Veteran dancer-choreographer Xing Liang finds little meaning in dancing, but has nonetheless become one of China’s top ten national performers. He tells Winnie Chau why the mind matters more than the body when it comes to dancing.

I was born in Beijing. I’ve been living in Hong Kong for 10 years now. My father was a Chinese-French translator.

I didn’t see him during much of my early childhood because he was jailed for being a counter-revolutionary.

My father was very strict with me because my mother was busy with her job and didn’t discipline me often when I was young. He was rather bad-tempered and would beat me. We didn’t really communicate after I entered the Beijing Dance Academy. Despite all this, we maintain a fairly good relationship.

I learned to dance in 1983, when I was twelve years old. But I didn’t fall in love with the art until 1994. I always preferred martial arts, particularly wushu. I studied wushu for six months before I was admitted to the Beijing Dance Academy.

I don’t have any regrets. I always knew I could go back to wushu if I failed in dance.

Life at the Beijing Dance Academy is like being in the army. You wake up at 6:20am every day, train, have lessons, train again, and then you’re in bed by 9:30pm. That’s how I spent my secondary school and university years.

My greatest influence is dancer Willy Tsao, founder of the City Contemporary Dance Company. I learned contemporary dance from him in 1993. He opened my mind and broadened my vision.

He taught me that if you want to become a good performer, first you have to be a good person.

The biggest setback in my career was when I started to doubt myself.

I asked, why do I dance? Even now if you asked, I’d say that dancing has very little meaning. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in it.

Actually, I believe that doubt is essential to a dancer. If it’s just for pleasure, then dancing is just dancing. When it becomes a career and you start to see it in a new light, then your doubts become valid.

Dancers are much simpler people than those who don’t dance, but that’s not to say they are ignorant—they just devote their energy to dancing. It takes a great deal of time and concentration for a dancer to get into his work.

When a mature performer is expressing strong emotions on stage, his or her mind should be very calm. The audience isn’t coming to see your hysteria, only your performance.

A performer’s body should be able to adapt to many possibilities. They should be able to fulfill different roles, be they masculine, feminine or gender neutral.

Injury is inevitable, and as I get older, I worry more about my body.  There isn’t one single correct way to execute any dance move, so it’s important to have a flexible mind, as well as a flexible body.

The most important trait for a dancer is not technical skill, but sincerity.

I’m a perfectionist. I try to guide my dancers to achieve certain movements, but at my age, I can’t demand that everything be perfect anymore. I tell myself that perfection is impossible, but I still wish it were otherwise.

In the past, I wanted to be a good child, a good student, a good performer, a good choreographer and a good boyfriend. But what’s more important to me now is that I understand myself better. “Good” and “bad” are very vague concepts.