Japan's ballet troupe coming to China with The White-Haired Girl

In 1945, The White-Haired Girl premiered in Yan'an, a revolutionary base in Northwest China, as an original Chinese opera, causing a sensation.

Since then it has been staged many times as one of the country's most successful operas and has been adapted for the stage, cinema and TV. But it's little known that Japan's Matsuyama Ballet Troupe is perhaps the world's first ballet company to adapt the Chinese story. Its ballet The White-Haired Girl premiered in Tokyo in 1955 and was staged in China in 1958.

Japan's Matsuyama Ballet Troupe will tour China with its signature work, The White-Haired Girl. Provided To China Daily

During the past decades, the troupe has visited and performed in China. In May, it will perform the ballet in Beijing and Shanghai, which will be the troupe's 15th tour in China.

According to Yin Jianping, director of China International Culture & Arts Company, co-organizer of the Matsuyama Ballet Troupe's China tour this year, the performances will also mark 45 years of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Besides The White-Haired Girl, the troupe has staged other classic ballets in China, such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.

Japanese ballerina Mikiko Matsuyama and her husband, Masao Shimizu, founded the troupe in 1948. Shimizu died in 2008.

The couple watched the Chinese film The White-Haired Girl in Japan in 1952, and choreographed a ballet based on it, taking inspiration from the film's portrayal of poor people's fight against oppressive landlords. The ballet premiered in Japan in 1955.

Three years later, the ballet was presented at Beijing's Tianqiao Theater, in a first for the company in China.

Set in the 1940s, the film tells the story of a poor young woman, Xi'er, whose father is beaten to death by a local landlord because he is unable to repay his debt. She is forced to work in the landlord's home but escapes to a mountain where she lives in hiding for years. Her long black hair turns white as she is unable to endure all the suffering. Eventually, she is saved by the Communist soldiers and reunited with her lover, Wang Dachun, who is a Communist fighter.

"Chinese leaders, such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, watched the troupe's performance in Beijing (in 1958)," says Yin.

Zheng Yiming, who has worked with the troupe for a long time, says the ballet has three versions and during its upcoming China tour, the latest version - debuted in Tokyo in 2010 - will be staged.

"With the connection between the two countries deepening, the ballet has been updated from the point of view of choreography, music and costume," says Zheng, a former dancer attached to the People's Liberation Army.

In the latest version, the audience can expect to see a number of ballerinas playing the role of Xi'er, in white wigs, to depict the character's suffering.

In 2009, the troupe launched a ballet training school in Beijing, bridging the cultures of the two countries as well as promoting classical ballet education. Zheng is the school president.

The famous Japanese ballerina Yoko Morishita, who is the director of Matsuyama Ballet Troupe, will play the lead role in the ballet's upcoming China tour.

Morishita, 68, joined the troupe in 1971. She is married to the founding couple's son, Tetsutaro Shimizu, the troupe's co-director.

"I have been dancing with her about 13 years now. Her moves are very expressive and inspiring," Zheng says of Morishita. "She shows no sign of slowing down."

If you go

7:30 pm, May 19. Great Hall of The People, west of Tian'anmen Square, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-610-3721.

7:15 pm, May 23. Shanghai Grand Theater, 300 Renmin Avenue, Shanghai. 400-106-8686.

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn