If you were lucky enough to get tickets to the apparently sold out ballet performance “Sigh of Love“, (Chinese title 花样年华) you got to see something quite unique.

The Shanghai Ballet, under the guidance of French choreographer Bertrand d’At with Claude Agrafeil created what I would call a “Ballet Art Play”. It is not quite ballet, not quite a musical, but whatever it was, it was beautiful. From the audience’s perspective you see a series of heartfelt dancing scenes, which seem a bit discombobulated, only in a sense that it might be hard to understand the story. Though, the dancing scenes are very admirably performed by the dancers that really give you a sense of deep emotion behind every move.

As with most artistic professions, those who do it, do it for the love of the art. The dancers, as far as my conversations, all chose to do dancing as a career, not because they nothing else, but because they really had a passion for it. Having a job that is your passion is really something we all look for in life. Though, it is not all roses, as most of the dancers have been dancing for about 9 years or more. As you might guess, some of them have lost a certain amount of enthusiasm for their vocation. This, though, does not seem to lessen the seriousness with which they take their job.

Overall, they are performers doing what they want to do. Their salaries are not what you might expect for people in a highly specialized profession such as ballet dancing, but they don’t seem to mind too much, and it is still more than your typical Chinese salary.

If you missed their performance this time, be sure to catch it next time when they are on stage in October.

Here are some of photos of the production: