Artistic Credits
Yang Liping
Director & Choreographer
Yang Liping was born in Dali
in Yunnan province, South
West China, and is of Bai
ethnicity. She loved dance
from her early childhood but
never trained formally. She
began her dancing career
in 1971, as a member of the
Xishuangbanna Prefecture
Song and Dance Troup, and
has been a household name
in China since 1986, when she
gained nationwide fame for
her original dance piece Spirit
of the Peacock. Her most
notable subsequent works
include Moonlight, Two Trees
and Love of the Peacock. She
is the director, choreographer
and lead dancer of Dynamic
Yunnan, Tibetan Mystery,
Echoes of Shangri-La, The
Peacock and Winter Peacock,
and the director of the dance
theatre work Under Siege
(2017 Melbourne International
Arts Festival). She also wrote,
directed and performed in
the film Sunbird, which won
the Grand Jury’s award at
the Montreal International
Film Festival. Her numerous
awards include the Gold
Award at the Dance Classics
of the 20th Century (China),
the highest honour at the
Osaka International Exchange
Centre and five China Lotus
Awards in 2004, including
those for Best Female Lead
and Best Choreography. She
is Vice Chairman of the China
Dancers Association.
Tim Yip
Visual Director
Tim Yip is an art and costume
director who also works in
visual and contemporary art.
His distinctive style, ‘New
Orientalism’, blends the avant
garde and the traditional and
has become an internationally
recognized visual language.
He won an Academy Award for
Best Art Direction and a BAFTA
for Best Costume Design
for his work on Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000). He has worked as set
designer, costume designer
or both with many renowned
choreographers, directors and
companies, including Robert
Wilson, Franco Dragone,
Akram Khan, Zhang Yimou,
Stan Lai, Yang Liping, English
National Ballet, San Francisco
Opera, Cloud Gate Dance
Theatre, Contemporary
Legend Theatre, Han Tang
Yue Fu, Swarovski Troupe and
U Theatre. His works have
been staged in China, Austria,
France, the USA, the UK,
Spain, Japan and Israel.
He Xuntian
Composer
He Xuntian is a distinguished
composer and professor at
the Shanghai Conservatory of
Music. In 1981 he established
the Three Periods Theory
and the Theory of Musical
Dimensions. In 1982 he
developed the Renyilv
Duyingfa Method of Musical
Composition, one of the first
compositional methods of the
People’s Republic. His albums
Sister Drum and Voices from
the Sky were released in more
than 80 countries, selling
several million copies. In 1996
he established a new method
of musical composition,
and the following year he
put forward the Theory
of Interspace. In 2003 he
composed Images in Sound,
which he calls ‘mankind’s
gift of primordial music to
all species of the natural
world’. In 2008 he produced
Ehe Chant, which includes
Freudian pre-consciousness as
a composition technique. He
has received 15 international
composition awards, including
the Outstanding Musical
Achievement award of the
1989–90 International New
Music Composer Competition
(USA), as well as 13 national
composition prizes and
several international and
national honorary awards. His
works have been premiered
and performed globally by
many leading orchestras and
ensembles, including the BBC
Symphony Orchestra.