Pain Behind Glory

Always on their feet, ballerinas face a challenging lifestyle behind the stage curtains By Deng Yaqing

Pain Behind Glory

Always on their feet, ballerinas face a challenging lifestyle behind the stage curtains By Deng Yaqing

From the best seats in the house, audience members easily fall under the ballerina’s spell, enraptured by, or even envious of, the graceful performers and their carefree lives of dance. But behind the curtains and dreamscape sets hides the unknown pains and tribulations that can easily overcome even the most committed of dancers.

For almost all ballet dancers, particularly the elite troupe at the National Ballet of China(NBC), the path to ballet excellence is paved with hurt toes and hard training.

In a bright dance hall in the Xicheng District of Beijing, a dozen ballerinas fi nish their warm-up routine before beginning a daily rehearsal. Following the orders of Xu Gang, a renowned Chinese ballet master, they practice basic ballet skills,associated with the dramatic plot of the performance.

In another corner, a girl rehearses the classicSwan Lake, in which the true love of a swan has moved numerous performers and audiences over the past century. With the plaintive tone of the violin accompanying her dance, the ballerina twirls about elegantly and gently, drops of sweat falling from her forehead and bandages covering her injured ankles.

She is Zhu Yan, the principal dancer of the NBC.

“In a ballet, a player often gets cast in a few roles. So some ballet dancers change costumes several times in the backstage area during performance,” said Zhu.

Established in 1959, the NBC has grown into a world-class ballet troupe with a professional crew of 70 dancers, 10 teachers and masters, most of whom are well known internationally.

For ballet dancers, the stage becomes their home, and the dance becomes their life, said Zhu. Many dancers spend between 10 and 15 years of their lives on stage.

Most NBC ballerinas start their performing careers as teenagers. Retirement comes in their 30s, after their bodies and feet can no longer take the physical strain of practices and performances.

Despite prior knowledge of the hardships,many Chinese parents support their children's dreams of dance. Every year, young girls head to Beijing for better instruction, some as young as 8 or 9. After several rounds of examinations and contests, quali fi ed recruits are selected from thousands of candidates. Then they begin a strict systematic education of ballet at a high school af fi liated to the Beijing Dance Academy (BDA), the most honored dance college in China.

“I never regret dancing,” Zhu said, “I feel so lucky that I became a member of the NBC and receive applause and acclaim in the spotlight.”

Despite an honorable history and support from the government, the NBC now relies mostly on its own commercial performances.The government now offers 40 percent of the NBC’s budget, while the troupe has to raise the rest on their own. The pressure to raise funds is a daily reminder for everyone at the NBC.

For this reason, the NBC arranges as many commercial performances as possible.The performances raise extra cash, but push the dancers to their limits.

In 2011, the NBC troupe performed more than 150 ballets in China and internationally.

“Sometimes we have to perform five or six ballets a week,” said Zhu.

“Our dancers seldom get weekends off.They go to practice from sun up to sun down and then perform once the sun sets,” said NBC President Feng Ying. “The amount of exercise of a ballet dancer in one performance is almost the same with that of a volleyball player in a match.”

In today’s fast-moving and tech-obsessed society, ballet is failing to attract large numbers of fans—those that do show up are usually older and few in number.

FLAP WINGS: Ballerinas imitate the action of the swan during rehearsal at NBC in Beijing on March 9

PRACTICING HARD: NBC dancers stretch to warm up before a routine rehearsal in Beijing on March 9

The brain drain of ballet dancers is another big challenge for the NBC to tackle. “Due to unsatisfactory income, many excellent ballet dancers who were trained by us have quit and chosen to serve in foreign ballet troupes,”said Jiang Shan, Director of Operations and Planning of the NBC.

“Nowadays, a super star can earn much more by singing a song than the whole performance of a ballet troupe,” said Jiang. “So we must continually improve our troupe to offer better conditions for our dancers.”

In spite of some challenges, the young generation of ballet dancers is working hard for improvement of the stage art by creating new dramas with innovative ideas and Chinese features. For instance, on March 8,theRed Detachment of Womenperformed by the NBC at Tianqiao Theater of Beijing was praised among middle school students. With quick and strong rhythms, the newly unveiled balletPink Floydhas won unexpected popularity among young audiences.

JIANG XIAOYING