In 1964 Beryl Grey became the first Western ballerina to be invited to dance with a Chinese ballet company. She was both inspired and depressed by what she found there. The dancers were wonderful and welcoming, but the poverty and deprivation they faced distressed her Western sensibilities.
And it got worse. Two years later, during the Cultural Revolution, “the dancers I had work- ed with were sent into the fields like peasants,” she says. “They had to plough and dig and sow; they were not allowed to be artists because artists were considered lazy and inferior.” Now, 40 years on, Grey can hardly believe how much dance in China has changed.
Today, as the Beijing Olympics prove, the country is hungry for international attention, in the arts as in business, and dance is a source of national pride. Companies regularly tour abroad, while the free exchange of ideas between East and West has expanded the Chinese artistic sensibility. Audiences are growing and new dance troupes have been formed, while the art form has forged a uniquely Chinese identity.
“We are very lucky because China is the hot point of the world at the moment,” says Zhang Changcheng, the director of the Beijing Modern Dance Company. “People want to experience the changing China, and lots of artists want to come to Beijing to work with us.”
It’s a far cry from Grey’s day, when dancers longed to escape their artistic isolation and Mao Zedong’s favourite night out was The Red Detachment of Women, a “revolutionary model ballet” that featured ballerinas on pointe brandishing rifles. In 2008 China’s dancers, like the country’s musicians, are out to prove that they excel in European art forms.
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This year, thanks to Britain’s huge China Now arts festival, Chinese dance will be on display as never before. The National Ballet, in a summer season at the Royal Opera House, will show how it’s preserving Russian classical traditions while developing new ones of its own. The Beijing Modern Dance Company, which makes its British debut at the same venue on Thursday, will show how Eastern philosophy and Western contemporary style can inhabit the same choreography.
Meanwhile, cross-cultural collaborations will highlight how China is seeking fresh ideas from the West. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the Belgian choreographer, has been working with the sculptor Antony Gormley and monks from the Shaolin Temple for his new piece, Sutra (which has its premiere at Sadler’s Wells in May), while the British choreographer Akram Khan has joined forces with dancers from the National Ballet to create Bahok. The latter, which opens at the Liverpool Playhouse next month, will undertake an extensive British tour.
For Khan, the time spent choreographing in China was a creative buzz. “It’s been very exciting because they come from such a different perspective,” he says. “The National Ballet dancers are extremely lyrical and extremely athletic. And even when the vocabulary is the same, the movement is not. That sense of chaos on the outside but a very calm stillness within the body: I find that very Asian, and I’m always searching for it within myself.”
Calm or not, the Chinese dancers (there are three of them working alongside five from Khan’s own London company) were thrown by rehearsing with such an unorthodox talent. “They wondered where it was going, partly because they are the writers of the show, and that’s new for them. They found having to speak a strange experience.” All the text in Bahok comes from the dancers, from their stories of their homes, because the piece is about the search for origin in an increasingly fractured world. “It’s all about that feeling of travelling from one place to another,” Khan says. “In order to know where you are going, you have to know where you are from.”
Cherkaoui, whose Chinese project has been even more unconventional, has nothing but praise for the experience. “Working in China feels like a way of discovering another part of myself,” he says. For Sutra, “which is filled with poetic imagery of how human or animal life goes from beginning to end”, he is collaborating with 15 young Buddhist monks, all of them kung fu experts. “Their movements relate to animals such as the preying mantis, the snake or the monkey, so they are quite similar to some of my movements, which also relate to animals. But I am going to learn a lot because they perceive movement so differently. They consider their body and their environment one thing, which is not the way we consider it in the West.”
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When he first arrived at the Shaolin Temple (about 90 minutes south of Beijing) last year, Cherkaoui found his preconceptions about life in their closed religious community overturned. “I was surprised to see them walking around with mobile phones and listening to pop music. They have movement patterns that are 750 years old but they are clearly living in China today. And they are very open-minded. They want to communicate and share their knowledge with the world; otherwise they wouldn’t have let me in.”
