Jin Xing

b. 1967, Shenyang

Dancer, choreographer

Jin Xing is a modern dancer and choreographer. Coming from a minority Korean military family, Jin Xing joined a dance troupe run by the army in Shenyang at age nine. By 1987, Jin Xing had emerged as China’s top male dancer, winning a national competition and then going to New York for four years of study. In 1996, one year after undergoing a sex-change operation, she founded the Jin Xing Dance Theatre in Beijing and became Artistic Director of a company of sixteen freelance dancers. This was China’s first independent modern dance company, but it later disbanded.

She is now based in Shanghai.

Jin Xing’s works are startlingly original and provocative, and often explore issues of love and identity. One of her most celebrated pieces is The Imperial Concubine Has Been Drunk for Ages (Guifei zui jiu), which is based on a traditional Jingju (Peking opera), The Drunken Imperial Concubine (Guifei zui jiu). A pun in her title revolves around the word jiu, which in the opera title means ‘wine’ but in the dance piece means ‘for a long time’. In this innovative work, Jin Xing brings out popular unease with position between the rich traditions and a fast forward-moving postmodern industrial society. In November 2002, Jin Xing and the British pianist Joanna MacGregor presented a newly created performance called Cross Border—Crossing the Line (Cong dong dao xi), a multimedia production of dance, live music and video art representing the noise and chaos of post-industrial society. The work was performed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing.

Further reading

Sylvie Levey et al. (dirs). Colonel Jin Xing [documentary film, 52 min.].

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