By Janet Chen 

Aly Rose, or 罗红玫(Luo Hongmei, which means Red Rose in Chinese) began her journey through China with a trip to the Hubei countryside in 1994.
She moved back to China in 1997, to study Chinese language and dance. In 2002, she received her MFA in choreography, becoming the first and only Westerner in the history of China to graduate from the Beijing Dance Academy. After graduating, she served as an educator and choreographer at the Beijing Dance Academy. In 2003, she was the head choreographer for Lady in the Dark, the first American Broadway musical to be seen on a Chinese stage. In 2005, she starred as the principal dancer in Nanjing 1937 with the Communist Party’s China National Song and Dance Operatic Troupe. In
addition, she worked with Warner Brothers to create, in China, the world premiere of John Clifford’s Casablanca, the Dance. She also pioneered the building and creation of the independent art space “Sanctuary” located in Beijing’s 798 Art District which culminated in the production of her own dance drama, Phoenix, in 2006. After living in China for more than 11 years, she is fluent in both spoken and written Chinese and now teaches
Chinese Contemporary Dance and the History of Stage Performance, after the Founding of the PRC at Tisch School of the Arts in New York University. In February of 2009, I interviewed Rose about her fascinating journey through China.

气(2008), Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Janet Chen: How did you first make your way to China in 1994?
Aly Rose: I was invited by a close friend, Nader, whose Chinese friend invited us to spend part of the summer in the countryside north of Anlu, with his
family. We traveled by train and bus, then bounced for hours in a hollowed mini-bus packed with people and animals. We then walked all the afternoon and finally reached the village by nightfall. It was the middle of the summer and the heat was sweltering. No phones, no TV, no radio, no internet, and no clean running water. But I think it was a wonderful experience.

Chen: You didn’t know a word of Chinese, and without an English interpreter, how did you communicate? And how did you like it?
Rose: The family and the villagers seemed so pure, untainted, and unexposed to the rest of the world; they lived in a very natural way. I enjoyed the daily life - we cooked together, farmed together, and I played with the children. At night we sang songs and played “mahjong” (Editor’s Note: Mahjong is a game of four players originated in China.) We slept on hard beds with nets, and lit formaldehyde burning coils to keep the mosquitoes away. We bathed in lakes with the water oxen, and ate the vegetables we picked. But I felt more like a witness than a participant. After that summer experience, I knew if I was to return again I would have to better understand what it meant live life from a Chinese perspective, and inevitably I would need to learn Mandarin.

Floating (2007), choreographed by Hou Ying of Shen Wei Dance Arts
duet performed at Mark Morris Dance Studio and Fredrick Loewe
Theater in NY /photo by Aeric Meredith-Goujon

Chen: In 1997, you moved to China and began a new life studying Chinese at Guiyang University in the remote province of Guizhou. There is a Chinese saying “ru xiang sui su” which means “when you come to an area, you should adjust yourself to the local customs.” But there’s always the reality of “culture shock”. How did you acclimate?
Rose: I am a Baha’I (Editor’s note: The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in nineteenth-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind.) My faith teaches me that all the people in the world are one human race, one family. I came to China with that approach; I felt excited to learn, to grow, to change and understand what was important to the people around me.

Chen: Struggles?
Rose: Welcomed challenges. Hot and spicy food morning, noon, and night. Human feces used as fertilizer, caged animals, and dogs as food. Steady
falling light rain, mold everywhere, and very little sunlight. Hand washing our clothes in cold water. A dorm schedule proclaimed running water from 6
am to 9 am and from 8 pm to 10 pm. But most days the electricity and water was turned off in order to conserve. I grew accustomed to life with candles and an invasive chill from the dampness. I bought buckets and learned to save enough water to last throughout the day. But then I discovered the power of guanxi.

Chen: Explain, please.
Rose: If I buy some cigarettes as a present for a worker at the building complex, he will fix the door for me; he might even build a new door for me. No
contracts and no cash are exchanged. If I treat several guards to dinner, they might arrange for someone to plaster the molding wall. If I help their wives and children, teach them English for free, they might build a boiler for me in my bathroom so I can save and heat water. And that is exactly what happened. These relationships altered my perspective and allowed me to maneuver more freely in China.

Chen: At that time, in 1997 in Guizhou, foreigners like you were rare. How did others perceive you?
Rose: The students at the University had hoped I would to serve as an English-bringer and assist them with practicing their oral English, but I insisted on speaking only Chinese. Many of the students would not spend time with me unless I spoke English, so I ended up meeting lots of the local folks. That is why back then I spoke Mandarin with a thick southern Guizhou accent. It wasn’t until I moved to Beijing that I was conscious of it. I spent many years correcting it.

Chen: Who did you spend time with back then in Huaxi?
Rose: I preferred the sincere conversation of bus drivers, farmers, even Karaoke misses who worked in the 24-hour night clubs. They fascinated me. Smart women, but opportunities and paths are different in a more traditional and isolated society in the southwest of China. I was interested in how people survived and what specifically motivated them to achieve or not.

