I saw Universal Ballet’s Swan Lake on 15 August at the Seoul Arts Center, and I came home and wrote this immediately.
Partly because the ending was not what I’d expected.
Mild spoilers below, flagged before they arrive.
Getting there
Seoul Arts Center (예술의전당) 2406 Nambusunhwan-ro, Seocho-gu, Seoul
By metro: Line 3, Nambu Terminal Station, exit 4-2, then about 650m on foot.
Parking: first 30 minutes free. Rates and lot locations are on the official site.
One for Korean residents: tickets qualify for the cultural expense income deduction.
Inside the building — three things worth knowing
The Opera Theatre entrance is on B1, not the ground floor
If you walk in from the main entrance, you arrive at basement level 1. Take the lift up to the ground floor to collect your tickets.
I did this in the wrong order and walked it twice. Learn from me.
There’s a lounge if you’re early
The CJ Lounge is a good place to sit if you’ve arrived with time to spare. Which you should — see above re: walking it twice.
You can buy opera glasses in the convenience store
This is the tip I’d most want someone to have told me.
There’s an emart24 on B1, and they sell opera glasses. I went up to the ground floor for my tickets, found out about this, and went back down. Again.
How to actually use them, since nobody explains this and I got it wrong: the rings marked 1 and 2 adjust focus. You hold 2 and 3 to your eyes. I did it the other way round and spent a while wondering why nothing was magnified.
Verdict on opera glasses
- Upside: you can see the dust on the stage.
- Downside: holding them up gets tiring, and I ended up just watching with my own eyes.
Worth it if there’s a particular act or a particular step you want to study closely. Less so for a whole three-act ballet.
A costume atelier in the basement
There’s a place called Dusha Atelier near the emart24 that I’d been meaning to look at. The owner was out the day I visited.
From what I could see, they don’t sell practice leotards or skirts — it looks like performance costumes only. Every piece looked like an artwork. Someday, maybe.
The cast — 15 August
| Role | Dancer |
|---|---|
| Odette / Odile | Elizaveta Cheprasova |
| Siegfried | Lee Hyun-jun |
| Rothbart | Lee Dong-tak |
| Jester | Cho Eun-soo |
The 32 fouettés. My first time seeing them live. I had actual goosebumps.
Cheprasova was extraordinary in both roles, but the Odile was the one that stayed with me — she was so completely a different person that for a moment I wasn’t sure it was the same dancer.
Lee Hyun-jun’s Siegfried landed his jumps so lightly it looked like a trick. The Jester and Rothbart both drew applause on turns and jumps alone.
And the music. There’s a point where you stop analysing and just think: oh, this is what art is.
What the third tier actually sees — Opera Theatre, Level 3, Row B
Since this is the thing people ask about, here it is plainly.
You will not see faces or costume detail.
But the rake is steep enough that you see the whole stage at once — which for Swan Lake matters more than you’d think. The corps formations in the white acts read as a single image from up there. Nothing about the viewing was uncomfortable.
And a genuinely underrated advantage: you get out fast at the interval and at the end.
If you’re choosing seats for a big classical ballet with a large corps, I’d take a good third-tier seat over a front stalls seat. You’re there for the shapes.
The ending
Spoilers from here. Scroll past if you’d rather not.
The ending I’d read about in advance — the one I wrote about in my preview post — was not the ending I watched.
Which is the thing about Swan Lake: the final act varies by production, and companies change it. Reading up beforehand and then being wrong turned out to be more fun than being right.
If you’re going, don’t over-research the ending. Let them tell you.
If you saw a different cast, I want to hear about it — leave a comment.
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