The three most famous dancers in the Chinese dance world are Yang Liping, who danced ethnic dance, Venus, who danced modern dance, and Tan Yuanyuan, who danced in ballet. Venus, known for her poisonous tongue, rarely saw her praise people so excitedly, but also praised her peers, enough to see how much she admired the ballet queen Tan Yuanyuan. Today we will listen to her story.
Tan Yuanyuan was born in Shanghai in 1977. When she saw "Swan Lake" on TV at the age of 5, she learned to stand up on her tiptoes and imitate the movements of swans, not knowing how this would affect her future life. When the mother was young, she also liked to dance, and she was very supportive of her daughter dancing when she saw that her body was very soft. In 1987, at the age of 10, Tan Yuanyuan was admitted to the Shanghai Dance School. The teacher of the school not only measured Yuan Yuan's body proportions, but also came to the home for a home visit, saw that her parents were also in good shape, and then sent the admission letter to the family. Mom thinks it's a good thing, but Dad thinks it's good for girls to learn to dance in their spare time, but it's too hard to be a professional. Moreover, ballet is a Western art, Chinese may not jump out of the big name. Dad's idea is that Yuan yuan's grades are so good, he should take the road of college entrance examination and become an engineer or lawyer in the future. The parents disagreed and the two were deadlocked, and time passed. The Shanghai Dance School came to urge, and the parents finally handed over their fate to a coin, and fate chose ballet. Tan Yuanyuan finally embarked on the road of dance.
She graduated from the Shanghai Dance School in 1992. In the same year, she received a scholarship and went to Germany to study. This year is also the first transformation of Tan Yuanyuan's dancer's life. Soon after, she represented China in the Fifth International Ballet Competition in Paris and won the gold medal, and for her outstanding performance in the competition, she received an invitation from the San Francisco Ballet. So Tan Yuanyuan chose to go to the United States and became a soloist at the San Francisco Ballet.
When she first joined the group, she was ostracized and jealous of her peers, and three months after she joined the group, by chance, the chief actor was absent due to illness, at which time the leader of the group turned his attention to her, although Tan Yuanyuan's English had not yet passed, and she could not fully understand what the leader said, but she understood the meaning of the leader. She took the tape from the leader of the group and chose the challenge. The tape was a dance code for Baranchin, which she had never touched before, and she spent the night learning the stravinsky Violin Concerto. The next day she took the stage and performed the dance music perfectly. Since then, she has established her position with the San Francisco Ballet. It is precisely because of the outstanding performance of that imminent appointment that in the following year and a half, she has won many important performance opportunities such as "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake". After a show of strength, in 1997 Tan Yuanyuan was promoted to principal dancer of the San Francisco Ballet. She was 20 years old.
After Tan Yuanyuan finished dancing all the classical ballet dramas, including many newly created works, the bottleneck period quietly came at the age of 35, and Tan Yuanyuan even thought about ending this dance life. At this time, she met the role of the Little Mermaid. The interpretation of the mermaid stimulated the hidden potential in Tan Yuanyuan's body, so "The Little Mermaid" became her best favorite work. It also made her postpone her boot hanging up.
In 2004, Tan Yuanyuan was named "Asian Hero" by Time magazine in the United States and became the cover of Time magazine. In the same year, he was selected as one of the "20 Most Influential Heroes in Asia at the Age of 40". In 2006, she participated in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and danced with Liu Yan and Yang Liping in "Three Friends of the Cold Years - Songzhu Mei", Tan Yuanyuan, who was born in ballet, was "Song", Yang Liping, who became famous for her national dance, was "bamboo", and Liu Yan, who was known for Chinese dance, was "Mei". Tan Yuanyuan, a theatrical performance at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, served as the lead dancer.
People only saw Tan Yuanyuan's elegant stage performance, but they did not see her late nights of hard thinking and sweaty rehearsals. Each year, the San Francisco Ballet and the world tour are between 90 and 100 performances, and Tan Yuanyuan works an average of 13 hours a day during the performance season, and he has to dance four or five pairs of ballet shoes a week. At the end of each performance, she lay in bed and couldn't sleep, thinking about the details of the performance, which dance movement was not perfect. She would think of it at two o'clock in the morning, and at ten o'clock the next morning, she would show up in the rehearsal hall on time to train, preparing for a more perfect performance. In order to protect his feet, Tan Yuanyuan did not even have any outdoor entertainment activities. A friend would ask her to have dinner and chat at night, and she would not be able to participate in the next day's performance, saying that she needed to get sleep.
The cruel other side of ballet art is manifested in the actor's extreme use of the body, resulting in Tan Yuanyuan's full of pain. She was beautiful on stage, but up close, the ballerina's legs were deformed, so she didn't wear shorts and skirts in the summer, and her feet were even more deformed, so she didn't wear open-toed sandals either. Tan Yuanyuan has also complained to some extent. She once said in an interview that "she will never dance ballet in the next life", and if she could, she would also like to rebel once and live a normal life, without having to stay in the practice room every day. Afterwards she knew she was talking angrily, and she loved ballet more than life.
