Ballet in China
By the 2020s, China had become one of the world's great ballet powers. His development in this area was greatly influenced by the Russian ballet school. Chinese ballet has come a huge way of development and has become one of the most interesting and distinctive phenomena in the theatrical art of both China itself and the whole world. Including because, having absorbed and melted down the traditions of the West and the East, the Chinese ballet, combining both European and national features, creates completely new, unexpected and very interesting performances, which now have an impact on the development of ballet in the world.
1954: Russian dancers and educators create a Chinese ballet school. Founding of a school in Beijing
As Oksana Karnovich said in June 2023, in the early 1950s, ballet in the modern sense in China, in fact, did not exist. The acquaintance of the theater community of China with modern European choreography and the formation of the now world-famous Chinese ballet theater took place with the direct and direct participation of representatives of the Russian and Soviet choreographic schools.
"The real heyday of Chinese classical ballet will begin in the 1950s, when Soviet teachers of the Moscow and Leningrad ballet schools, invited by the government of the People's Republic of China, opened choreographic schools, trained classical dance teachers and created the first troupe of dancers in China at the National Theater in Beijing. Therefore, they are deservedly called the "founders of Chinese ballet," "said Oksana Karnovich, head of the branches of the Bakhrushinsky Museum.
The turning point in the development of a new form of theatrical art for the country was 1954, when the first professional choreographic school was opened in Beijing. Its origins were teachers of Moscow and Leningrad ballet schools O.A. Ilyina, V.I. Tsaplin, P.A. Gusev, N.N. Serebrennikov, V.V. Rumyantsev and T.K. Leshevich.
1920s: The emergence of the first interest in ballet in China thanks to Russian emigrants
Since the 1920s, modern choreographic art has entered the multi-layered culture of China, first as an unusual dance art for this country, but over time it has become one of the main directions in the theater, said in June 2023 Oksana Karnovich, head of the branches of the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum - memorial apartments G.S. Ulanova and M.M. Plisetskaya.
China's acquaintance with the European ballet school occurred, in particular, thanks to Russian artists and choreographers who emigrated to China after the October Revolution. Among them V.K. Izhevsky is a graduate of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theater School, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater N.I. Feoktistov, as well as choreographer and former soloist of the Mariinsky Theater N.M. Sokolsky, E.V. Kvyatkovskaya, V.N. Volkova. At the same time, Harbin and Shanghai even developed peculiar centers of Russian ballet art, where permanent ballet troupes and schools worked.