Once out of favour, this western art form is now a popular pastime among the middle-aged, writes CLIFFORD COONANin Beijing
AFTER A few minutes tying her ballet shoes and stretching her legs on the barre, Liu Ping bends her knees delicately and executes a perfect pirouette as her stern, protective teacher sounds out the numbers for the exercise.
Her face is a picture of modesty as she carefully raises her arm and completes a graceful pas followed by a series of pliés, while her friends in the ballet class do the same movements gathered around the barre.
The movements are challenging, but well executed, and are all the more remarkable as she is a 59-year-old retired property developer.
Ballet is generally the domain of young girls in Ireland, but in China it is becoming a pastime of choice for the middle-aged.
“I can’t say which part of ballet I like best. I like it all. I like the exercise, and I like the graceful, classical elegance of it all.
“I’ve been coming here for 10 years now and I always look forward to my class,” says the Beijinger, who is the oldest in the Liqun ballet company, which caters for older women. She looks every inch the prima ballerina in her green singlet and legwarmers.
Most of the women who come to Liu Liqun’s class are older than you would expect for ballerinas, but their enthusiasm for this western tradition is palpable.
China’s older generation likes to keep fit. Public parks have exercise machines for older people and, walking through the parks early in the morning, you see grey-haired men and women doing their tai-chi exercises, walking backwards and jogging slowly while beating their chests softly, all activities believed to help keep you active and healthy.
At night hundreds of older couples waltz down by Houhai lake, not far from the Forbidden City. This is the kind of thing that simply could not have happened in the China of chairman Mao Zedong. Ballet has a strong focus on the individual, which does not sit easily with the mass focus of Maoist doctrine. It is also a western art form, whereas Chinese art forms were more favoured. These ballet classes are emblematic of China’s modernisation in the last 30 years of reform.
To get to the ballet class, you climb five flights of exterior stairs at the Beijing Post Office Worker Culture Centre, not far from Tiananmen Square, and enter a huge hall lined with portraits of revolutionary leaders, as well as photographs of model workers and sporting heroes from the post office. Preparations are taking place for the 60th anniversary of the revolution that brought the Communist Party to power, and stirring music is playing from some old box speakers mounted on the wall.
The class is in a studio at the back of the hall, and the women are walking around stretching and tying their ballet shoes. The class opens with a Chopin nocturne.
Jacqueline and Jill, who insist on using their English names, are a mother and daughter who have been coming to the class for several years. Jill, a schoolgirl, is 16 and the youngest member of the troupe, while Jacqueline, who works in an office affiliated with the ministry of culture, says her age is a secret.
“It’s all fun, I don’t know which part I like best,” says Jill as she stretches her leg on the barre, a movement that is a little easier for her than for some of the others in the class. But the general standard is very high, says their teacher.
Liu Liqun, who is referred to as laoshi in the reverential tones that Chinese people reserve for addressing their teachers, is a graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy and a former member of the National Ballet of China.
He proudly tells of how he even got to travel abroad in the old days, and was supposed to go to Britain but was forced to return to China in 1971 after the death in an air crash of Lin Biao – an event that was officially described as an accident but most people believe was Mao’s doing.
In April 1981, Liu set up the first women’s aerobics class, and founded the first woman aerobics team in China in 1985. However, his first love is ballet. “My main aim is to keep it tasteful, to do it right. The students are very committed, and they adapt well to the discipline needed to perform ballet well,” he says.
Liu has run the school for 10 years, and says the post office studio room is only temporary while his main facility is being finished.
“The women are very graceful,” he says, as he changes a CD and starts putting the women through the next round of pliés and pas.