In 2015, she retired as a dance partner for 19 years. Tan Yuanyuan talked about the deep feelings of this dance partner, saying that he and I are like a husband and wife on the stage, and we can cooperate with our eyes closed. Finally, the dance partner left the stage because of the pain, and before leaving, he said to Tan Yuanyuan: You must continue if you can. Tan Yuanyuan asked why me? The partner said to her seriously because you are a legend.
Although the golden time of the ballet dancer is fleeting, Tan Yuanyuan once lamented that my emotional artistic expression is very mature now, but my body has passed the peak moment. But Tan Yuanyuan has no intention of retiring. She once used the example of the famous British dancer Margo Fontaine: she planned to retire at the age of 38, but danced until she was 50. Tan Yuanyuan also said that she chose to jump until the day when she could not jump, and waited until her body signaled that it was unbearable, and she would allow herself to retire. But the San Francisco Ballet also had some noise: Tan Yuanyuan did not retreat, and no one else could go up.
On the stage of "Dance Storm" in 2020, Tan Yuanyuan once again appeared in front of the audience. As a ceiling-level ballet dancer, in this show, she actually has more than enough to be a judge to participate in the competition. It turned out that because of the sudden epidemic, she had been away from the stage for too long, and she really wanted to dance.
Tan Yuanyuan is a well-deserved legend. Only occasionally when she stood at the tip of the pyramid and looked out, did she see that she had been left behind for more than 20 years. She also gave up a lot of ordinary people's lives and pleasures. She said many times that she was sometimes like an ascetic. Dedicate all of yourself to the only faith of "ballet". For the sake of the ballet career, she gave her entire life, and her personal life also had many regrets. Tan Yuanyuan has been very close to her grandfather since she was a child, but after embarking on the road of dancers, she rarely had the opportunity to get along with her grandfather. Once she flew back to Beijing to perform, and her grandfather called her: Yuan Yuan, come and see me. But that time her dance troupe mission was so tight that she had to fly back to the United States. Unexpectedly, as soon as the plane arrived in the United States, Tan Yuanyuan received the news of his grandfather's death.
There are many regrets in her life, including that she has no family and no children. Dance is cruel for actresses, she can't fish and bear paws at the same time, especially jumping to the job like Tan Yuanyuan, must have some sacrifices, whether it is Tan Yuanyuan or Yang Liping, they have sacrificed a lot for their beloved dance career. So Tan Yuanyuan's mother sometimes says that she regrets letting her daughter embark on the road of ballet, but as Venus said, if Tan Yuanyuan is an ordinary person, she can have an ordinary life, but she is destined to be not ordinary and extraordinary, then she may also need to endure some loneliness.
Tan Yuanyuan's achievements in ballet are well known, her life is exciting enough, but her fans are more concerned about her personal life, but fate is a difficult thing. She has had several foreign boyfriends, and it is also rumored that she once had a relationship with Wang Wei, the CEO of Tudou, and intervened in other people's marriages. Tan Yuanyuan himself denied it in an interview. Compared with her partner, dance is the most important thing for her, and she once said a paragraph that is also a response to her personal emotional dynamics: I still have too many things to do, such as having a work that really belongs to me, or being able to make up a work myself. So other things, I really don't have time to think about, dance is still my only emotional sustenance.
Tan Yuanyuan, now 45 years old, is still single and lives with his parents. Someone photographed her home in San Francisco, far less than Yang Liping and Venus's mansion, and the Internet rumored that Tan Yuanyuan's annual salary at the San Francisco Ballet was about $200,000. Some people say that it is a pity that she did not return to China, and her classmates who were inferior to her at the Shanghai Dance School opened a studio in Shanghai and opened a dance school, and now the annual income of more than ten million abounds. Tan Yuanyuan's fame and achievements are greater than theirs, and she can make a lot of money if she returns to China, but Tan Yuanyuan does not think so, she wants recognition on the international stage. It was not until 2015 that Tan Yuanyuan set up his own studio in China. Now she was running on both sides. She was neither burdened by the honor nor could she see the traces of the years on her.
Tan Yuanyuan is always so elegant on the stage, and she is also so decent in the interview show, it seems that she has not seen her laugh, until she was on the "Venus Show", she saw Xiaonan put on ballet shoes, Xiaonan put the ballet out of the feeling of stepping on stilts, and danced out of the taste of the two-person rotation, which can make the ballet queen who laughs like a flower and turn forward and backward. It is rare to see Tan Yuanyuan smile so happily, and I hope that in the days to come, she can have more moments of laughter. She can also live like a dancer, lifting weights.
This is Ear Studio, and we'll see each other in our next story.