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The result was a sizeable, but not full auditorium, a pity for this beautifully presented,well-disciplined troupe of dancers, most of whom ranged from petite to tall and slim, male and female. For anyone looking for pectoral display, forget it. For those enjoying story telling, Western production style, for a Chinese fairy tale, the four-act ballet was quite rewarding. The choreographer is the company’s current artistic director, Xin Lili, a former principal seen in the Bay Area with the company when it danced The White Haired Girl at the Marin Civic Auditorium.

The Butterfly Lovers relates the story of two students, Liang and Zhu. Zhu cross dresses, presumably because good girls don’t get men’s education. Don’t ask me which century because Zhu obviously could not have had bound feet. Ma is a bully cheating in class and disrespectful of the teacher. Remember Confucian ideals and the classical learning system here, particularly as it relates to Imperial administrative opportunities.

Ma tangles with Liang; the latter is hurt. Zhu binding the wounds of Liang, finds she is smitten; Liang is unaware of the feelings he arouses.

Act II involves a farewell because Zhu must return to her family. Liang escorts her to her family home, amidst scenes full of symbols of conjugal bliss. Zhu has an opportunity to display herself as a bride, donning a red veil; Liang sees this as a game. Liang realizes Zhu is a woman when she gives him a fan.

Act III is autumn and Zhu’s father has arranged to marry her to the bully Ma. Mother is never present. Ma is impressed, Zhu distraught. There is a Juliet-bedchamber scene. Liang arrives to propose marriage but is rejected by Zhu’s father. Ma has his thugs dispose of Liang.

Act IV sees Ma leading the bridal procession across a wintry scene past Liang’s tomb upstage center. Zhu, dressed in traditional Chinese bridal red, walks behind, but stops, throws off her robe and mourns Liang. Her feeling mounts; the heavens opens the headstone and Zhu disappears. The final moments of the ballet see Zhu and Liang reunited as butterflies,like Odette and Siegfried in the Swan Lake, if this new apotheiosis is more active.

Butterfly Lovers provides a theme which the Shanghai Ballet gives a Petipa treatment, visually a smash start to finish, the backdrops evocative of the Chinese landscape tradition associated with the literati, the single interior with near imperial splendor, the costumes exquisitely rendered. The corps dances virile or feminine technique with extra ordinary precision, their costumes a marvelous range of color and evocation of Chinese sartorial traditions projected across the proscenium with elan. To see some dozen men in a celadon green flipping enormous fans open and shut and then executing a jete with leg extended a la seconde, the springing one in perfect point, all managing to be virtually the same height in the jete, is just breathtaking. To see an array of women en pointe weaving in and out, dressed in a rainbow of butterfly costumes fingers wavering slightly, is to know the Russian aesthetic found a response in the Chinese desire to excel in Western performing arts.

Zhu for this performance was Ji Pingping, who took the Gold Medal, for classics, at the Ninth and last Paris International Dance Competition in Paris, 2000. I wish I knew the name of the man dancing Liang; it may have been Sun Shenyi, who won a Gold Medal at Varna also in 2000. Both slender, are extremely finished dancers and perform with conviction.

I was told the company would return next year, venue currently unknown. Though San Francisco and Shanghai enjoy a sister city relationship, it’s hard to envision what San Francisco theater would be available let alone an appropriate size for the company's size. Another caveat would be to have someone skilled in Chinese, possessing idiomatic English to work with the graphic designers. Text and comments beg for revisions.