West meets East at ABT: American's Ballet Theatre's Chinese-born soloist Yan Chen has become a true mistress of the classical western tradition.

American Ballet Theatre's Chinese-born soloist Yan Chen has become a true mistress of the classical Western tradition.

There will be no end of predictions about the impending millennium, but the safest to make, by far, is that it will find many more well-trained Asian dancers performing with classical dance companies the world over. Ballet, like many Western arts, sciences, and practices, has been accepted without being diminished in Asia, but it took longer to be established. It can be said to have secured only a toehold in the first quarter of this century when emigre Russians who had fled the revolution established enclaves of classical dance in Japan and China. A historic 1922 tour of Japan by Anna Pavlova and her troupe paved the way for the ballet school of Eliana and Nadezhda Pavlova--no relation to Anna--where the first generation of classical Japanese dancers were trained. Soviet influence, the dominant force after World War II, caused a marked increase in technical standards and soon created a generation-spanning crop of such international virtuosi as Yoko Morishita, Gen Horiuchi, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Miyako Yoshida, and Koichi Kubo [September, cover, page 64].

Classical ballet in China took root in those cities with large diplomatic communities. When the Hookham family moved from London to Shanghai in 1928, for example, nine-year-old Peggy could continue to study ballet uninterruptedly for five years at the studio of George Goncharov, former member of the Bolshoi. (Back in England, Hookham resumed her studies, changed her name to Margot Fonteyn, and--you know the rest.) Systematic classical training at the highest level did not begin until 1954 with a cultural exchange with the Soviet Union that established the Beijing School (later the Beijing Dance Academy). The rapture of diplomatic relations with the USSR in the next decade proved less threatening to the academies throughout the country than the "Cultural Revolution" of the 1970s against Western, as well as Chinese, culture. After that tidal wave of brutal reaction had ebbed, state-supported ballet classes were once again available--but only for children of a certain age.

Yan Chen, now a soloist at American Ballet Theatre, was among the eligible. "You had to be between eleven and twelve," she says, recalling her admission to the Shanghai Dance School in 1981. "I was very lucky." (Her easy command of English enables her to sum up life's big events in this terse, often unimprovable fashion; she recounts her husband's whirlwind courtship five years ago with, "We met on a beach in Thailand, and that was that.") A delight in what she calls "all kinds of dancing as a kid" rapidly developed into a dedication to ballet under the stem tutelage of Chinese instructors trained in the Vaganova method. Even in China she drew the usual inspiration from watching The Red Shoes and The Turning Point, but by then she was already caught up in the discipline of ballet and the satisfaction of meeting its demands.

By 1985 the school considered her sufficiently advanced to represent China as an exchange student with San Francisco Ballet--Shanghai and San Francisco had attained the status of "sister cities"--and to dispatch her to the Prix de Lausanne ("I won a prize"). In 1988 Washington Ballet artistic director Choo-San Goh offered her a scholarship; over the next five years, she added contemporary works to her repertory and progressed from apprentice to principal.

Along the way, she attracted the attention of ABT principal Kevin McKenzie, a regular guest artist with Washington. (Eventually he became its artistic associate.) McKenzie recalls, "She was struggling with English then, and with the same dedication she brings to everything. Her dancing was impressive, but so was the intensity with which she would get caught up in every new experience, whether it was a language or a role or a style." After McKenzie assumed direction of ABT in 1993, she phoned him about joining the company. She was the only Washington dancer he brought to ABT; he assigned her to the corps but made the role of Clara in his Nutcracker on her. Twyla Tharp later gave her a featured part in How Near Heaven, In 1995 she was promoted to soloist.

The matter of height, which often limits very gifted Asian males to demi-caractere roles, has proven no obstacle for her. Although she is clearly not built along the Lines of that inescapable cliche, the long-stemmed American beauty, her dancing shows no trace of that unavoidable bromide for Asian ballerinas, the porcelain figurine. Her proportions are so exquisite, her technique is so secure, her line so expressive, and her musicality so pervasive that no Yan Chen performance is less than a full-scale achievement. Ballet mistress Georgina Parkinson, who often coaches her, dismisses any fretting about height. "It's just a matter of her dancing `big,'" says Parkinson. "And she's perfectly capable of doing it, Her training has been excellent. Did you see her Snow Maiden? Her Coppelia?"

