Travel-time reading is transformed into a dance production

The Moon Opera, choreographed by Wang Yabin, features the elements of Chinese classical dance, breakdance and Peking Opera. [Photo by Zhang Luoping/For China Daily]

Last November, when Wang Yabin toured Europe with Genesis, a collaborative dance work she made with Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, she took with her the novel The Moon Opera, written by Chinese author Bi Feiyu, as well as DVDs of the TV series based on the novel.

Dancer-choreographer Wang is also an actress－she is the dance double for actress Zhang Ziyi in Zhang Yimou's 2003 film House of Flying Daggers.

Wang read the novel and watched the TV series in her spare time during the tour. She wondered: Could she adapt The Moon Opera into a dance work?

The novel tells the story of Peking Opera performer Xiao Yanqiu, who is committed to her role to the point of obsession. It has been translated into different languages and was long-listed for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the United Kingdom.

For Wang, 32, the heroine in the novel resembles her.

"We have the same passion and devotion to art. We also share the same pain of internal struggles as an artist."

Having imagined the dance work for a very long time, Wang spent 10 hours on a return flight to Beijing from Monaco finishing the main choreography for the dance work.

Titled The Moon Opera, her work will premiere at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing from Oct 4 to 6, which will be followed by two shows in Shanghai on Oct 19 and 20.

In the 75-minute production, Wang will present a new vocabulary of dance using elements from Chinese classical dance, breakdance and Peking Opera.

The idea was born as early as 2012, when Wang acted the role of Jin Yan in the TV series Seeing Without Looking. It was adapted from another Bi novel, Massage, one of the first Chinese novels to focus on the lives of blind people, which won the 2011 Mao Dun Literature Prize, the highest national literary award.

Bi and Wang discussed her idea of adapting The Moon Opera into a dance work and he gave his consent in June last year.

Wang, a native of Tianjin, started dancing when she was 6 and was admitted to the renowned Beijing Dance Academy at 9.

She pursued her dance dream by working with some of the world's best contemporary dancer-choreographers in the annual dance program Yabin and Her Friends.

Wang has been collaborating with international choreographers, dancers and musicians for many years.

In addition to Cherkaoui in Genesis, Wang has worked with Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, a former star of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, in Dream in Three Episodes, which premiered in Beijing in August last year.

In The Moon Opera, she also worked with an international crew, including set designer Matt Deely from the UK and costume designer Nakano Kimie from Japan.

Wang says that the dance work expresses her as a dancer-choreographer as well as a woman who pursues her career goals.

"I feel like I have used all the experience I have had in dancing and choreographing to make this dance work."

The Moon Opera, her seventh work in the Yabin and Her Friends series, is a breakthrough for her, she says.

Lighting designer Willy Cessa says: "Yabin is a very strong artist, and she has a clear view about what she wants to create. This is really helpful.

"The main point for me in designing this piece was to find the right mood between reality and the mind of the main character, a strong woman, who sacrifices everything for the stage."

Wang also invited Chinese composer Guo Sida and Polish composer Olga Wojciechowska, who wrote music for Genesis.

"I had little knowledge of traditional Chinese opera, but somehow I think the result gives an interesting diversity to the picture and atmosphere," Wojciechowska says.

"I thought about the subject from an emotional point of view, which is similar in whichever country you are. It's about the sensitivity of every person, which defines us, and resolving situations in different ways."

If you go

7:30 pm, Oct 4-6. National Center for the Performing Arts, 2 West Chang'an Avenue, Xicheng district, Beijing.010-6655-0000.

7:30 pm, Oct 19-20. Malanhua Theater, 43 Huashan Road, Xuhui district, Shanghai. 021-5169-1871.