ABT CHINA TOUR SPARKS MUTUAL ADMIRATION.

American Ballet Theatre performed for the first time in the People's Republic of China as part of a landmark three-week tour of Eastern Asia. The company danced two full-length works, La Bayadere and Don Quixote, as well as American repertory works such as Martha Graham's Diversion of Angels, Lar Lubovitch's Meadow and George Balanchine's Theme and Variations. The tour, which began late last September, gave audiences in Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as Singapore and Taipei, Taiwan, their first look at the American dancers and repertoire; ABT dancers had the chance to witness the changes that have transformed China in recent years.

Corporate sponsors helped finance the tour. The tour contract was negotiated by Jane Hermann of ICM Artists Ltd., who began talks directly with the Shanghai Grand Theater in September of 1999. The agreement followed a touchy period in which the Chinese government rejected all American contracts due to the inadvertent bombing by U.S. forces of the Chinese embassy in Serbia in May 1999.

ABT soloist Yan Chen, who was born in Shanghai and came to the United States in 1989 (the year of the violently suppressed pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square), saw first-hand China's cultural and economic transformation over the last decade. "Before I left the country, there were no highways, no taxis, few cars and no shopping malls," she said. "Now you find the exclusive shopping malls and the designer shops. There is enormous change. I can't believe all the high-rise hotels, foreign industries and freeways. And the people are now much more open, friendly and accepting."

China, which has a communist government but a rather loosely regulated capitalist economy, shows few signs of what Americans might expect from a communist state. Corps de ballet member Sean Stewart said, "It was the first time I had been to a communist country, but it all seemed so very Westernized in a lot of ways." According to Stewart and Chen, the most notable indicators of controlling government were an obvious police presence and a large video in Shanghai's People's Square showing soldiers marching in lockstep, which played as Chinese citizens went about their shopping sprees. The company was also in Shanghai October 1 for National Day, the Chinese equivalent of America's Fourth of July, when thousands jammed into People's Square to watch the fireworks. The dancers said that what little free time they had was spent sightseeing and seeking out Chinese herbalists and chiropractors for their dance-related ailments.

The company performed La Bayadere in the Shanghai Grand Theater, an elaborately designed 1,800-seat complex enclosed in glass that was completed only three years ago. The Shanghai audiences, said Stewart, "are not used to Western theater, so they weren't really sure how to respond." As the Chinese are more exposed to Western dance, said Chen, "they appreciate Western culture more. Before this, all they saw was traditional Chinese culture. Now the West is very new and interesting to them, and they are excited about absorbing it." (see review at www.dancemagazine.com)

For Chen, the tour also marked an important homecoming and family reunion. She took her 5-year-old son, Adam, with her to meet her parents, grandparents, uncles and brother, an expatriate in Australia. Chen, who danced one of the Shades in the second act of La Bayadere, also received an emotional welcome from her original dance school, the Shanghai Ballet School, where she taught a class in the school's renovated, spacious studios. "The new generation of students is more selective than before," said Chen. "Beautiful legs, beautiful line, skinny as a rake."

During the tour, various ballets became audience favorites. In Singapore, Lubovitch's Meadow was a resounding success, while Taipei preferred the classics. Soloist Gillian Murphy made successful debuts as Kitri in Don Quixote and in the ballerina role in Theme and Variations.

Above all, the tour suggested that the worlds of politics and culture have only gotten smaller. As a recently naturalized American citizen, Chen said with a laugh, "Now when I visit China, I need a visa." Added Stewart: "While I was in China, I only ate Chinese food twice."