National Ballet of China thrills US audiences

Classics peformed at Lincoln Center in New York and Washington area

Enthusiastic applause reverberated again and again when the ballerinas of the modern ballet The Red Detachment of Women took curtain calls at New York's Lincoln Center last weekend.

"The audience was swept away by the emotionalism and fervor of The Red Detachment of Women," said Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival.

As the fi rst full-length Chinese ballet created after the founding of the People's Republic of China, The Red Detachment of Women is best known in the West as the ballet performed for President Richard Nixon on his visit to China in 1972.

In a marriage of Chinese contemporary history and pirouettes, the ballet tells the story of a peasant girl who rises from servitude to join a crusading, all-female battalion of Red Guards to defeat the evil landowner who once enslaved her.

"Ballerinas armed with rifl es and dressed in military garb make the performance seem to comprise equal parts ballet and Chinese history," wrote Gabriel Mizrachi in Lincoln Center playbill.

"It's rare to see female ballet dancers wearing military uniforms on the stage even in the West," Feng Ying, head of the National Ballet of China (NBC), told China Daily.

Since the work's premiere in 1964, the NBC has performed Detachment nearly 4,000 times in theaters throughout the world.

For the fi rst time, it took the stage in New York at this summer's 20th edition of the Lincoln Center Festival.

"What an incredible, stunning, inspiring, artistically path-breaking and immense piece of work! Still high and reeling from this!" Tweeted Outernational after the show.

"The revolution spirit of the Chinese people is apparent in the plot of the play," said one member of the audience. "The ballet was short but it is such classic to watch."

"The spirit of the female Chinese soldier inspired me and I think that quality is very lacking in many modern societies," said another audience member.

More than 70 ballerinas from NBC and 70 musicians from the National Ballet of China Symphony Orchestra joined in the performance.

Uncle Yao's Chorus, a local New York Chinese singing group, joined in the production.

"Anybody who lived through that age cannot be more familiar with these melodies," said a Chinese audience member. "When the song began, I sang loud with the Chorus and was about to cry. It's hard to believe I was hearing these songs again in New York. "

Another ballet performed by the NBC at Lincoln Center is The Peony Pavilion.

The ballet is adapted from a Chinese love story often compared to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. And after the festival, the ballet was also performed in Vienna, Virginia at the Wolf Trap National Park for Performing Arts.

Redden said that after the performances, "The audience was very positive about both productions. The two ballets showcased the company's exquisite ballet technique and their unique synthesis of East and West."

Hong Xiao in New York contributed to this story.