Moving more youth to dance

Chinese American ballerina Yen Han explores her links with China, Cheng Yuezhu reports. 

Chinese American ballerina Yen Han is tracing her connection with China with a visit to Shanghai. She had received some ballet training in the country as a student and now wants to provide opportunities to young Chinese dancers.

Han was born to Chinese parents in Vietnam. The family moved to the United States in her childhood, when she started her professional ballet training. In 1989, she came to China for a two-year training course at the Beijing Dance Academy, which she says also helped to build her career as a dancer.

"For me to have this experience to work with these teachers, they really brought me to a different level of dance, of a lot of precision ... This gave me a very strong foundation to further my ballet career later on in Europe," Han says.

Han has been a principal soloist of the Zurich Ballet for 25 years.

She has returned to China after 30 years, bringing her own Yen Han Ballet Company to the China Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Han's company and the Shanghai Ballet staged Creations, a piece that explores the dancing body and its expression of thoughts and emotions at the Shanghai festival recently. The dance comprises two chapters, entitled Thoughts of a Silent Night and Echo of Shadow, choreographed respectively by Filipe Portugal and Ken Ossola, both of whom have worked closely with Han. The production is supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai Swiss Arts Council.

Portugal says that Thoughts of a Silent Night is inspired by the eponymous poem of the great Chinese poet Li Bai.

"What attracted me about this poem was firstly the title, which by itself says already a lot, and then the simplicity of how such a short poem can let us travel so far."