and giving the outside counseling and private tutoring institutions too much influence over the Korean education system. The show ran for about 4 years and was cancelled in 2019.

I never watched it—too much cliche. Overbearing parents, deathly pale kids who look like they haven’t seen light of day for months, the so-called experts who act and talk like they know everything… It’s a recipe for very irritating TV.

For its 100th episode special, the producers of the TV show collaborated with the Billy Elliot the Musical team from UK to run an audition for the Korean version on stage. The musical was hiring 3 title characters (plus an understudy) between the ages of 8 and 12. Of some 600 boys, the 7 finalists were…

The TV show compiled footages of the 7 boys’ training and preparing for the actual audition in front of the British casting directors for over a year, along with a short profile of each of them.

They all had a story to tell, where they come from, what kind of background they had, what their strengths and weaknesses were…

The story of then-12-year old Jeon Min-chul (전민철, bottom left in the above picture) caught a lot of attention back then, I remember, because his was a lot like that of the actual Billy Elliot character.

Min-chul’s dad didn’t seem pleased at all with his son’s liking of the ballet and dancing into the late hours of the night. He questioned his sobbing son in the TV episode, what are you going to do when you grow up as a dancer? No male dancer can succeed. You’re doing well in school, so you should concentrate on your academics.

** notes (and possible spoiler): The dad did not seem threatening nor abusive at all. He never raised his voice. In fact, it almost seemed as if the TV producers put him up to questioning his son’s dreams and making Min-chul cry. Min-chul has said that unlike how his dad was portrayed in the TV show, he was always very supportive.

“his dad’s worries and Min-chul’s tears keep coming back”

“I want to be the most Billy-like Billy.”

“Billy’s dad unapproving of his son’s dancing is…”

“…similar to how my parents were opposed to me dancing, I felt.”

Damian Jackson, Director of Choreography for Billy Elliot, the Musical. “We haven’t failed once at casting the right person.”

But there was a huge problem for Min-chul. At 12 years of age, he was the oldest and the tallest of the 7 finalists, and the British producers had a hard limit on the maximum height of the 3 boys to be chosen for the lead role, 150 centimeters (just short of 5 feet).

And his voice had already started to change. It was a double whammy for Min-chul.

So, after over a year of audition prep, Min-chul didn’t make it. The above 4 boys (the left 3 were the youngest of the 7 finalists + the understudy) were chosen for the lead role.

The Korean producers of the musical actually came to Min-chul’s house to console him and tell him that the only reason why he wasn’t chosen was his height.

“Was it fun?” “Yes.”

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That was 8 years ago, and I had forgotten all about it—really had no interest in following up with any of it.

Until I was watching something with the abovementioned Kim Ki-min at the Mariinsky Ballet. As I was watching some highlights of Kim’s solo performance in awe (how could a man jump and float like that, all the while maintaining perfect balance, as if he were weightless for a few seconds?), Kim talked about the newest addition to the Mariinsky Ballet, another Korean ballerino.

Two Korean ballerino soloists in Mariinsky? And for the worst surprise of the day—it happened to be Jeon Min-chul, now 20 years old.

That little doe-eyed boy who had to be cursing at his height 8 years ago is now 184 centimeters tall (6 ft 1 in), and has become the real-life Billy Elliot, exactly as he once said he hoped of becoming.

Imagine the chills I had that day…

Min-chul apparently never stopped dancing, and with his father’s full support, he went on to Korea National University of Arts (한국예술종합학교, “the Korean Juilliard”) and from there, he got the attention of the Mariinsky (probably Kim Ki-min’s success and ticket power had something to do with it) and was invited to join the famed ballet company.

I can’t say that I’ll be following his career, but at least for a day, I was a fan. A big one.