Artist Profile: Ms. Rebecca Yuchen Jiang

NEW YORK—Ms. Rebecca Jiang receives accolades for her exceptional flexibility and endurance when performing in practicum at Shen Yun Performing Arts.

In her case, it is exceptional flexibility, not only in the literal sense of a flexible physical body, but also in the figurative sense. She plays a wide range of diverse roles, with distinction, in the many types of dance pieces.

For instance, in the 2012 season program, Ms. Jiang had featured roles in two pieces.

Endurance and Technique

The dance In the Mountains portrays the Taiwanese Amei people. According to the Shen Yun program, “Amei dance, like its people, emphasizes teamwork, coordination, and community.”

During the past season, Ms. Jiang was in the spotlight as an Amei woman, synchronizing with another female dancer, performing a kneeling and spinning sequence—with no kneepads to cushion her knees from the contact with hardwood floors. Dance experts say that this movement requires great endurance for pain.

In the piece Snowflakes Welcoming Spring, Ms. Jiang performed a dazzling technical move. The piece is a folk dance from northeastern China, telling the story of one last snowfall melting into spring.

Throughout the piece, all the dancers spin and twirl white, sequined handkerchiefs. At a climactic point in the dance, Ms. Jiang dramatically flings her handkerchief up and away from her. While the handkerchief is soaring upward and returning like a boomerang, she nimbly executes a walkover (a type of front flip), returns to her feet, and catches the spinning handkerchief with one hand, bringing a burst of applause from the audience.

The Journey in Classical Chinese Dance

Ms. Jiang, bilingual in English and Chinese, was born in Australia to parents from China. Her journey to Fei Tian Acadamy of the Arts, and eventually dancing in practicum at Shen Yun, began when she was selected after a competitive audition in Canberra in 2007.

At Fei Tian, Ms. Jiang trains with the majority of time devoted to dance classes and rehearsals. Warmups include 300 leg kicks. She also studies Chinese language, history, and civilization in a classroom setting.

Ms. Jiang has traveled to perform in practicum at top-end venues in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), Australia, New Zealand, and a number of European nations, as well as many cities in the United States and Canada.

Her favorite dance to date is Forsythia in Spring, in which the female dancers twirl orange handkerchiefs, evoking fields of flowers blooming and swaying.

Broad Range

The programs in classical Chinese dance may include stories from history and legends, as well as ethnic folk dances from the minority groups in China. Ms. Jiang talked about how the feeling a dancer must have—and express for the audience to sense—is different for each type of dance.

“The Miao are a really upbeat and outgoing ethnic group,” she said, referring to the dance piece In a Miao Village of 2011.

On the other hand, she noted, in the piece Sleeves of Silk from this past season, “The water sleeves, the silk sleeves, it’s a really soft feeling.”

In classical Chinese dance, Ms. Jiang says, “Feeling is harder to get than the actual techniques.”

In a story dance, you have to feel like you’re actually there.

“You have to listen to the music and feel the music. In a story dance, you have to feel like you’re actually there.”

For the dances portraying characters from history and legends, such as the general Yue Fei or Mulan, dancers will need to also hit the books to understand more deeply.

“To get a better gist of the story, we go and do research about it,” she says.

She also notes that the actual story of Mulan is somewhat different from the popular Disney film. “There’s not the emphasis on romance,” she said, although the original story is stirring and inspiring in other ways, as the young lady disguised as a man valiantly leads troops to victory in battle.

Cherishing Traditional Culture

While she grew up in Western culture in Australia, she cherishes the values of traditional Chinese culture. Dancing in practicum with Shen Yun has helped her, she said, to “understand how rich culture in China is, and how much we lost. The culture today has been completely twisted by the communist regime.”

Ms. Jiang remarked that “Chinese audience members will say, ‘This is what you call tradition, it’s not like the stuff Chinese regime produces nowadays.’”

She believes that traditional culture can help “restore China to its former glory.”

To Chinese people growing up in the West, she said she would tell them, “Don’t forget your own culture and your roots.”

For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.

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