Ballet performance hosted by Swan Kim
On Saturday, Feb. 4, Swan Kim hosted an exciting dance presentation of Time in Flow, which is her second project in New York. Swan Kim and the ART SBC (Swan Ballet Center) Production organized a magical performance at the Jeanne Rimsky Theater in the Landmark on Main Street in Port Washington.
Time in Flow is an interpretation of Amilcare Ponchielli’s act three finale of the opera Dance of the Hours. The opera was first performed in 1876 and revised in 1880. You may be familiar with Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia where it is depicted as a comic ballet featuring ostriches, hippopotamuses, elephants, and alligators. Time in Flow is an interpretation of the ballet as a metaphor for the passage of time through the performance of solo and ensemble dancers
The show has the theme of ‘movement in time’ and is a work that symbolically expresses relationships as experienced in friendship, love, trust and tranquility in the present now of our life. It represents how the present is where our memories are reproduced and newly created, as seen here through the medium of dance. Swan Kim’s new choreography depicts 11 dancers who express the flow of our 24-hour day from dawn, morning, afternoon and into early and late evening.
(Photos from the Swan Ballet Center)
We live in an irreversible continuum of time containing the past, present, and future in which we may reminisce about our struggles, sadness, joys and happiness in memories that cannot be captured. In front of this irreversible continuity of time, this performance presents a new experience of time to the audience through choreography that expresses memories of the past and hopes of the future that aims to show the transcendence of time through dance.
There were ten professional performers based in New York, including Ethan Schweitzer- Gaslin, Carlos Pazuna, Cooper Everson, Karolina Zarach, Kylie Fox, Madisen Nielsen, Marian Morgan, Mikaiah Krueger, Richel Ruiz, Sara Rodriguez. Additionally, there were two invited guest performers, Savannah Jade Dobbs and Keith Reeves.
About Dr. Swan Kim
Dr. Swan Kim is s a choreographer, artistic director, and producer on Time in Flow (2023). She created performances on The path of finding a true self at West End Theatre, NY(2022), and upcoming show Duality in Life at Gibney Performing Art Center (2023). She is the Founder of Swan’s Ballet Center, Korea. She holds a Ph.D. in Dance Education, Performing Arts, Chung-Ang University (CAU), Seoul, Korea (02. 2023), M.A. in Dance Education, Music and Performing Arts, NYU, NY (2015), B.A. in Dance, Ballet, School of Performing Arts and Media, CAU, Korea (2010).
Swan had trained and performed as a classical ballet dancer for more than 27 years internationally in Korea, United States, Europe. Currently, she is an educator, artistic director, choreographer and producer in NY and Seoul. Her research areas are in holistic dance movement approach, expressive and functional movement, and Laban movement analysis.
Swan is interested in creating/teaching movement by observing Laban’s four motion factors(space, time, weight, flow) and applying them to choreography in classical-contemporary ballet.
To learn more about the Swan’s Ballet Center (SBC), visit www.swansballetcenter.com
—Information provided
by Swan’s Ballet Center
Time In Flow Ballet Review
Swan Kim is an internationally experienced ballet dancer and educator of dance education in her native Korea who gathered a troupe of dancers trained in classical ballet and modern dance disciplines for this performance. The resulting mixture of the two disciplines treated the audience to an exciting and memorable evening. The music selections drew upon well-known classical pieces and some modern music adaptations.
Dr. Kim’s choreography infused the work with her underlying theme of the transitory nature of our life experiences and how they may be expressed through movement. This movement may symbolically express relationships as one may experience in friendship, love, trust, and tranquility. The choreography was Swan Kim’s interpretation of Amilcare Ponchielli’s act three finale of the opera Dance of the Hours first presented in 1876.
This reviewer’s favorite piece was during Act 1 entitled ‘Daylight’. The stage was infused by a beautiful Pink light as the dancers Karolina Zarach, Marian Morgan, Kylie Fox, Sara Rodriguez, and Ethan Schweitzer-Gaslin performed classical ballet to the music of Johann Strauss’s “Blue Danube.”
—Written by Thomas Dillmann,
Adjunct Professor/Administrator (Retired)
Long Island University
