Eileen Kim (BFA '23) | Photo by Rachel Neville, courtesy of Kim

By Ashton Benn for Dance Teacher

At 16, Eileen Kim faced a life-changing decision: Stay home to finish high school in Chicago or move to Washington D.C. to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer. After spending the summer at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in DC, she was accepted into the year-round program and begged her parents to let her go. Though she had only been training in ballet for two years, she took a leap of faith and went. Several leaps later, she is now a professional dancer, balancing her career with an ever-growing list of creative pursuits.

In her childhood, Kim trained seriously in rhythmic gymnastics, but by eighth grade, she had reached the highest level of the sport and transitioned to ballet. “I thought ballet was similar enough, but I quickly learned that wasn’t true,” she says, laughing. “In any case, I fell in love with it, and it stuck.”

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