Finis Jhung

Finis Jhung, born May 27, 1937, in Honolulu, Hawaii, is an American ballet dancer, dance teacher, and dance company founder whose career has spanned performance, choreography, and instruction across several decades. His multiracial heritage includes Korean, Scottish, and English ancestry. He is the youngest of three sons born to Caroline and Walter Jhung, whose tailor shop on Oahu's Hickam Air Force Base was damaged during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war reduced business at the base, Jhung's father left Hawaii for the mainland, and his parents divorced in 1945 when Jhung was nine years old.

As a child, Jhung studied tap, ballet, acrobatics, and hula. During his teenage years, he auditioned for Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova while they were on tour in Hawaii, and Dolin encouraged him to seek him out once he had matured as a dancer. Jhung pursued serious ballet training at the University of Utah under Willam Christensen, and while there performed in productions of The King and I, Carousel, Damn Yankees, Coppelia, and The Nutcracker. He graduated in 1959 with high honors.

In 1960, Jhung served six months in the National Guard at Fort Leonard Wood, during which he received a telegram from Rodgers and Hammerstein seeking an Asian dancer capable of performing double tours en l'air for their Broadway production of Flower Drum Song. He auditioned successfully, completed his military service, and joined the company in New York. The show was already in its second year when Jhung came aboard, and it ran for several more months on Broadway before touring. His Broadway appearances are documented from 1958 to 1960.

When Flower Drum Song played San Francisco during its tour, Jhung reconnected with University of Utah classmates Michael Smuin and Kent Stowell, who were then dancing with the San Francisco Ballet. He auditioned for the company, was hired, and remained with the troupe for a year and a half. During the same period, Flower Drum Song was adapted into a film and Jhung was invited to join its cast.

By 1962, Jhung had moved to New York to join the Robert Joffrey Theatre Ballet, where he was immediately cast in Alvin Ailey's Feast of Ashes and Brian MacDonald's Time Out of Mind. The Joffrey company's reliance on funding from arts patron Rebekah Harkness eventually led to a split in 1964, when Harkness established her own ballet troupe. Jhung was among eleven Joffrey dancers who joined the new Harkness Ballet, where he remained until 1969.

During his years with the Harkness Ballet, Jhung danced lead roles in Norman Walker's Night Song, Brian MacDonald's Zealous Variations, John Butler's Sebastian, and George Balanchine's Minkus Pas de Trois. In 1966, while on a European tour, he was introduced to Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism by the company's shiatsu masseuse. Shortly after beginning that practice, he was profiled in Dance Magazine and was cast in Dolin's Variations for Four, a classical white tights role he had long sought. He subsequently requested and received a promotion to Principal Dancer from Rebekah Harkness. Reviewing Variations for Four, Saturday Review critic Walter Terry wrote that Jhung combined the brio of the Western world with the clean, clear linear delicacies and elegances of his part-Oriental heritage, and described him as a dancer whose every movement appeared photographic, with no visible preparations, only results.

In March 1969, following the New York season, Jhung left dancing to devote himself to Buddhism and world peace. He took a position as office manager at an investment firm and spent his evenings leading Buddhist group meetings and instructing new converts. When that office closed in January 1972, he was left unemployed.

On the advice of his Buddhist leader, Jhung began teaching ballet in 1972 and became a consistent presence in the New York dance world. He has taught members of New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the Robert Joffrey, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham companies, as well as Broadway performers and adult amateur beginners. He operated his own studio from 1974 until 1987 and taught at institutions including the Broadway Dance Center, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Peridance, Ballet Arts, the New Dance Group Arts Center, and Steps.

In June 1981, Jhung was approached by Stephen Belth of the Arts and Science Development Service, Inc. about forming a touring company. The result was Chamber Ballet USA, which Jhung led as Artistic Director, with Belth serving as Executive Director and a founding board that included Gwen Verdon. The company debuted on March 6, 1982, with a performance honoring Verdon, and its public premiere ran December 14 through 19 at The Space at City Center. The inaugural repertory included John Butler's Othello, Vicente Nebrada's Lento, a Tempo e Appassionato, Toer Van Shayk's Jeux, and Lois Bewley's Russian Blue. In the spring of 1986, Antony Tudor restaged his ballet Sunflowers for the company's final season. Following the resignation of the board's president in June 1986, Chamber Ballet USA completed its remaining bookings and disbanded.

After the company folded, Jhung returned to full-time teaching, accepting guest engagements at the Bartholin International Seminar in Copenhagen before joining the Broadway Dance Center, where he taught until 1994. Throughout his career, Jhung studied with teachers including Vera Volkova, Erik Bruhn, Rosella Hightower, Valentina Pereyaslavec, Stanley Williams, Willam Christensen, Joanna Kneeland, and David Howard, identifying Kneeland and Howard as the two with the greatest influence on his approach. He has also produced instructional videos intended for use by dancers around the world and has presented workshops for both dance teachers and adult students throughout his career.