Letting in the West has become easier as China’s international status increases. “Every year the Beijing Modern Dance Company invites different choreographers from the US and Europe to come to China and work with us,” Zhang says. “We try not to follow any other country, but collaboration encourages the dancers to be more open-minded, which allows them to develop their own identity.” His troupe, which trains in t’ai chi and Peking Opera techniques as well as Western styles, uses traditional and contemporary elements in its choreography.
The way his company is run also reflects the new thinking in China. The first thing Zhang did when he took over in 1998 (three years after the company was founded) was to make BMDC independent of government. His decision, unprecedented on the Chinese arts scene, made it much tougher to run the company but gave it more artistic freedom. “I told the dancers that we are wild animals. No one can give us food, no one can take care of us. We must catch the rabbit if we want to eat.” The only way his troupe survives is through the performance fees it earns on foreign tours.
His dancers, he says, barely earn a living wage because, despite China’s tiger economy, there is very little money around for the contemporary arts. A few Chinese dancers (especially of the ballet variety) find jobs in Europe and North America, but it’s still difficult for them to surmount the immigration hurdles.
“To be a dancer is to be very poor in China,” Zhang says. “My country has developed very fast economically, but it needs time to develop a real culture of contemporary performing arts. Most of the audience is only interested in classical art. What’s the fashion? To get dressed up and watch Swan Lake in a big theatre.”
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Ironically, the National Ballet of China (the company with which Grey danced) opens its Covent Garden season on July 28 with its new Swan Lake, staged for the company by Natalia Makarova, the ?migr? Russian ballerina (with sets by the British designer Peter Farmer). But it will also perform Raise the Red Lantern, a ballet based on the hit Chinese film directed by Zhang Yimou, who also directed the dance adaptation. It had its British premiere at Sadler’s Wells in 2003, and was so successful that the company felt confident enough to bring it back.
An intense and tragic tale that examines the role of women under feudalism in 1930s China, Raise the Red Lantern represented a landmark in the history of the 50-year-old Beijing company. Daring to blend ballet and traditional Chinese dance, it sparked controversy and debate outside the narrow confines of the theatre. The film-maker himself was quick to declare it a harbinger for the future of ballet in China.
Zhang Changcheng’s 14-strong company, which exists at the other end of the dance spectrum, has an even longer journey to make. “There is lots of entertainment in China,” he says, “but the arts are not so healthy. Right now commerce, entertainment and art are too mixed up together. Some people are getting very rich in the new China, but they don’t yet have a soul. When enough people have enough money they will start thinking about their souls. Maybe then they will go to a gallery, go to a museum or come see modern dance. They just need time.”
THE BEST DANCE AT CHINA NOW
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Beijing Modern Dance Company China’s leading modern dance troupe makes its British debut with a double bill of works inspired by Eastern philosophy and Peking Opera. Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House (020-7304 4000), Feb 14-16.
Bahok The British choreographer Akram Khan’s collaboration with dancers from the National Ballet of China. Opens at the Liverpool Playhouse (0151-709 4776) on March 7; then touring to July 9, including Sadler’s Wells (0844 4124300), June 11-14.
Sutra Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui choreographs for the kung fu masters at the Shaolin Temple. Sadler’s Wells (0844 4124300), May 27-31.
Dick Wong A look at one of Hong Kong’s most prominent contemporary choreographers. Lilian Baylis, Sadler’s Wells (0844 4124300), May 30.
Sang JijiaTibet’s first professional modern dancer performs his own work. Lilian Baylis, Sadler’s Wells (0844 4124300), June 6.
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One Thousand Hands Bodhisattva, the 21 hearing-impaired dancers of the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe produce perfectly timed and choreographed arm movements. Touring various venues (020-7553 7180), June 1-14.
Liu Qi The deputy artistic director of Guangdong Modern Dance Company visits <NO1>the UK<NO>Britain to work with dancers here. Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadler’s Wells (0844 4124300), June 13, 14.
National Ballet of China China’s flagship company brings its new Swan Lake (staged by Natalia Makarova) and Raise the Red Lantern, based on the famous film. Royal Opera House (020- 7304 4000), July 28 to Aug 2.