Chen: Besides the students and misses, what about others?
Rose: I became very close to the entire Liu family in Huaxi and their son is still my godson. But at the time, their neighbors and many others in the community felt apprehension about who I really was, always asking questions. If I was not a journalist, a missionary, a business person, a teacher, what was I doing there? Why would a student spend so much time with the Liu's? This opened my eyes to the other faces of China. And I witnessed how that suspicion and fear affected the Liu's ability to do their own business.

Chen: Guiyang University is actually located in the countryside, not far from the Miao villages. Did you visit them?
Rose: I did. I traveled and spent time in Kaili, Langde, Sansui, and also the border towns north of Tongzi. We sometimes drove, but the Miao would walk for literally days to attend the Lusheng festival in particular. Dancing, eating, bull-fighting, handicrafts, embroidery, knitting, hundreds of baby boys, singing, reed pipes, silver, smoking, cheering, and there I was soaking it all in! I became enchanted with the Miao, their dance, culture and history.

Lusheng Festival in Guizhou, China 1999

Chen: Besides attending the festivals, what else did you do?
Rose: I had a lot of quiet time for myself. It was the first time I’ve ever had to spend hours alone contemplating, reflecting, reading, and discovering
life without television, commercials, or sound bits surrounding and infiltrating my reality.

(Recommended by Guizhou Television, Rose competed in the Foreigners Singing Chinese Songs Competition in 1999. This is a national competition hosted annually by Beijing Television, in which each province sends one foreigner to represent them.)

Chen: It must have been challenging to sing a traditional song in front of millions in China. How did you manage?
Rose: I accepted Guizhou Television’s invitation. In a very short period of time, word had spread that I would indeed compete. Several things happened. I was assigned a teacher from the Guizhou Arts Academy who was responsible for teaching me how to sing Zhou Xuan’s “The Song
of Four Seasons”; I was told to lose weight; a well-known tailor fitted me for a performance qi pao (Editor’s note: a qípáo is a body-hugging Chinese dress for women. It is known in English as a mandarin gown or cheongsam.); and a drama student was assigned to coach me in stage presentation. This entire team was responsible for me winning on behalf of the province. (Rose won “Best Performance Award”, but only a bronze for her singing.)

Chen: Did you treat the competition as seriously as the others?
Rose: I am not a singer, but it was a brave attempt and a lot of fun. The competition inspired me. I was overwhelmed by how specialized some of the others competitors were. Foreigners who studied Tuva, Chinese opera, martial arts, and then there was Da Shan. He spoke beautiful Chinese with a Beijing accent. And it was at that performance I met a dancer/soldier from the Wu Jin Wen Gen Tuan who introduced me to professors and choreographers at the Beijing Dance Academy later that year.

Chen: So you applied and were accepted?
Rose: Not exactly. Had to first take the HSK (Editor’s note: HSK or Chinese Proficiency Test is the standardized test of Chinese language proficiency for speakers whose first language is not Chinese (Mandarin.) which was being offered in Kunming, Yunnan. We arrived in Kunming on May 8, 1999, which I was later to discover was not a good day in history.

Chen: That day the American military dropped a bomb in Belgrade that hit the Chinese Embassy, killing three people.
Rose: Hundreds of us had arrived for the exam. Australians, Japanese, Germans, English, Koreans and some Americans, but we were all placed on something similar to house arrest in the dormitories. We were ordered by the Foreign Affairs Office not to go out or stand in clear view by the windows. We were to await instructions as to if and when the exam would be given the following day. That evening the streets roared with
thousands marching in the streets. They chanted and rows and rows of banners passed by below. I stood in the darkness and wept. Posters of Clinton’s face, but with Hitler’s mustache remain etched in my memory. I lay on the bed and realized that this day could change my fate.

Chen: So what happened?
Rose: Some guards began knocking on our doors at 6am and shuffling us into lines. We then were escorted to the test site, which was in a building
about 500 meters away. My test section was on the 4th floor. We began the exam promptly at 8am, but about 30 minutes into the listening portion of the test a brick hit the window and shattered the glass. The facilitator did not stop the tape and many began to complain.

Chen: When you look back, how do you feel about that day?
Rose: I appreciate the experience and did want to judge it. I wanted to truly comprehend China and this was part of it. CCTV (Editor’s
note: CCTV stands for Chinese Central Television, the mainstream broadcasting channel in China.) has incredible power. They steer and shift society’s focus, maybe even consciousness. I observed it for over a decade.

(Despite the exam, Rose got accepted into the Beijing Dance Academy and moved to the north that summer.)

Chen: Can you summarize your first year in Beijing?
Rose: Discipline, obedience, excel lence…transformation.

Chen: Sounds like the army.
Rose: Up until my acceptance, I understood dance to be an exploratory art form, a way of discovering movement which might then move others. But to my professors and peers at the academy, dance was more formulaic, set forms and patterns, our bodies the tool for the manifestation of the dance’s perfection. We were apprentices and lucky to be among the masters of ballet, Chinese classical dance, folk dance, and some of the pioneers of dance study and administration in China.

