Unlike the National Ballet of China, which already has five of George Balanchine's ballets in its repertory, the Shanghai Ballet premiered its first just this week.
Ben Huys, a former dancer of the New York City Ballet, staged Serenade, an early masterpiece by the 20th century's greatest choreographer, in a mixed programme that forms part of the Shanghai International Arts Festival.
The company looked tense in the first two movements, not helped by the use of recorded music instead of a live orchestra. Xiao-Wei Yu as the Waltz ballerina lacked expressiveness. The best performance came from the radiant Xiao-Feng Fan as the Russian ballerina. This tall and long-limbed dancer was the most Balanchinean in style, her dancing sharp, incisive and large-scaled. The whole cast was resonant with feeling in the final elegy movement. This was a promising debut.
A good contrast was provided by the premiere of an interesting creation, Conversation with Chopin by Yuanyuan Wang. (Ms Wang is joint choreographer of the ballet Raise the Red Lantern, which was shown by the National Ballet of China on its US tour earlier this month.) This ensemble ballet for 13 dancers, who sometimes dance barefoot, is divided into five sections, set to scores alternating between Chopin's études and electronic music. The dance vocabulary is predominantly contemporary.
Wang's choreography is inventive and original, spanning a range of moods and rhythms. She is fluent in creating long phrases from simple motifs. Particularly memorable is the melancholy third section, for two seemingly interdependent male couples.
The two tense and agitated allegro movements set to electronic music recall William Forsythe's earlier ballets. The whole cast danced wonderfully.
The evening ended with the last act from the 19th-century classic Don Quixote, albeit in a version with a dubious text. The company looked provincial in manner here but fortunately, as in Serenade, it was redeemed by Xiao-Feng Fan in a tasteful and dazzling performance of the grand pas de deux, strongly partnered by Shen-Yi Sun.
