A universal favorite.

WHEN Seoul-based Universal Ballet travels with Romeo and Juliet to New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco this summer, Americans will see the results of twenty, years of tightly focused shared vision and hard-fought disciplined action. The organization's goal: to demonstrate its capacity to endure and to perform up to the highest standards of the European style and heritage in dance.

"We want to take the best of the Western classical tradition and apply it so it fits us well, not like we are wearing someone else's clothes," says former principal ballerina and, since 1995, general director, Julia H. Moon.

Ballet fever has spread throughout this country in less than a lifetime. The beginnings of Western classical ballet in South Korea date to the early 1960s, when the first fledgling dancers began public performances, attended by audiences who considered themselves adventurous. At the March opening of La Bayadere in Seoul's renovated Sejong Cultural Center, audiences filled the hall for all performances, applauding at length, while the younger set even called out the dancers' names. Everybody rose to honor Moon and Universal Ballet's artistic director, Oleg Vinogradov. And on the theory that deep water floats all boats, a current directory lists five additional ballet companies in South Korea.

LIKE many major ballet companies, Universal Ballet feels that it must export its classical repertoire; international tours started in earnest in 1998. Vinogradov's Romeo and Juliet (2000), with Italian Renaissance decor by Simon Pastukh and costumes by Galina Solovyeva, received a warm welcome when the company visited Paris last spring.

"I am about theater," maintains Vinogradov, who was the artistic director and chief ballet master of St. Petersburg's Kirov Ballet from 1977 to 1997, and, since 1990, has directed the Universal Ballet Academy in Washington, D.C. Vinogradov insists that, whether it is an abstract or a story ballet, its essence must be communicated through character and context. "Perfect dancing is not enough," he says emphatically.

However, neither South Korea nor its Universal Ballet is limited to recreating the past. We have more than seventy pieces in our repertoire--works by George Balanchine, Nacho Duato, and Heinz Spoerli," says the American-born Moon, "and we are starting now to nurture and produce Korean choreographers. Today there is an audience for more contemporary work, too. But it is the big classical showpieces that audiences still demand to see."

DANCERS as well as choreographers are urged to push ahead. "When I stopped dancing, I fell in love with ballet again," says Moon. "I could feel its value and beauty and the world's need for that. After my injury, the surgery on my foot, and a long recovery, I struggled, and then I plunged into all the administrative work that had been overlooked while we focused on production.

"We must plan for the future and its leadership," Moon continues. "Our schools are turning out exquisite dancers, and we have met our goal of two-thirds of our company being Korean. Now we need a ballet orchestra with a permanent conductor. We have no tradition of private or corporate subsidies, but we are actively working to develop an endowment and more diverse sponsorship. There is so much to be done." Still, Moon says, her life is not just ballet. "I struggle for balance so there is time for my 13-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter."