NBC to show Cranko's Romeo and Juliet in homage

Stuttgart Ballet's principal dancer Friedemann Vogel will perform Romeo with NBC's ballerina Wang Qimin as Juliet in Beijing. [Photo by Wang Chongwei/China Daily]

This time, NBC has invited Vogel again to dance with Chinese ballerina Wang Qimin.

"I had a really wonderful experience. When I first worked with the National Ballet of China, I was surprised by their standards. The dancers, the crew, all were all very good," Vogel, 34, tells China Daily on the sidelines of a recent rehearsal.

After his debut in China, Vogel has been to the country a few times. In 2007, he danced the pas de deux of Romeo and Juliet with Wang for Angela Merkel, when the German chancellor visited East China's Nanjing city. Then, he danced as Lensky for another Cranko masterpiece, Onegin, with NBC in 2009. He also performed a few gala shows in Shanghai and Beijing.

"One of the wonderful things about ballet is that we can dance everywhere in the world because we speak the same language," he says.

He also says every time he returns to China, both Shanghai and Beijing seem changed but the dancers and the company make him feel like he never left.