Kirov students have become leading dancers with top companies around the world. The American Ballet Theater has included Kirov-trained dancers Melanie Hamrick, Sascha Radetsky and Hee Seo.
“It’s unprecedented how many extraordinary careers that school has produced in such a relatively short time,” said Evan McKie, a 1999 graduate who danced with the Stuttgart Ballet for 13 years and has been principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada since 2014.
Brooklyn Mack, a 2004 graduate of the school and danced leading roles with the English National Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, called the closure a sad situation. He recalled how in the early years of the academy guest artists from the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia, now known as the Mariinsky, performed in recitals along with the students. The school and the company no longer have a relationship, but when they did, Mack said, the school was a jewel: “There was no other place like this in the country.”
Rev. Moon opened the Kirov in 1990, 36 years after he founded the Unification Church. The religious movement is best known for its mass marriages, business ventures, conservative politics, and longstanding devotion to Rev. Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who died in 2012.
His interest in ballet was sparked by his friendship with Hoon Sook Pak, a ballerina and the daughter of a close assistant, Bo Hi Pak, who ran The Washington Times as president. In 1984, Hoon Sook Pak was touring with the Washington Ballet and preparing to star in “Giselle,” when Reverend Moon’s 17-year-old son ran his car off the road. Having died single, he was ineligible to enter Heaven according to Church teachings, so Hoon Sook Pak agreed to marry the dead teen’s ghost in a lavish ceremony in which she wore his portrait .
Later that year, Rev. Moon founded the Universal Ballet company, in which Hoon Sook, who took the name Julia Moon, became principal dancer. Six years later, a regal-looking former monastery near Catholic University reopened as the Kirov Academy.