Chinese ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan recently appeared as a presenter on Chinese nationwide television channel CCTV-1’s The Reader, a popular culture-focused series, sharing the insights that she gained during her many years of dance training.
Tan started learning to dance in pre-school. At age 10, her skills were noticed by the Shanghai Ballet School and she was invited to join their training program. During her years as a student, she won gold medals at several international ballet competitions. Now Tan is the youngest principal and the first Chinese dancer to reach that rank in the history of the San Francisco Ballet, one of the three leading ballet companies in the United States. She is also the first Asian dancer attending the World Star Show in Prague. Tan was born and raised in China, an Eastern country, yet she has impressed the world with her mastery of the graceful Western dance.
In 2004, Tan was featured on the cover of Time as one of “Hero of Asia” and, in 2017, was honored with “You Bring Charm to the World” award from HKSTV. On April 9, 2018, Tan won the San Francisco Mayor Art Award with that day being declared “Yuan Yuan Tan Day” for the people of San Francisco.
Tan joined the San Francisco Ballet when she was 18. Before that, the company had never had an Asian principal dancer. An unexpected opportunity arose when Tan was asked to master Balanchine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” with only one night to prepare. With her solid mastery of the fundamentals and her determination, she was able to perform it the next day. During the following year and a half, she took on roles in many major performances including “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake” and became a principal dancer after only two years.
Tan considers herself a whirling dervish, balancing a perpetual struggle between the beauty she seeks to express and the pain she must endure. She has devoted her life to ballet. Tan’s performance during her episode of The Reader received critical acclaim in China. Online fans across the country were highly supportive, praising her as the “irreplaceable pride of China on the global stage”. We look forward to Tan continuing her globe-spanning journey.
SOURCE The Reader
