Ilmu (One Dance), a signature repertoire of the Seoul Metropolitan Dance Theater under the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, won the Outstanding Choreographer/Creator award at the New York Dance and Performance Awards (commonly known as The Bessies), held in New York on January 20, 2026 (local time). With this achievement, Ilmu (One Dance) became the first work by a Korean national or municipal public arts organization to receive a Bessie Award.

The award was presented to the three choreographers of the work—Jung Hye-jin, Kim Sung-hoon, and Kim Jae-duk—marking a significant recognition of Korean dance creation within the international contemporary performance scene. Beyond individual achievement, the award highlights how a repertoire developed within a public institutional system can be evaluated and validated on a global stage.
 
The Bessie Awards honor artists and works that demonstrate outstanding innovation and artistic excellence among dance and performance pieces presented in New York each year. Known for prioritizing formal rigor and contemporaneity over nationality or genre, the Bessies are widely regarded as one of the most influential awards in the New York dance community. In this context, Ilmu’s recognition signifies that a work grounded in traditional forms has successfully met these international evaluative standards.
 
Premiered in Seoul in 2022, Ilmu evolved into a flagship repertoire of the Sejong Center before making its international debut in 2023 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. There, the clarity of its structural composition and the precision of its large-scale group choreography drew attention from the local dance community. Subsequent performances further refined the work, and the Bessie Award now marks the point at which this process of accumulation received formal international recognition.

Ilmu originated from “ilmu (佾舞)”, the ritual court dance performed as part of “Jongmyo Jeryeak”. Rather than emphasizing individual expression, the traditional form centers on collective order and temporality, created through precise lines and formations of multiple dancers. The contemporary work does not replicate this structure literally; instead, it extracts its core principles—alignment, spacing, repetition, and stillness—and reorganizes them into the rhythm and compositional logic of a modern theatrical stage. Accumulated moments of restraint gradually build tension, culminating in powerful collective movement.

Among twelve nominated works, Ilmu was selected as one of four award recipients. The Bessie Awards jury described the piece as “a visually captivating reinterpretation of traditional Korean ritual dance through a contemporary lens,” citing its ability to achieve a perfect balance between stillness and motion, while reaching a climactic intensity through explosive and dynamic movement.

The work’s impact is shaped not only by choreography but also by its overall stage composition. The production adopts a rigorously minimal structure, using light and spatial division to accentuate the dancers’ formations and lines. Costumes subtly reference tradition while remaining streamlined, ensuring that neither individual figures nor decorative elements disrupt the collective geometry of the group. As a result, the dancers’ movement itself becomes the stage’s primary sculptural form, and collective order is perceived as a visual image.

The precision of collective synchronization may recall the tightly coordinated group choreography commonly associated with idol performances. In Ilmu, however, such exactness does not function as a tool for speed or immediate spectacle. Instead, synchronization serves as a structural mechanism that sustains ritual time and tension. Accuracy is not an end in itself, but a means of organizing order on stage.
 
Having already received the Korea National Brand Award in 2024, Ilmu had been recognized domestically for both its artistic quality and cultural significance. The Bessie Award extends this recognition to the international arena, demonstrating that domestic and global evaluations converge along a single trajectory rather than remaining separate. The achievement suggests not a momentary surge of attention, but the possibility of long-term artistic endurance.

This accomplishment is best understood not as the globalization of tradition, but as its contemporization. Ilmu does not explain or decorate tradition; instead, it reconstructs the structural logic of traditional ritual dance through present-day stage language, presenting an order that contemporary audiences can immediately perceive.
 
In recognizing this transformation, the Bessie Awards affirmed the work as a meaningful case in which tradition operates convincingly within the standards of the international contemporary performance world.