Yang Liping

Yang Liping was born into a Bai ethnic family in Dali; her registered ethnicity is Bai. Her father was Yang Yinbao and her mother Yang Xianguo. She grew up immersed in Bai traditional culture. As the eldest child, she was responsible for looking after her younger siblings. From a young age she showed a strong interest in dance; although she had no formal dance training, her talent led to her joining the Xishuangbanna Prefecture Song and Dance Troupe, founded in 1971, as a performer.

Her professional career began in 1971 with the Xishuangbanna Song and Dance Troupe. In 1979 she starred in the ethnic dance drama The Peacock Princess, which won first prize at a Yunnan provincial performance competition. In 1980 she was transferred to the Central Nationalities Song and Dance Ensemble, where she further developed her performing career. Her work Spirit of the Peacock was created in 1986 and won the first prize for choreography and the first prize for performance at a national dance competition. In 1988 Beijing Daily named her one of the year’s top ten newsmakers.

Yang has been active internationally, making multiple cultural exchange visits to countries including the Philippines, Singapore, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Japan. The film she wrote, directed and starred in, Sunbird, won the jury prize at the Montreal World Film Festival. In 1990 she performed Spirit of the Peacock at the closing ceremony of the 11th Asian Games in Beijing. In 1992 she became the first mainland Chinese dancer to perform in Taiwan.

In 1994 Spirit of the Peacock received the Gold Award as a "20th-Century Classic Work of Chinese Ethnic Dance." In 1995 she appeared in the film Lanling Wang. In 1997 she received the highest art award at the Osaka International Festival in Japan and was named a lifetime member of the Philippine National Folk Dance Association. In 1998 her film Sunbird again won the jury prize at the Montreal World Film Festival.

In 2003 Yang retired from the Central Nationalities Song and Dance Ensemble and returned to Yunnan to do field research and select performers. She served as artistic director and chief choreographer of the original-ecology song-and-dance production Yunnan Impressions, which in 2004 won five awards at China’s Lotus Awards for dance. Her artistic contributions earned her the Montblanc International Arts Patronage Award. In 2009 Yunnan Impressions began a world tour and became the first Chinese work to appear in PBS’s premier series "Great Performances." Since then she has continued to perform and create internationally and has served as chief director and artistic consultant for various cultural events.

She has also held positions as a vice-chair of the 11th China Dancers Association and as a part-time vice-chair of the Yunnan Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and she is active in charitable work. She has received many important domestic and international awards, including the China Arts and Culture Award, the Lotus Award, and the Montblanc Arts Award. In recent years she has continued to premiere new dance dramas and has participated in numerous television variety and cultural projects, becoming a contemporary Chinese dancer with significant international influence.