The Story of Dai Ailian : Icon of Chinese Folk Dance, Pioneer of Chinese Ballet

Dai Ailian was one of the great heroines of ballet in China, where she was an enormously respected and influential figure, both for her wide research into Chinese folk dance and her pivotal role in the establishment of ballet, but her name, and her story, are barely known in the west. Richard Glasstone now sets them in a wide social and historical context.He charts the journey from Dai's teenage years, studying dance in England, via her involvement with the resistance to the Japanese invasion of China, to her journey into the remote Chinese Borderlands, collecting and recording the dances of the Minority populations. In 1954 she was appointed Principal of the Beijing Dance School, and in 1963 became Artistic Director of the Chinese National ballet, but her ground-breaking work in establishing and developing classical ballet in China was interrupted by the notorious Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong's decision to banish all foreign influences from Chinese life. Dai was exiled to the countryside to work in the fields for several years but, with characteristic resilience, survived to help the National Ballet recover its former strengths and, indeed, surpass them.