Sun Ying

Sun Ying, of Nehe in Heilongjiang with family roots in Hebei, was born in 1929. In 1950 he studied dance with Wu Xiaobang at the Central Academy of Drama, then helped found its classical dance group, researching opera movement. From 1979 he edited the journal Dance, and from 1981 he served the Beijing Dance Academy as library head and chair of dance history and theory. Copying hundreds of Han dance images from artefacts, he created the classical dance drama Tongque ji in 1985 and set out the idea of Han-Tang dance; his best-known pieces include Tage, Chuyao, Xiegong ji and Xianghe ge. In 2001 the academy founded a Han-Tang classical dance section for him. He died on 3 December 2009.