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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

From T&T to Beijing: Dai Ailian

The Moth­er of Chi­nese mod­ern dance

by

20140601

Dai Ail­ian might not be a house­hold name in Trinidad. But through­out Chi­na, she is known as the "Moth­er of Chi­nese mod­ern dance."Dai Ail­ian was the Trinidad-born bal­le­ri­na who de­vot­ed all her life to Chi­nese dance. She was born Eileen Isaac in 1916, to a third-gen­er­a­tion Chi­nese fam­i­ly in Cou­va whose ori­gins were in Xin­hui, Guang­dong Province.Her life sto­ry will be told at Na­pa on June 6 and 7 through a dance pro­duc­tion ti­tled Cou­va's Lo­tus, pre­sent­ed by the Dai Ail­ian Foun­da­tion and Kith and Kin pro­duc­tions, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Chi­nese Em­bassy of T&T and the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

The pro­duc­tion is di­rect­ed and chore­o­graphed by lo­cal icon of dance and founder of her own epony­mous dance com­pa­ny, Car­ol La Chapelle.The sto­ry of how Dai came to be one of Chi­na's lead­ing fig­ures of dance is tes­ti­mo­ny to her own dri­ve as well as, per­haps, the in­domitable spir­it that re­sides in every Tri­ni. There is a list of firsts at­tached to her name: among them, she was co-founder of the Na­tion­al Bal­let of Chi­na and the Bei­jing Dance Acad­e­my. She's al­so said to have been the first per­son to bring west­ern bal­let to Chi­na in the 1940s.In an in­ter­view on the Chi­nese TV pro­gramme Up Close, two years be­fore her death on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2006, Dai Ail­ian spoke about her de­sire and pas­sion for danc­ing as well as her ear­ly train­ing in bal­let in T&T.

She said, "As far as I can re­mem­ber, as a child when I heard mu­sic, I would dance..."

'Jump­ing' in T&T Car­ni­val

Al­though she did not say ex­act­ly when her love for dance took root, she said Car­ni­val shaped her ex­pe­ri­ence of cre­ative mo­tion."When I was a child, in the place where I was born–Cou­va, T&T–they have a Car­ni­val...and they don't call it dance, they call it jump­ing."When I was small I be­gan to learn bal­let. I nev­er thought of be­ing a star or any­thing like that. I have al­ways loved to dance and bal­let has al­ways been a plea­sure to me," she said.Dai wrote in her au­to­bi­og­ra­phy that as a child, she liked climb­ing trees, play­ing with boys and play­ing soc­cer, but she nev­er liked play­ing dolls like most oth­er girls. In mid­dle school, she loved sports and was good at run­ning, ta­ble ten­nis and swim­ming.

Grow­ing up in a Chi­nese fam­i­ly in Trinidad, Dai said she had four dreams as a girl. The first was to be­come a singer. She then want­ed to be a sailor in the navy–be­cause there were many ships vis­it­ing the is­land, and she was in­ter­est­ed in the life of a sailor and very cu­ri­ous about the world. An­oth­er dream was to be a mu­si­cian, be­cause she had start­ed to play pi­ano at sev­en. She even set her sights on be­com­ing a painter.She did not think se­ri­ous­ly about danc­ing as a ca­reer un­til she was 14, when her moth­er sent her to Lon­don to take some class­es.

Fac­ing chal­lenges in Lon­don

But while in Lon­don, dis­as­ter struck when her fa­ther gam­bled away all the fam­i­ly's mon­ey and could no longer sup­port Eileen and her sis­ters, who were liv­ing in the UK. A sis­ter re­turned to T&T; but Dai chose to stay in Lon­don. She did not have the mon­ey to pay for her class­es, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter her fa­ther went bank­rupt; de­spite that, her teach­ers still tu­tored her.She did all sorts of jobs just to sur­vive on her own, and in 1931 at the age of 14 won schol­ar­ships to study at the Jooss-Leed­er Dance School at Dart­ing­ton Hall, ac­cord­ing to www.chi­na.org.cn. She re­ceived bal­let train­ing from such lu­mi­nar­ies of bal­let and mod­ern dance as An­ton Dolin, Dame Marie Ram­bert, Rudolf La­ban and Mary Wig­man.

Then while at the Lon­don dance school, Dai met her long-time love, an Aus­tri­an-British sculp­tor whom she nev­er mar­ried but loved all her life, ac­com­pa­ny­ing him for a year in Lon­don, ac­cord­ing to the Chi­na Dai­ly pa­per.Fas­ci­nat­ed by the sto­ry of Yang Guifei, the favourite con­cu­bine of Em­per­or Xu­an­zong in the Tang Dy­nasty (AD 618-907), she chore­o­graphed a so­lo per­for­mance called Yang Guifei in 1936 ac­cord­ing to the sto­ries and her own imag­i­na­tion, says the Chi­na Dai­ly.

Turn­ing point: to Chi­na

By chance, Dai read Edgar Snow's Red Star over Chi­na, which helped her de­cide to move from the UK to Chi­na. In 1937 she trav­elled there, and be­came heav­i­ly in­volved in ben­e­fit con­certs and stud­ies of Chi­nese folk dances and op­eras, cre­at­ing pieces based on folk tra­di­tions, such as The Drum of the Yao Peo­ple.Dai mi­grat­ed to Hong Kong in 1940 and soon fell in love with the not­ed painter Ye Qianyu, says Chi­na Dai­ly. She chore­o­graphed, per­formed, and taught dance all over Chi­na, and was even­tu­al­ly named the prin­ci­pal of the Bei­jing Dance School when it was es­tab­lished in 1954.

Al­though trained in bal­let, Dai deeply re­spect­ed in­dige­nous Chi­nese folk dances. She trav­elled through­out Chi­na to re­search eth­nic dance tra­di­tions, to use as a ba­sis for her own dance chore­og­ra­phy. She record­ed dances us­ing La­ban­o­ta­tion–a no­ta­tion sys­tem for record­ing and analysing move­ment that was cre­at­ed by Rudolf La­ban. She trav­elled many times to see the mi­nori­ties in south­west Chi­na's Yun­nan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan ar­eas, to learn the folk dances di­rect­ly from the peo­ple there. She be­lieved Chi­na should de­vel­op its own unique bal­let style.Dai's Dance of Lo­tus Flow­ers (based on a Shaanxi folk dance) and Fly­ing Ap­saras (in­spired by the Dun­huang mu­rals) were ac­claimed both at home and abroad and won the gold prize at the World Youth Fes­ti­val. By the 1990s, these two dances were hailed as 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­sics of Chi­nese dance.


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