Hard act to follow

Yang has managed to do something which up until now, has proved difficult for many companies in the arts and cultural sector - attract serious investment. Provided to China Daily

To cover her costs, she took out loans, sold her house, performed in other shows, and crucially appeared in advertisements.

As such a star, she could sometimes earn as much as 100,000 yuan per day from a commercial, enough to finance her company and her staff for two months.

The Yunnan Show opened in 2003 in Kunming to huge acclaim, and Yang Liping Arts & Culture was set up a year later.

The show then toured China and more than 50 other countries and regions. It is still being performed in Kunming today, and is now considered one of China's most successful, and high-profile, long-running shows.

It certainly had a profound effect on Wang Yanwu, when he saw it in 2006.

Then a managing director at Swiss bank UBS, he was so impressed by it, he volunteered to work for Yang's company in his spare time.

He mentioned his involvement with Yang Liping Arts & Culture at an investment forum in 2011, drawing the attention of Xu Xiang, the head of the Southwest China region at Shenzhen Capital Group - and after several rounds of talks, their investment partnership was sealed.

Wang formally became full-time general manager of Yang Liping Arts & Culture as a condition of the deal.

"Yang Liping is one of the world's greatest dancers, and we feel confident her company will develop.

"She has gathered some first-class talent and her performances are of the highest quality," Xu said.

"We are helping to expand the company's distribution by setting up new theaters, and plan to have it listed in three to five years."

Two new theaters are planned, in the tourism cities of Lijiang and Dali, in Yunnan province, as fixed sites for Yang's future dance shows.

Xu said that in Lijiang, construction should be finished by the end of 2013, and is projecting an annual revenue of 50 million yuan. The Dali theatre is scheduled to be finished by 2015.

The theatre in Kunming has been operating for 11 years, with its annual revenue in 2011 of almost 20 million yuan accounting for about 50 percent of the company's total revenue, the remainder coming from touring and from independent companies paying to perform Yang's shows.

But investing in arts and culture is still in its infancy in China, and many venture capitalists and investors remain skeptical about it, much like many still remain nervous about investing in biotech or any other newer investment sector.

"In the culture sector, the creators are the most important people," explained Wang.

"Yang Liping has accumulated decades of performance experience, and this is really a 'golden time' in her career," he said - meaning a time when she can take full commercial advantage of her name and her skills.