▲ Good Art Culture Foundation / Chief Director Ha Jae-yeon

For normal people, dancers dancing on a stage in cool costume and splendid lighting might be an object of envy. Globally successful K-Pop stars are creating sensations and each of their movements of body attracts the hearts of audience. Yet they are just a few cases as majority of dancers are struggling to make ends meet. A good choice for them to carry on their career and to earn a living at the same time is being a ‘dance instructor’. The Korea Dance Leaders Association and the Good Art Culture Foundation were established on realizing the hard reality of many dancers and to promote their rights and interests. 

Dance instructor can be an answer
Ha Jae-yeon founded the Korea Dance Leaders Association in 1997 and has devoted her life to development of Korean art and culture for the last 25 years. She used to be a big shot business woman but grew her interest in dance when she started folk dance. She pushed forward her interest into a serious level in dance as a whole and eventually obtained a master’s degree from which she has led her life as a professional dance instructor. 

She has introduced effective dance programs and organized competitions in an effort to promote the dance industry in Korea. She has carried on dance training for teachers with her level by level programs alongside dance instructor certificate courses. She is received by industry specialists to have made a contribution to upgrading the overall quality of Korean dance instructors. 

As a result, the Korea Dance Leaders Association is providing dance lectures in many universities and credits and certificates are given to the students who attended and completed the courses and tests successfully; certificates include dance instructor’s certificate for baby. 

“Baby dance can stimulate movements and rhythmic ability of babies when accompanied with music. It can grow their body in balance and affects their emotion positively” said Ha. 

A variety of dance and cultural programs
The Korea Dance Leaders Association is busy preparing for the 60th National Dance Competition held in April 14. “We have been organizing the competition with utmost care and thorough screening by professional judges of each category they are concerned. Thanks to this consistency and transparency, the National Dance Competition is widely recognized by the industry specialists.”

Apart from dance programs and competitions, the association is holding creative plays such as ‘Festival of Birds: I’m Not a Loner’ and ‘I Have a New Friend’ through its affiliate Miryu Dance Company; the former is a story about bullying and the latter is about dance and traditional games. 

Good Art Culture Foundation
In order to promote professional dance instructors and to spread excellence of Korean culture to the world, Ha established the Good Art Culture Foundation and signed a number of MOUs with the Ministry of Education and other educational and arts organizations to run dance, art and performance courses. All certificate courses at the Good Art Culture Foundation are registered to the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training. 

“Our courses cover various areas from K-Pop and traditional culture to art, music and Korean language. It is really promising that Ahshan City in China is asking us to open a branch in the city and we are currently working on the details.”

Ha added that she and members of the Good Art Culture Foundation are determined to keep working hard to secure stable jobs for dancers and to spread excellence of Korean culture to the world.