Those two evening-length works, performed during ABT's recent spring visit to the Metropolitan Opera House, had demonstrated a deepening gift for characterization through movement. In the title role of Ben Stevenson's Snow Maiden, she proved to be melting in every sense of the word; the lilting tilt of her head and the lightness in her step as she darted among disconsolate reindeer and retreaded folk dances truly made her seem not of this world. Not even Stevenson's demand that she regularly waggle her fingers and fall to the floor fazed her.

Swanilda in Coppelia was another delightful, three-dimensional portrait. For once the petulance this Moravian maiden must regularly flaunt did not wear thin; Chen's exasperation, expressed in a truculent slouching stride that had her feet flashing like little scimitars, never failed to delight. Equally delicious were the quirky mechanical aftershocks that spiked her movements as the automaton. A fleeting failure to sustain a balance, the result of a recent ankle strain, was easily offset by the flurry of virtuosity that surrounded it.

Ethan Stiefel, her buoyant Franz, says, "She's a pleasure to work with. Easygoing. Technically coordinated. And open. She'll tell you what she wants, but she wants it to work as well for the partner as it does for her. She can sense what works for you." One example of such insight occurred during an afternoon run-through by the principals of Lar Lubovitch's Othello, when she was the most vulnerable of Desdemonas to the smoldering Moor of Yuri Possokhov. Putting to use the expertise she had acquired by repeatedly taking to the tundra in Snow Maiden, Chen suggested that Possokhov could "die" more gracefully by going into a sprawl from a plie. He didn't hesitate to accept the advice.

Some balletgoers who preferred mixed-bill programs to a night of narrative--particularly a narrative with dancing reindeer--could have seen her command of a role grow within the space of a week. In the first of two performances of the pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, she had remained coolly poised at all times, even when held upside down like a salt shaker (the ultimate demonstration of tender regard in today's choreography). At her second, she revealed an extra suppleness and abandon in the lifts and a more expressive set to the head that went beyond polished dancing. MacMillan's sensational demands were transmogrified into the rapture of young lovers under an inconstant moon.

Her Romeo was that most irrepressible of ABT's Montagues, Angel Corella. Chen says, "We work together so often I don't have to be polite when there's a problem. With anyone else I say something like, `I think it might go better if you do this.' With Angel I just say, `No, this is not right,' and we go to work on it." Their pas de deux rehearsal under the glittering, all-seeing eye of Parkinson had bubbled along in a spirit of camaraderie that belied their mutual concentration, effort, and risk. Parkinson's pointed advice in precise technical terms alternated with more folksy references (a carrying lift, with struggle, is "the bicycle"). Often these lapses from the standard French left no room for doubt ("Lift her in the air and sling her around three times"). McKenzie, a former Romeo who has partnered Natalia Makarova, dropped by to give constructive criticism; "You've got to feel her hipbones," he told Corella, snatching up Chen to demonstrate where and how.

One upside-down lift took an unexpected turn after Chen's grip on Corella's thighs went astray; he backed off in mock terror, shielding his crotch yet grinning all the while. She laughed into her cupped hands. Parkinson said nothing, knowing these pranksters would get back down to work in a moment. They did just that, immediately trying the lift once more. It went without a hitch.

Left with Parkinson and the pianist, Chen worked solemnly and determinedly on her variations from Snow Maiden. Many repeats were required of one set to a perky Tchaikovsky excerpt, and she apologized to the pianist. A requisite fall had to be done so often that an observer asked if kneepads would be a part of her costume. "Hip pads would be better," she sighed.

Regardless of the drain of rehearsals and performance, she will invariably brighten when the conversation veers from ballet to her family. That dreary cliche about Asians, their monochromatic "inscrutability," falls away as she proudly whips out photos of husband Peter Misseldine, and three-year-old son Adam ("Isn't he great?"). At every opportunity she flies home to Orlando, Florida, where Misseldine runs a gallery, dashing down and back over a weekend if her full schedule permits. She is equally frank when asked about her becoming a principal at ABT. "I hope I do," she says. Parkinson is even more to the point: "She will."

Harris Green is associate editor for features at Dance Magazine.