独角戏 (2008), performed for the Chinese Ambassador at
the Harmon Arts Center, Washington, DC. / photo by Enoch Chan

Chen: But you took the majority of classes in choreography?
Rose: No, just a quarter. So for the other classes, I felt my stay was conditioned on my ability to conform to each class. Uniform in our appearance, I went from 130 to 105 lbs. I grew my hair long and wore it as my classmates did. I ate, showered, and studied with everyone else. We began at 6:30 am and were occupied in practice, dance, and formal study until 9:00 pm. At 11:00 pm, lights out. I had only two hours to complete my homework, shower, wash my clothes, and learn the new dances for the next day. We had Sundays off, but I could not keep up. I just was not able to learn all the
combinations immediately as the others did.

Chen: What did you do?
Rose: I began teaching tap during lunch time to make extra money. Remember that my tuition is four times that of the Chinese students and I was completely independent from my family financially. From working, I saved some money and purchased a video camcorder. After befriending 1-2 students in each class, I would film them doing the combination after class was dismissed. After everyone went to bed, I practiced over and over again. I could then keep up the following day. I had to find a way to fit in. All I wanted to do was be like everyone else, except with my choreography class
homework. At least with that, I could be unique.

Chen: Do you feel like you were very different from the Chinese dance students?
Rose: Of course. I was one of the older students in the school and had been formally schooled in what the Chinese called normal or formal classes.
Yes, I had studied ballet, tap, acrobatics and jazz, but only twice a week and after school as a child. They had studied dance and only dance since the age of 10 or 11. They had amazing stamina, incredible kinesthetic memory, and were excellent at moving in groups. They had been exposed to, if not already graduated from ballet, folk and classical Chinese dance departments in their middle schools, before even entering the academy. They also were the best dancers in China, handpicked from around the country.

Chen: How would you describe the Chinese aesthetic?
Rose: The traditional aesthetic is a distinct one. Appears long and flowing, with attention to detail and breath, seamless in connection, and meticulous in presentation. Yet as dancers we are taught to cover the vastness of the stage with speed, stand in front of an audience rooted and still. Knowing that and being that are two different things. I worked on being.

Chen: How has working in China influenced your choreography?
Rose: It’s very Chinese to make see movement as emotive. Phoenix (2006) was about illusion, but it was emotional.

Chen: In 2005 you danced the main part in China’s political dance drama Nanjing 1937 which was written and directed for the “Sixty Years Commemorating Victory over Japanese Occupation.” So do you think art and politics mix well?
Rose: For me the question is how have they have mixed and why. For decades in China politics and art have been intertwined in some way or another. And although art is no longer pure propaganda, it is still produced and sold in a society that is largely shaped by its country's party lines. What is the origin of this practice? In my classes at NYU we explore how and why these works were selected to promulgate the People’s Republic of China’s mission. A nation's consciousness was altered and it assumed a new identity through the unifying force of chosen art forms and their content. For
anyone interested in appreciating art or dance in China, it is critical to not neglect the overwhelming influence politics has had in shaping those forms.

Chen: After studying and working in China for eleven years, you returned to the US, first as a Visiting Scholar from China, to teach several courses at NYU. One of the classes was “The Transformative Power of Political Art: the Eight Model Works of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)”. Why did you have an interest in this?
Rose: While the Yangbanxi (Editor’s note: Yangbanxi is form of Chinese entertainment that flourished during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).) were originally designed as propaganda, and only later restructured under the leadership and heavy hand of Jiang Qing, ironically they exhibit innovation, creativity, and a completely modern approach to opera. In a way, they opened the door for thousands in China who were inspired by those characters to formally study music, dance and drama. If you go to the countryside, you can still see people performing sections of them.

Chen: So if politics affects the ability of art to be seen in China, what about America?
Rose: Money. In America money influences the ability of art to be seen. There are also unions, guidelines, and laws to protect the dancers, technicians, and crew. It is expensive to make and run productions here. In the Chinese system, you have politics, an interplay of guanxi and power, but there’s still a lot of freedom; you can make beautiful art and at very low cost. You can work with the most talented dancers and for 12 hours a day, choreograph in the largest studios, and perform in fantastic venues seating over 10,000 people. I think it’s a good deal.

Chen: Why not stay?
Rose: The trade off is that we cannot control how that art will later be used, distributed, or manipulated by others. At all.

Chen: Why is it important to share Chinese art and dance with Americans?
Rose: I realize that through teaching, I can expose young Amer ican people to a former and modern China. China has awakened. The country is well
on its way towards not only selfexpression, but self-realization. America can only benefit from understanding China's recent struggles, trials, and aspirations. And as this generation embraces world citizenship with all of its challenges, appreciating China will be crucial, for progress and unity.

Rose's most recent work, One, will make its official debut in October 2009, as part of the New York Quadricentennial celebrations. The twelve minute performance consists of 80 aerialists morphing massive shapes in mid-air, suspended underneath the Walkway Over the Hudson, 200 feet over water, and running for 3 weeks. Rose told us One is one of her most difficult creations, but she’s looking forward to it.

Last update: 09-06-2009 21:53