Chongqing - The Chongqing Ballet Theater presents magical Tibetan customs with a graceful ballet show, The Pursuit of Shangri-La, with Julio Mario Santo Domingo Theater online, receiving nearly 2.3 million views.

It has become another masterpiece of the "Happy Chinese New Year" and "Chinese Culture Month" series of online performances in theaters during the past three years.

Chongqing Ballet Presents Tibetan Customs to the Colombian Audience. (Photo/Chinese Embassy in Colombia)

The Pursuit of Shangri-La tells the moving story of Dan Qing, a young painter who enjoys the world's prosperity but suffers from the pressure of real life to pursue the spiritual highland that symbolizes tranquility and serenity—Shangri-La. Chongqing ballet dancers give the audience an audio-visual feast using modern dance performance technologies like sound, light, and electricity. The viewers are amazed by the graceful dancing postures, soul-stirring music, radiant stage, and magnificent Tibetan charms.

The ballet play was co-created by artists and celebrities from China, the US, the UK, Australia, etc. Li Siyu, the 2022 China Dancers Association's "Top Dancer" award winner, played the heroine. After its premiere on May 3, 2013, The Pursuit of Shangri-La won several awards and was invited to perform more than 120 times in China and abroad in Macao, Singapore, Spain, and France.

The chairman of the Colombian Artists Association commented that "the international artistic technique with Chinese and Western styles tell contemporary love stories and show the fusion and aesthetic value of China's ethnic cultures to the world, which is worth sharing."

When she selected the program, Laura, the program director at Columbia, was deeply attracted by the colorful Tibetan customs. She praised the play as a successful model of the combination of international and ethnic, fashion and classical. She said, "the Colombian audience was totally fascinated, and they are eagerly looking forward to the return of Chinese artists to the stage after the epidemic."

(He Hanyue, as an intern, also contributed to the report.)