Ballet in the People’s Republic has blossomed in recent years, reaching new heights in its shift from left to centre stage.

The National Ballet of China’s recent production The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭 mudan ting) at the Arts Centre Melbourne is an example of the company’s most valued repertoire: original ballets which reflect Chinese culture and its uniqueness. Stylistically, The Peony Pavilion is highly contemporary, nuanced by global languages of dance and design. At the same time however the production retains the kind of nationalistic sentiment that characterises much of the history of ballet in modern China. In this way, China’s leading ballet company – viewed as a pioneer in a growing field – successfully blends creative and ideological practices.

CHANGSHA

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to CHANGSHA, the forthcoming photobook from Rian Dundon and Emphas.is Press.

I first went to China on a whim. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. It was 2005 and I was 24-years-old. I made a one-year commitment to stay in the country. In the end I stayed for six.

At first, when I didn’t speak the language, I would hang out in pool halls and practice counting balls in Chinese. I couldn’t talk but I knew how to play and I knew how to swap cigs with the hustlers and lookers-on. Later my Mandarin came and I could go to dinner with people or hit the karaoke clubs. Mr. Tian was a whiskey wholesaler and one of our first friends. His brother owned The Red East – a popular nightclub and karaoke house where I got my first taste of provincial nightlife with the bar’s cast of boozers, working girls, and off-duty cops. I photographed. During the day I moved through the city digesting what I saw. I began to develop an idea for the kind of pictures I wanted to make in China, but I knew it wouldn’t be possible in just one year. It was important that I avoid the typical images – the Mao posters and soldiers, the futuristic cityscapes – and remain true to an experience separate from politics. I wanted to make pictures that didn’t necessarily read as China. Personal photographs. Private photographs.

Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years struck a chord with many when it was first published in Hong Kong in 2009 and later in the English language in 2011. Many said it felt eerily like documentary, despite its deliberate exaggerations, while others pointed out that it tapped into widespread fears of Chinese world hegemony.

A satirical novel, set in the semi-future of 2013, The Fat Years proposes a Brave New World like China in which all dissent has been bought off with the promises of stability and consumerism. Emerging victorious from a global financial crisis of 2008, the country has now entered a new age of peace and prosperity, its version of ‘authoritarian harmony’ now legitimated by its economic success. Meanwhile, the majority of the Chinese population appears to have willingly forgotten about a one-month period of turmoil that raged across the country until ended in a bloody government crackdown.

Given the dramatic events of the last few months (e.g. the public ousting of party functionary, Bo Xilai, and the extremely public fleeing of blind activist, Chen Guangcheng from house arrest into the arms of the US Embassy in Beijing) I thought I’d have a word with Chan Koonchung and ask how the China of today appears to be shaping up against that predicted in his novel. How does he see the real China of 2013, now on the horizon? Is it maintaining its political legitimacy, internationally? And is it a coincidence that his main character, Lao Chen, shares a surname with the blind human rights activist, Chen Guangcheng?