Hope in the moves

A Chinese woman, whose life changed after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, now teaches Martha Graham's dance techniques, Chen Nan reports.

Xin Ying has been busy lately. As the principal dancer of the Martha Graham Dance Company, she gave seven performances at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the longest-running international dance festival in the United States, from Aug 14 to 17, and then as a choreographer, she worked with dancers of the American Ballet Theatre in New York on a new piece. She flew back to China for two weeks earlier this month, traveling between Sichuan province and Beijing.

Xin is 18 weeks pregnant.

"Although I have pregnancy symptoms like vomiting, I don't feel like slowing down. I have many ideas as a dancer and choreographer. I won't stop working until my body tells me to do so," the 34-year-old says during her recent stay in Beijing.

While she lives in New York, Xin visits China every year, mainly as president of the dance department of the Sichuan College of Culture and Arts in Mianyang, a small town in the province where she helped to launch the first modern dance major.

And the Xin Ying International Dance and Art Center is ready to open in Shanghai by the end of the month.

"I am fulfilling my dreams with such projects," she adds.

Xin was born and raised in Yichun, Heilongjiang province. She has been dancing almost every day since she was 6 years old. Her mother sent Xin to receive traditional Chinese dance training in the provincial capital, Harbin, when Xin was 7 years old. She was admitted to the first choreography class in Nanjing University of Arts, where she learned contemporary dance at age 15, as the youngest student in the class.

"I was open to various dance genres, including ballet, traditional Chinese dance and ethnic folk dance, which enabled me to know how my body works and how to control my body as a dancer," Xin says.

It was during her college years that Xin became aware of Martha Graham (1894-1991), the American dancer-choreographer who is considered the "mother of modern dance".

After graduation, Xin became a dance teacher at the Sichuan College of Culture and Arts. But her stable life in Mianyang changed after Sichuan was hit by a massive earthquake in 2008.

More than a decade later, Xin recalls the devastation. Xin was in a store buying a bottle of water when she saw people flooding out of their houses. The ground was shaking. The magnitude 8 quake killed more than 69,000 people.

In 2010, she applied to the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York, a name she had learned from her college books. With the support of the Sichuan College of Culture and Arts, she passed an audition and entered the school in New York.

"I had never thought about studying abroad. The earthquake taught me that life is short and unpredictable. It motivated me to pursue my dreams," says Xin.

To keep up with the classes, Xin, who barely spoke English back then, taught herself words for different parts of the body.

"I started from zero at the dance school (in the US), where I learned true modern dance. Though the beginning was very tough for me, I now feel powerful and real when I dance to Graham's pieces," Xin says.

After a year of training, Xin became a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company and danced with Fang-Yi Sheu, a former principal dancer of the group. In 2015, she became a soloist of the company and performed with other members at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

"It was the first time I'd performed in China after I had gone to New York. It was also the first time that my mother watched me dance (after leaving Sichuan)," she says.

Her mother had asked her to return to China.

"It was hard for her to understand why I would leave my stable teaching job to pursue modern dance abroad", Xin says, adding that after the NCPA performance in 2015, "she was convinced that her daughter is a good dancer".

Xin became the principal dancer of the US dance company - the first from the Chinese mainland - the following year. When Janet Eilber, the artistic director and a former principal dancer of the company, told her about the promotion, Xin says she cried.

Xin is still emotional about that moment.

From 2013 to 2015, she conducted master classes on Graham's techniques for students at the Beijing Dance Academy. She continues to teach them in China. She's also planning a multimedia exhibition introducing the techniques through Graham's important dance pieces that will premiere in Shanghai in May.

"We want to display different emotions that are delivered through Martha Graham's works, such as fear in Errand into the Maze, grief in Lamentation and destructive love in Cave of the Heart."

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 09/18/2019 page16)