Renowned Chinese dancer Tan Yuanyuan will dance with young promising artists at three shows in Shenzhen later this month.

“Magical Night at the Museum,” a new performance under her project “Tan Yuanyuan and Her Friends,” is a unique and immersive experience that offers a parallel way to appreciate music, dance and paintings. Besides combining paintings and music, the performance also offers audience members with different dance styles, including ballet, contemporary dance and classical dance.

Set design plays a major part. “From the moment that audience members enter the theater, everything will make them feel that they are in a museum, not a theater. That’s a different experience created by the dancers,” Tan said.

“Audience members now have seen all the world-class performances. As their tastes are of a high standard, we want to come up with something new,” says Tan, who is the San Francisco Ballet’s first Chinese principal dancer and its artistic director and co-choreographer.

Echoed by artists, including director and scriptwriter Zhou Ke, composer Qu Dawei, and theater designer Chen Yu-hsuan, Tan invited leading Chinese dancer-choreographers, including Chen Zhenwei, Li Jiabo and Xiao Fuchun, to join the performance with each of them selecting a painting as their inspiration for choreography.

Paintings, such as “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, “The Girl With a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer and “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” by Huang Gongwang from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), are featured in the performance.

Tan selected one of her favorite paintings, “The Lovers” by Rene Magritte, which features a woman and a man locked in an embrace with each of their faces covered with a white cloth. They are kissing one another through the veils. Considered as one of the most mysterious masterpieces of surrealist paintings, it leaves Tan open to various interpretations, which is captivating for her.

In 2000, Tan performed as the leading woman in a red dress in the dance work “Magrittomania” choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, former principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet. The dance work pays tribute to the painter Magritte.

“Magritte presents paintings which are beautiful in their clarity and mystery and provoke unsettling thoughts,” adds Tan. “I believe that arts are mutual and they inspire one another. What we want to do is to combine them together and present them as a whole to audience members.”

Tan wants to expand visions about dance through crossover projects, hoping to engage audience members with different perspectives about dancing and displaying choreographic creativity. “Tan Yuanyuan and Her Friends” has been running for years, gathering international artists. Having worked with masters such as George Balanchine, John Neumeier and Kenneth MacMillan, Tan said that she still wants to hold more exchanges between China and the West to allow “more Chinese to learn about the uniqueness and charm of dance.”

Born in Shanghai, Tan began ballet training at Shanghai Dance School and in 1992, she won a scholarship and went to Stuttgart, Germany, to further her ballet training. During her time in Germany, Helgi Tomasson, the artistic director and principal choreographer of the San Francisco Ballet, got in touch with her. He told her she would become the company’s youngest solo dancer, and in 1995 Tan joined the company as a soloist. In 1997 she was promoted to be a principal dancer of the company.

Tan has built up a large fan base in China with her performances at the CCTV Spring Festival galas in 1994, 2006 and 2021, one of the most-watched TV shows in the country, and at last year’s Hunan TV’s popular reality show “Dance Smash.”

Time: 8 p.m., June 30-July 2

Tickets: 180-880 yuan

Booking: WeChat account “SZpolytheatre”

Venue: Shenzhen Poly Theater, Nanshan District (南山区深圳保利剧院)

Metro: Line 2 or 11 to Houhai Station (后海站), Exit E(China Daily)