the shanghai ballet
Originally founded in 1966, the company was renamed Shanghai Ballet in 1979. With the classical Chinese ballet The White-Haired Girl, which won a gold medal for Best Classical Dance Work of the 20th Century, Shanghai Ballet achieved unprecedented success and firmly established its name in the international ballet world.The current Artistic and General Director is the renowned Chinese ballerina Xin Lili.
Over the past decades, Shanghai Ballet has created and staged many ballets, including Jane Eyre (Patrick de Bana), The Butterfly Lovers (Xin Lili), A Sigh of Love (Bertrand d’At), The Last Mission of Marco Polo (Jose Martinez), and the Shanghai Grand Theatre versions of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake (Derek Deane). The company’s repertoire also includes Swan Lake (Derek Deane), Romeo and Juliet (Derek Deane), Coppélia (Pierre Lacotte), La Sylphide (Jean-Paul Gravier), The Nutcracker (Tetsutaro Shimizu), Giselle, Don Quixote, Balanchine and Beyond, and the gala performance The Ode of Joy.
The Shanghai Ballet is highly active in collaborations and cultural exchanges with artists and companies both within China and abroad. Its diverse range of dance styles has earned the company an excellent reputation among Chinese and international artists alike.
choreographer derek deane
Derek Deane joined The Royal Ballet in 1972 and quickly rose to Senior Principal in 1980. He danced all the major roles in the repertoire, including many roles specially created for him by some of the world’s best choreographers.
After creating several ballets for The Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Deane left The Royal Ballet in 1989 to create a broader oeuvre of choreographic works.
Since 2000, Derek Deane has created ballets and staged new productions for The English National Ballet (Strictly Gershwin, Alice in Wonderland, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake), Teatro La Scala Milan (Coppélia), Teatro San Carlo Naples (La Bayadère, Giselle, The Nutcracker), National Ballet of Croatia (The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Paquita, Cinderella, The Lady of the Camellias), Teatro dell’Opera Rome (Cinderella), Shanghai Ballet (Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker, Hamlet), Kobyashi Ballet Tokyo (Giselle), the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre USA (Alice in Wonderland, Hungry Heart, Simply Simon, Anything Goes, Romeo and Juliet) and the Queensland Ballet (Strictly Gershwin).
Derek Deane was awarded ‘Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ (‘Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday Honours List’, June 2000) and appointed ‘Patron of Laine Theatre Arts’ (2016).
artistic director xin lili
Admitted to the Shanghai Dance Academy in 1973, Xin Lili specialised in ballet and graduated with honours in 1980. In that same year she joined Shanghai Ballet and became a principal dancer. In 2000 Lili was appointed artistic associate of Shanghai Ballet, in July 2001 she became Artistic Director and in September 2011 General Director.
With a pure graceful and lyrical temperament, Lili danced leading roles in Swan Lake, Giselle, Don Quixote and Romeo and Juliet, as well as in Chinese ballets such as The White-Haired Girl, Thunderstorm, Song of Youth, Soul, and The Butterfly Lovers. As a choreographer she showed her talent in a modern pas de deux entitled Twine.
In December 2014 Xin Lili was elected Chairwoman of the Shanghai Dancers Association. Since 2019 she has been Vice-Chairwoman of the Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles and she is Chairwoman of the Arts Council of Shanghai International Ballet.
Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840 in Votkinsk, in the western Ural region of Russia. In addition to law, he studied music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under the mentorship of the Russian composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein, with whom Tchaikovsky later completed further studies in orchestration. In 1866, Anton’s brother, the composer and pianist Nicholas Rubinstein, arranged for Tchaikovsky to be appointed as a harmony teacher at the Moscow Conservatory. There the young composer met the playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, who wrote the libretto for Tchaikovsky’s first opera The Voyevoda (1868). Other creations from that period include the operas Undine (1869) and The Oprichnik (1872), Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor (1875), the symphonies No. 1 (Winter Daydreams, 1868), No. 2 (1873, later revised under the title Little Russian), and No. 3 (1875), and the overture Romeo and Juliet (1869, revised in 1880).
Swan Lake was so poorly received at its premiere in Moscow in 1877 that Tchaikovsky turned his back on ballet music for some thirteen years. The premiere of the production as we now know it took place several years after his death. Ultimately, Swan Lake would become the most famous ballet of all time worldwide…!
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