The 1964 Chinese ballet The White Haired Girl, set the whole nation on fire. The May 3, 1966 edition of People's Daily published a spread collecting together reviews of the ballet, mostly from Chinese workers, peasants and soldiers. They all expressed their strong affection for the ballet with the same level of fervor.

Yin Amei, the first female Chinese tractor driver from Shanghai, wrote that, "Foreign ballets look like noodles, too soft and limp. But The White Haired Girl is different. It is full of force and energy. The dancers' facial expressions are also full of emotion and show the strong spiritual outlook of our workers, peasants and soldiers."

The original version of The White Haired Girl produced in the 1960s

Chu Zaiming, a steelworker who was also from Shanghai, wrote that, "The ballet dancers I saw in the past all dressed very tightly, but in The White Haired Girl, the dancers just wore the clothes of our ordinary people. And they included the movements from Chinese ethnic dance, Peking Opera and Chinese martial arts, which look more intimate for our Chinese people…"

Conceived by the Shanghai Dance School (today's Shanghai Ballet), The White Haired Girl was adapted from a Chinese opera of the same name, which was first produced in 1945. There was also a film version in 1950.

The story of The White Haired Girl tells of a Chinese girl, Xi'er, who is the daughter of peasant  Yang Bailao. Since they can't pay the debt they owe to despotic landlord  Huang Shiren, Yang is killed by Huang and Xi'er is kidnapped and forced to become Huang's servant.

Although she later escapes into the mountains, the girl's hair gradually turns white due to malnutrition. Xi'er is eventually rescued by the red army and reunited with her lover, Wang Dachun, who had become a red army soldier.

The White Haired Girl has been regularly staged by Shanghai Ballet over the past 50 years, totaling some 2,000 performances.

Lin Yangyang, one of the original choreographers of the 1964 production, told the Global Times that, "The White Haired Girl made a great impact on the history of ballet in China since it brought forth completely new ideas about the form of Western ballet, not only in content, but also in costume design and choreography. Lots of the songs created for this ballet became classics that are still popular today."

Lin added that another innovation was that the backup vocals were performed live, as opposed to being pre-recorded as was the norm at the time.

Now the 50th anniversary of the ballet is being celebrated with two special performances on April 29 and 30 at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.

Fan Xiaofeng, the current chief female dancer of Shanghai Ballet, will top the bill.

Fan Xiaofeng (right), the current chief female dancer of Shanghai Ballet, plays Xi'er in the new version of The White Haired Girl. Photos: Courtesy of Shanghai Ballet

For Fan, as for every dancer who joins the Shanghai Ballet, learning the moves to The White Haired Girl was a required course. However, for Fan and her colleagues, the biggest challenges are incorporating the aspects so beloved of audiences of the original production - that is, the elements of ethnic dance, Peking Opera and martial arts. Another challenge is the level of acting involved.

"The difficult thing is to portray the full revolutionary passion and emotion that the original dancers would have displayed on stage," she said. "Especially in this work, it is demanded that the facial expressions of our dancers must be acted very clearly to show what you should love and hate, like Xi'er's hatred for the landlord, Huang Shiren."

When she first began playing the role in 2000, Fan said she was accustomed to expressing emotions by her body actions rather than her facial expressions, but that for recent productions she has tried to incorporate more of the latter.

"The White Haired Girl is indeed a product of its time and, unavoidably, has the political overtones of that time, but we never experienced that era," Fan said. Now she has decided to interpret that role in her own way, paying more attention to the inner emotions.

Lin said that Fan's confusion is understandable, and that even the dancers in the 1960s took a long period to adapt.

According to Lin, before the premiere in 1964, the original dancers were all taken to a small village in the suburbs of Shanghai to live with peasants and get first-hand experience of their lives.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), The White Haired Girl was one of only eight productions that was allowed to be staged in China. It enjoyed a favorable reputation among the country's leadership of the time, with Zhou Enlai watching it 17 times.

In the spring of 1972, a tour of The White Haired Girl in Japan helped encourage the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in September of that year.

Date: April 29 and 30, 7:15 pm

Venue: Shanghai Grand Theatre

上海大剧院

Address: 300 People's Avenue

人民大道300号

Tickets: 80 to 380 yuan

Call 6217-3055 for detailed information