Right royal Beauty

The Royal Ballet returns to China this summer for the first time in nearly ten years.

The Royal Ballet Company will embark on a major five-week tour to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, performing some of their most popular ballets including Kenneth MacMillan's ManonMonica Mason and Christopher Newton's production of The Sleeping Beauty and a mixed work which reflects the Company's broad range of choreographic styles.

The Beijing performances will run at the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Manon on June 18, 19 and 20, The Sleeping Beauty on June 21, 22 and 23 and the Mixed Program on 25 and 26.

"It is a pleasure to be returning to China, where audiences are discerning and knowledgeable about ballet and have such a deep appreciation of their own traditional art forms. We very much look forward to performing in the newly opened National Centre for the Performing Arts," says Monica Mason, Director of The Royal Ballet.

Manon was initially not on the program of the tour. It was Zhao Ruheng, president of the National Ballet of China as well as the dance director of the NCPA who proposed bringing it to China.

"Manon is one of the Royal Ballet's most enduring works. Though Chinese audiences are not familiar with it, it is a must-see ballet," says Zhao.   

Based on Abbe Prevost's L'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, the ballet, which was created in 1974, follows the fall of the central character, Manon, from Parisian courtesan to a fugitive in the swamps of Louisiana. Despite falling in love with a young student, Des Grieux, Manon agrees to a financial arrangement that her brother has made with a wealthy elderly gentleman, Monsieur GM. A victim of her own avarice, she persuades Des Grieux to cheat Monsieur GM out of even more money at a card game. When their plot is discovered, Manon is arrested as a prostitute and deported to America, followed by her lover.

The Mixed Program opens with Wayne McGregor's Chroma, and includes Frederick Ashton's Tha?s pas de deux, Act III pas de deux from Sylvia, the Romeo and Juliet pas de deux, the Tchaikovsky pas de deux, the final pas de deux from Marius Petipa's Don Quixote and is completed by Ashton's Homage to The Queen which includes new choreography from David Bintley, Christopher Wheeldon and Michael Corder.

Time: 7:30 pm

Place: West of Tian'anmen Square

Tel: 66550000

Chen Jie

(China Daily 06/07/2008 page6)