Sunday, June 4, 2000

By ANGELA JEFFS

It was too off-the-wall to resist: the chance to meet a Chinese ballet master from Alaska. So we arranged to meet in front of Tokyo's Yotsuya Station (not as easy as it sounds, since he is newly arrived and a stranger to Japan) and find him somewhere to eat. Luckily there was a Chinese restaurant right across the street, with a young waiter speaking Shanghai-accented Mandarin. Which helped make Jian-min Hao, born in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, in southwest China, feel almost home. Until I began scribbling.

"Oh my goodness," he spluttered through a mouthful of "mabu-dofu." "You mean you're interviewing me now? But I guess it's OK. I mean, I do have an unusual story. By the way, most people call me Jimmy."

Jimmy Hao is ballet master to the Alaska Dance Theater in Anchorage. My own experience of that city is of being trapped behind glass at the airport en route to elsewhere, gazing out into snowy wastes amid the dubious allure of hirsute macho hunting types, spaced-out rock musicians and very large women on the tourist desk encouraging us to "stay a bit next time and feel welcome." To all this he agrees, especially about people being big. Alaskans are the largest Americans he has encountered anywhere, he says, maybe because everyone spends winter curled up, snacking and watching TV.

He enjoys a good standard of living: palatial home, two cars and a profession that gives him satisfaction and respect. His wife finds Anchorage a little small and parochial, but their 13-year-old daughter is very happy. "Early June, she'll be dancing at a gala 'China Night' at our arts center. It's so sad I won't be there. But a chance to come to Tokyo to guest-teach some master classes is just too good to miss."

Life has not always been so free and easy. Born in 1956, he describes himself as a child of China's Cultural Revolution, and the fact he grew up a dancer destiny rather than choice. "Academically I was good -- all straight A's. I imagined I'd be a doctor. But with my father a famous actor with the Beijing Opera, maybe the stage was in my blood."

Jimmy says it's very sad looking back -- and he began giggling incessantly as he talked, that very Chinese response to shame and deep embarrassment. The price China paid to achieve its standard of living today was high. All the intellectuals (including his father) were sent to the countryside for re-education. He was denied studies, except for reading Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book." His mother, a kindergarten teacher, was ordered home to look after younger children and grandparents. And after his older siblings were sent to rural areas, he admits to spending hours in school struggle meetings, doing bad things to teachers.

"I was desperate not to be sent away too," he confessed. "The only alternative was to dance. Not art, but propaganda. Maybe you know 'The Red Detachment of Women' -- a very famous piece. I was active politically, and a troupe was being formed, so I applied -- along with thousands of others. Most young people felt desperate, seeing no future. But this was a government job that meant you stayed in the city. Ten of us were selected. I was 15."

He spent three years studying in an old temple, surrounded by smashed statuary and architectural treasures. There were 100 students. "We learned dance, acting, everything, but it was like military training. We had to be up at 6 a.m. even in midwinter, running before breakfast, followed by self-criticism meetings ahead of studies."

He was promoted first to the corps de ballet, then principal dancer. One day students and comrades were told to make ready for a big announcement from Beijing. When told over the radio that China's "Great Leader" had passed away, the whole assembly began to weep, sob and then wail. "I tried to cry, but I couldn't."

His father and brothers and sisters returned home; leaders of the troupe began to make efforts to revive Western dance. "No one could remember; we had to feel our way back." He recalls doing bits from "Swan Lake" between 1977 and '79, and also a Spanish dance. Life was a succession of similar surprises -- pulling on tights for the first time felt "very odd," while the girls felt an incomprehensible sense of shame in wearing tutus.

Jimmy was 23 when the Beijing Dance Academy reopened. It was looking for students seeking a broad education in every possible related subject: folkloric dance to classical poetry to Western-style classical dance. With applications open to the whole of China, competition was even more fierce. "It's still the largest dance academy in the world." The older teachers were all very old, with the middle-aged generation missing. So there was an emphasis on education -- training dancers to teach. "With the academy opening the first-ever education department in dance in China, I went through the most rigorous exams imaginable. Again I was lucky enough to be accepted."

There followed four years of intensive study. During which time he began to see the work of companies visiting from abroad -- the Royal Ballet from Britain, the New York Ballet: "My eyes opened." On graduating with a major in teaching dance, he was invited to become a faculty member but continued performing as a member of a youth company. His first trip abroad came in 1984, to participate in an international dance festival in Hong Kong. "I felt overwhelmed. Such tall buildings. The lights. The color. People looked like flowers."

Back in Beijing he won a teaching award. Was promoted to lecturer. Married, fathered a baby daughter, settled down, felt filled with hope for China's future. Then in 1989 came Tiananmen Square. "My disappointment was so extreme, I began to think of going abroad." A chance came almost immediately: a 14-month contract with the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. He took his family along, and while there, choreographed a piece that attracted the attention of a woman from the dance department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"She asked if I was interested in studying in the USA. I couldn't speak English then, but said I'd love to. That's how I came to move to L.A. on a scholarship and as a teaching assistant. But first I had to go through all the right channels back in Beijing. With my family to think of, I was too scared to sneak away. Flying alone in late 1991, my first impression of America was that it was not as good as I'd imagined. In fact, feeling deaf and dumb, with no friends and very stressed, I thought it horrible. I used to sit and gaze out over the Pacific imagining every plane flying west over my head was heading for China."

Slowly he found his feet, and as the dance program began to go well, he felt useful again. Choreographing "Between the Winter Trees" for a UCLA dance festival's gala performance earned good reviews and attracted wider attention. Yet still he yearned for China. "Returning in 1993, I was glad to see everyone, but shocked to feel uncomfortably like a stranger. My wife persuaded me to return to the U.S., but initially the U.S. Embassy in Beijing ruled we had to leave our daughter behind."

Now a master of fine arts, he was hired by a private studio in Malibu, where he stayed two years. Then he heard of a possible opening for a ballet instructor with the Alaska Dance Theater. "I last danced in 1997, so it seemed a good move. No, I don't miss dancing at all. I believe I was born to teach and choreograph. Promoted to ballet master last year, my dream is to be a professor with a major dance company."

The Alaska Dance Theater has a company of 30 members and a school with 500 students. Since everyone is now on summer vacation, the timing to spend a few weeks here was just perfect. Arriving Monday, he quickly adjusted to the apartment near the school where he has already been made welcome. "The room's small, but well-organized and equipped." He had already met up with a good Japanese friend of long standing, and also his former student Li Po, a much admired Chinese dancer on the Tokyo scene.

"Being able to read the kanji even if I can't pronounce them in Japanese makes me feel comfortable. My only regret is to miss my daughter's gala."

Does she want to be a dancer like her dad?

No, he replied, with a wry but utterly disarming smile. "She wants to be a doctor."

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