Dancers perform a scene from Liaoning Ballet's award-winning production Moon Reflecting in the Erquan Pond. File photos

They are rehearsing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which the company debuted in 1980. A new production is being readied for a couple of performances in Japan and will feature in the long list of ballets to be performed as part of its 30th birthday celebration, which kicked off in May last year. Adaptations of Cervantes' Don Quixote and the Disney animation Mulan are also on the bill.

A collage of scenes from almost all the productions staged in the last 30 years will be the high point of the show. A conference to discuss the future of ballet in China will be held.

"This is our chance to promote ballet in Liaoning," says director Wang Xunyi, who has been with the company for 30 years. An exponent of Chinese-style ballet, he has directed several shows, including classic numbers - Nutcracker Suite, Sleeping Beauty, La Corsaire, Raymonda, Neapolitan - taking them around the world.

"There is a Chinese adage which says one becomes independent only after reaching 30. So will Liaoning ballet," he smiles. "The history of Chinese ballet is only 50 years old, but we are catching up very fast."

Liaoning Ballet, he says, made a departure from classical ballet by staging Moon Reflecting in the Erquan Pond, based on a traditional Chinese erhu (two-stringed fiddle) music piece. The production swept almost all the major national awards in dance and drama in 2005-6, including the Gold at the Sixth Chinese Drama Festival.

In 2002, The Last Emperor, on the life of the final Chinese emperor Pu Yi, staged in collaboration with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany, won the Lotus prize at the Fourth National Dance Competition. Lu Meng earned the best dancer's trophy.

Other stars in the company include Zheng Yu, who won the gold at Liaoning Peach and Plum Cup Dance Competition in 2003, while Liu Shuang got the top spot at Liaoning Teenage Dance Competition in 1991. Zhao Yuan won gold at the Seoul International Ballet Competition in 2006.

The company's biggest achievement, Wang says, is in developing its training school, now the biggest of its kind in China.

About 95 percent of the dancers who eventually sign up with the company are spotted early on by the directors, to be nurtured and guided in the right direction.

"The school has given us some of the country's finest performers, like Lu Meng and Jiao Yang. Their presence gives Liaoning Ballet a solid foundation which now has a large repertoire of classical European and Russian, Chinese and modern ballets.

"Liaoning Ballet has really opened up the ballet scene in China," he adds.

"It's very important to seek out quality professionals from outside China and invite them to work for us, both as creative directors and instructors. Like they do with the Chinese football team, we too get foreign coaches to train our performers and we are showing the results."

Liaoning Ballet is evolving on the fast track.