A contemporary Irish dance company and a Chinese ballet troupe will meet for a unique performance, writes Clifford Coonan
The little girls waiting outside a Beijing studio where Irish choreographer Liz Roche is rehearsing a Chinese-Irish dance piece are giddy with excitement.
"There are foreigners in there," one would-be ballerina squeals, wide-eyed at the prospect. It's rare to spot a foreigner in Beijing's homely Xuan Wu neighbourhood, where the Chinese capital's growing internationalisation hasn't penetrated. But there are indeed foreigners in the dance studio of the Xuan Wu Cultural Centre for Children: three Irish and one Australian, working out a groundbreaking dance piece called Catalyst with six classically-trained Chinese dancers from the National Ballet of China.
The collaborative piece will be a highlight of the Irish Festival of Arts and Culture in China this month, which will showcase the best of Irish art, music, literature, film and theatre. And not a Riverdancer in sight.
Wrapping up a day of intensive rehearsing, Roche is coaching the group through an interpreter. Her manner is mild but firm and, from time to time, laughter ripples through the group as she critiques their day's efforts.
"You're still doing that," she says, flapping her arms. "You have to stop doing that." The dancers, lying in various states of unwinding on the floor of the studio, take the criticisms well. Then the rehearsal is over and the girls waiting outside rush in, eager to start their own class.
"It's going well and we find them very open." says Roche, a solid but elegant figure. "We just arrived on a Monday and then you just have to get on with it. We did a week at home. I think for the dancers here, a lot was thrown at them."
At the moment, the plan for the festival is that the Chinese National Ballet will perform one piece, Roche's company, Rex Levitates, will do one piece and then there will be the collaborative piece. The performances will take place in both Shanghai and Beijing.
The National Ballet of China is one of the world's best traditional ballet companies. Established in 1959, it has toured nearly 150 cities around the world, performing classical works by Anton Dolin, Rudolf Nureyev and Lycette Darsonval. Its repertoire also includes Chinese contemporary classics such as the socialist staple, the Red Detachment of Women.
"It's a big institution, 60 dancers; there are very few that big," says Roche. Especially contrasted with modern dance companies, where "you're usually doing well if you have a cast of eight." Roche formed the Rex Levitates company with her older sister Jenny in 1999 and has won widespread acclaim for shows such as Peeling Venus and her breakthrough show, Dragons and Tonics.
She says there are differences between the two companies and between the dancers themselves.
"They have a completely different musculature to us . . . the muscles are there to do different positions. Some are so well coordinated they can cope with anything," she says.
And indeed, a glance at the Chinese dancers bears this out. They are noticeably slim but with splayed feet, the product of entire days spent on their points. The women are classically beautiful but slight. Roche's own physique is sturdier.
She thumps her own legs and says, "These can cope with most things by now. They're very young, on average about 21, while our average age is 29-30. It's interesting to go back to working with younger people. It's interesting the difference between ballet and contemporary dance: they're serious athletes, but we're more artists," she says, laughing.
But she adds: "The standard is exceptionally high here, they're really good at what they do. If someone can move well, they can do anything - a dancer is a dancer.
"The dance world is all about heading off and doing a project and meeting people. For us it's a very attractive project because of the chance to interact with the Chinese dancers. They have a big repertoire of Chinese and western pieces but now they want to open up their contemporary repertoire. It's interesting to see if this is a new direction that they can follow."
The collaboration has put pressure on the Chinese dancers to deal with the different demands of contemporary performance and sometimes the difference in approach can lead to misunderstandings, particularly on gender roles.
"The change in the Chinese dancers during the three weeks has been incredible. It's not an Ireland/China problem, it's more of a ballet/contemporary dance problem," says Roche.
"For example, as women we would be pretty strong in comparison - we are used to lifting men and to interchanging roles. On the first day I'd say to someone, you go over there and lift him, and they were surprised; they said, 'boys lift girls'. But they got over it. They get over everything."
Normally, eight weeks' preparation is needed for a new piece but this time Roche is working with less. She flew to Beijing and visited the National Ballet for the first time in September, watched classes and picked out the dancers she wanted. But Roche is no stranger to working abroad and with different dance cultures. A graduate of the London Contemporary Dance School and College of Dance in Dublin, she has danced with all the major Irish companies as well as Les Carnets Bagouets, founded by Dominique Bagouet's former dancers after the choreographer's early death in 1992, La Camionetta in Montpelier and Christine Gaigg's 2nd Nature in Vienna.
She has won the highly prestigious Peter Darrell Choreographic Award, which involved a commission for a piece with Scottish Ballet that has toured Britain. Her work has been described as "dreamy and beautiful". Last year's Bread & Circus explored themes of strength, survival and endurance and was developed from the idea of gladiatorial combat in Roman arenas. With Catalyst, Roche has focused on movement rather than other forms of telling a story, such as declamation.
"With this I went for a very dance-based piece because I felt this was the most real thing we could do and still put on a good show. Broadly it's based on the idea of a catalyst in chemistry which shows a reaction and it throws up images of behaviour," she says.
Until now, Riverdance has been everyone's experience of Irish dance in China, after wowing audiences in the Great Hall of the People during President Mary McAleese's visit last September. Roche says no one has mentioned Riverdance to them so far. This form of contemporary, conceptual dance is likely to challenge Chinese audiences but, as China opens up and becomes more culturally sophisticated, demand for contemporary dance is on the rise.
"Maybe we'll realise in hindsight what has changed as a result of this. It's too early to get a sense of what I might have learned from this, or what I might take away from this, but I've learned a lot about the people I work with," she says.