Feng Ying
China
Mme. Feng Ying is a renowned ballerina and ballet mistress in China and currently the director and artistic director of National Ballet of China. She is also the president of the National Ballet of China Dance School, and National First-class Dancer.
She graduated from Beijing Dance Academy and joined National Ballet of China in 1980. In 1982, she was sent to the Opera National de Paris and studied with Ballet Masters such as Maurice Bejart and Rossela Hightower. As a Prima Ballerina, she had danced the whole repertoire staged by NBC then, including Swan Lake, Giselle, Don Quixote, The Maid of the Sea, and The Red Detachment of Women. Since 1997, she began a career as a teacher, répétiteur and choreographer. Together with her colleagues she trained a dozen of dancers who all received gold prizes at major international ballet competitions. Collaborated with great choreographers like Ben Stevenson, Roland Petit, Natalia Makarova and John Neumeier, she staged for the company Bourneville’s La Sylphide, Stevenson’s Fountain of Tears, Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, Carmen, L’ Arleseinne, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, Pink Floyd Ballet. As the artistic director, she produced for the company Bejart’s Fire Bird, Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid and Songs and Dances of the Earth, Petipa’s La Chauve-Souris, Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadère, Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella and George Balanchine’s Jewels etc. Meanwhile, she also oversaw the restaging of Chinese New Year (The Nutcracker Chinese Version), Le Sacre du Printemps, Don Quixote and Giselle.
In recent years, under the guidance of her proposed “three-pillar” artistic approach, the company has made remarkable achievements in artistic creation, cultural diplomacy, ballet talents training, performance operation, publicity and promotion, theater management, ballet education and public welfare popularization. Under her leadership, NBC has been focusing on the creation and continuous polishing of the realistic theme works, which have received wide attention and praise from all walks of life. Mme. Feng Ying is also the chief director and producer of the Chinese Ballet The Crane Calling , which was premiered at Beijing Tianqiao Theater in September 2015. As executive planner and producer she staged The Light of Heart in September 2017 and Yimeng-A Ballet in Three Chapters in April 2019, both at Beijing Tianqiao Theater. In 2020, under the situation that the pandemic hits severely people’s lives, with her as the executive director and producer, the company presented Homage to Life – The 10th Ballet Workshop online for the first time, the anti-epidemic ballet Against the Wind, and Like Flowers.
Since 2010, she organized NBC Ballet Workshop every year, presenting a dozen of original modern works with different characters and styles. She has been a constant participant of juries for major international ballet competitions, and seminars as well as conferences, which are shaping the trend of culture and art of the world. She led the company to numerous most renowned arts festivals and theaters. In 2015, she was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of French Government for her outstanding contributions to the cultural and artistic exchange between China and France.
In order to promote arts education and the development of cultural industries, she founded the National Ballet of China Dance School in 2018 after years of effort. In the same year the school produced the first fairy tale ballet The Nine-Colored Deer, giving students a stage to present their study results. She also led the company to various levels of schools and universities nationwide and overseas every year, giving ballet lectures and free performances. Under her guidance, the company also donated performance revenues to people suffered from natural disasters many times.