Giselle, along with Swan Lake, is one of the most widely-loved and frequently-performed classic piece of ballet. The first full-act premiere of Giselle in Korea was performed in December 10th of 1975 as the 17th period performance of the Korean National Ballet. Giselle, often considered to be an indispensable part of the repertoire in most professional ballet companies, has been said to be one of the most important pieces of classical ballet throughout the entire ballet history. The premiere performance of Giselle was a historic event which provided a steppingstone for the Korean ballet company to grow further into the next level. In this study, we aimed to ascertain historical truth about the first full-act premiere of Giselle in Korea and to draw historical implication. As research strategies, we collected and analyzed historical literature materials as well as conducted interviews with important figures. Our historical investigation indicated that the premiere of Giselle of 1975 triggered a significant leap toward a next level of performing art in general, not only of Korean ballet. Another important value could be found from its being a challenging attempt under the worst of conditions notwithstanding. In a similar vein, the premiere of Giselle had a particular significance due to its being the first independently performed full-act premiere without any help from outside the country. The first full-act premiere of Giselle was made possible due to the passionate devotion and inspiration of a few major figures

This study focused on the transformation process in which the traditional dance of Korea created new content and forms and wrote modern cultural discourses after the appearance of a modern theater. The construction of a theater established a modern value system including the perceptions of time and space, formation of a consumption structure, and emergence of the audience in a horizontal order. These changes happened around theaters such as the Mudong Banquet Hall, Hyeoryulsa, Gwangmudae and Danseongsa in Korea, and these spaces attracted the attention of the public through the changes of their microscopic repertoires mostly based on the traditional arts. They held values as they provided the public with aesthetic objects to be enjoyed and created a new cultural tradition through the gradual transformation of the culture. The traditional performance arts communicated with the public and moved forward by making an adjustment into stage performance arts in the middle of microscopic transformations that included the star system based on two Gisaengs of Gwangmudae, Ok-yeop and San-ok, a series story in a newspaper called "Yedanilbaekin," and long-term performance of Gangseonru.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of discourse act that was unfolded in the process of modern Korean dance securing its significance as performing arts. In Korea, the first-half of the twentieth century witnessed the formation of new culture based on a clash between modern Western civilization that was accepted and the autogenous modern consciousness. The appearance of newspapers, in particular, provided ample opportunities for the reading public to participate in the society and gave birth to the modern consciousness of sharing one's ideas with others. This happened in the field of dance from various perspectives including reviews in the criticism format after the appreciation of dance performances, critiques, dance theories, and new ideas of the traditional dance. There was no establishment of proper dance criticism in Korea during the modern period, however there were meaningful acts to create dance discourses from diverse perspectives and enhance the aesthetic modernity of the public.

This paper presents an experimental discussion that examines previous literature and controversial discourses on dance history of Korea in order to suggest new ways of writing dance history. The dance history texts of the premodern time of dance history are mainly written by An Hwak, Kim Jaecheol, and Seong Gyeongrin after the Japanese rule. Most of these texts are restricted to introduce court dances in the literature due to the limited number of surviving materials. I suggest that dance history of premodern Korea would be discussed with more variety and depth if social and cultural perspectives are adopted. There are various discussions developed about the descriptions of modern dance history, however there is room for improvement in regards to the poor perceptions of the independent starting point of modern times and the concept of modernity. If the descriptions of dance history in Korea achieve expandability by embracing different genres and various literary methodologies as well as syntactic descriptions, the scope of awareness will broaden further for dance studies.