Eighty-five percent of the tickets have been sold out for the new ballet Farewell My Concubine, which will debut at the Shanghai Grand Theater next Thursday through Sunday.

Many bookers of the tickets turn out to be the performing agencies from home and abroad who are showing great interest in the epic ballet.

Besides top performing agencies from China's Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Jiangsu provinces and the capital Beijing, overseas ones are also taking advantages. It's been confirmed that after the ballet's virgin shows in Japan and France, its tour show to South Korea has also been settled on the schedule.

The rest 15 percent of the tickets are likely to be sold out by the weekend.

Shanghai Dance Troupe will be the main presenter of the ballet, with cooperation from an army dance troupe, who provides an elite group of male dancers.

Shanghai Dance Troupe was also the performer of last year's world hit Wild Zebra. The success of Wild Zebra testified to it that the troupe's new piece could be an ever glorious one with its more popular theme about love between Chinese emperor and his concubine.

The performing agencies said they acted so hurriedly and readily because they had all learnt lessons from their last experience with Wild Zebra, which suggested that the most immediate action churns out the biggest money.

Wild Zebra traveled to several countries and rose to a household masterpiece throughout the world within only three years' time. Its turnover of 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) in China alone more than tripled its initial investment of 3.2 million yuan by the Shanghai Oriental TV Station, not to mention those earned overseas.

It successfully made inroads into whatever market outside China and all the contracted performing agencies had made a lot of money from it.

Talking about more details of the new ballet, it's learnt from local media that Zhang Qianyi, composer for Wild Zebra, has written the sound track for Farewell My Concubine, while Zhang Jiwen, stage designer for Wild Zebra, has nearly finished the settings designs for the new ballet.

The distinction of Farewell My Concubine, compared with Wild Zebra, is its creative blending of more conventional Chinese music elements and instruments such as the string-based lute, xiao flute and the multi-bell chime with modern ones.

(Eastday.com August 15, 2003)