Juhea Kim
OneWorld
Otago Daily Times, May 3rd 2025
Juhea Kim’s first novel, Beasts of a Little Land, was informed by her Korean heritage. Her second, drawn from her experiences as a dancer and musician, is a vivid and revealing portrait of the all-consuming world of professional ballet, and an exploration of the purpose and meaning of art.
The story opens in St Petersburg, where prima ballerina Natalia Leonova, the novel’s central character, first stepped onto the stage. Returning home decades later, emotionally and physically destroyed by a career-ending accident, the last thing she expects to find here is a way back into dance. So, when Dmitri Otrovsky, director of the Mariinsky company and the man she blames for the loss of all she holds dear, offers her the role of Giselle in the upcoming season, she initially refuses. It has been two years since her last performance, and even without her injuries, why would “the only person in the world I wouldn’t hesitate to call my enemy”, come to her rescue? But the temptation is irresistible, and with the support of friends and former teachers, Natalia begins her physical and professional rehabilitation.
This narrative is interwoven with the story of Natalia’s earlier life, from her first encounters with the art that defines her identity to the accident that erases it. It is a dramatic story that takes her from the Vaganova ballet school to the Bolshoi and the Paris Opera, and through a partnership described as the greatest since Nureyev and Fonteyn. But the real tenson comes from the unanswered questions that hang over both narratives: How and why did Dmitri destroy her life, and are his true intentions toward her now?
In interviews, Kim has described Natalia as a reflection of herself in her passion, intensity, diligence, and reverence for ballet. She has also drawn inspiration from the concerto form in her narrative structure, weaving past and present together in a conversation mediated by foreshadows, echoes and recurring motifs. The result is a rich and multi-layered evocation of rarified world in which “people we took classes with, dined with and competed against would be the same people we’d fall in love with, marry, keep as lifelong friends or rivals.”
Having danced myself, I really wanted to love this novel. But for all its meticulously crafted intensity, I couldn’t connect with it emotionally. Even the moments of epiphany or catharsis are expository rather than experienced: “I fell into this secret space until the boundaries contained me dissolved. I wanted to disappear between music and dance. Dancing well was, in a lot of ways, beside the point.” ; “The true cost of accomplishing something you want with your whole being is that the moment you get it, you realise it’s not enough”; “I began to doubt for the first time whether art had any relevance in this world…no matter how I danced, the world would still burn.” Beautifully articulated thoughts, but distanced, somehow, from feeling.
There is much to appreciate in Kim’s writing and City of Night Birds is an accomplished performance, but for me it failed to achieve transcendence.