Jin Xing is China’s unofficial first lady of modern dance. No small achievement, considering she started her career as a Colonel in the People’s Liberation Army. But becoming China’s first public transsexual in 1995 was a snip compared to what this fearless individual has since achieved as a performer, choreographer and artistic director in the world of dance.

Born to ethnic Korean parents in the northern Chinese city of Shenyang during the Cultural Revolution, Jin Xing entered the PLA Song & Dance Academy at the age of nine. He later received a scholarship to train in New York with dance greats such as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham.

In 1995, at the age of 27, Jin returned to the China dance scene with a new worldview – and gender. She founded the Beijing Modern Dance Ensemble under the auspices of the Beijing Cultural Bureau. However, aching for greater freedoms, she quit after three years as Artistic Director and financed her own troupe. The Jin Xing Dance Theatre, now based in Shanghai, celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2009.
But freedom has had its costs. “I haven’t received a penny from the government in a decade. We are completely privately run,” says the straight-talking, deep-voiced Jin. “It’s hard enough to get sponsorship for the arts here. Contemporary theatrical art – forget it.”

Jin Xing’s husband, a German businessman, works at raising funding from overseas institutes and governments. Consequently, the company stages up to 60 performances a year overseas, compared to around 20 at home where audiences still tend to stick with classics like Swan Lake.

“We are modern China – and that’s what the world wants to see now,” says Jin of her dynamic company of 20 China-born dancers. Although interpreted within a highly athletic and free-flowing modern lexicon, the music, movement and emotion of her choreography is undoubtedly Chinese. Made in China – Return of the Soul, which Jin choreographed in 2003, juxtaposes a scene from the Peking Opera classic The Peony Pavilion with life in today’s urbanised China. While Under the Skin – The Closest the Furthest, which premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2006, is inspired by her young son’s calligraphy lessons and dying traditional arts.

Aside from her own creations, Jin Xing also founded the annual Shanghai Dance Festival in 2006 in an attempt to foster greater creative dialogue. In the last three years, artists from Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Brazil and Israel have participated, bringing cutting-edge works to Chinese audiences.

Festival highlight have included Israeli group Noa Dar’s Tetris, performed on a raised platform punctured with 69 caged holes that audience members stuck their heads through to watch the dancers above them, and Austria’s Liquid Loft performing the raunchy Posing Project B – The Art of Seduction in a theatre outhouse.

This year’s Dance Festival, from September-October, will introduce artists from Belgium (Peeping Tom), Japan (Batik), The Netherlands (Michael Schumacher) and Sweden (Bounce). 2009 will also see the company debut in New York, and Jin Xing will take to the stage again in an extended solo work.

“Again I want to challenge the system. In many people’s minds I’m already too old to be on stage. But I’m at my best performing age. The maturity, the beauty, the experience – it’s all there,” says Jin, relishing her role as the defiant diva of Chinese modern dance