This March, Singapore audiences are invited into a world where love blooms like a fragile flower, memory drifts like mist, and fate dances just out of reach. The National Ballet of China arrives at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay with A Dream of Red Mansions, a ravishing two-act ballet inspired by one of the greatest novels in Chinese literature. A Dream of Red Mansions promises a waking reverie, providing a lush, poetic meditation on youth, longing, and the beauty of things that cannot last.

Based on Cao Xueqin’s 18th-century masterpiece, the production reimagines the rise and fall of the aristocratic Jia family through the tender, aching romance between Jia Baoyu and the delicate Lin Daiyu. Yet this is not a straightforward love story. Instead, the ballet unfolds like a dream remembered after waking: fragmented, emotional, and shimmering with meaning.

From the opening moments, audiences are drawn into Jia Baoyu’s inner world, where childhood companions reappear as spirits, flowers seem to breathe, and past lives whisper through movement. Playfulness and innocence ripple across the stage, only to give way to the quiet devastation of parting, unspoken love, and inevitable change. Every gesture feels intentional; every pause, weighted with emotion.

What sets this production apart is the National Ballet of China’s signature fusion of Western classical ballet technique with Chinese artistic sensibility. Pointe work and sweeping pas de deux coexist with restrained gestures, calligraphic flow, and a sense of stillness rarely seen in traditional ballet storytelling. The result is movement that feels both technically exquisite and deeply human.

Visually, the production is a feast. Costumes echo classical Chinese painting; soft silks, flowing lines, and colours that feel lifted from ink and brush. Lighting shifts like passing seasons, transforming the stage from the lively Grand View Garden to a solitary, dreamlike realm of reflection. The Rong Mansion becomes not just a setting, but a living memory; opulent, fragile, and fading.

Accompanying the dancers is an evocative original score by celebrated composer Ye Xiaogang, whose music weaves romance and melancholy into a sonic landscape that lingers long after the curtain falls.

A Dream of Red Mansions stems from the vision of General Choreographer Tong Ruirui, who has long dreamed of translating this iconic novel into dance. Working alongside Executive Director and Producer Feng Ying and an acclaimed creative team, Tong crafts a ballet that honours the emotional complexity of the source material while making it accessible to contemporary audiences.

Rather than retelling every plot point, the production distils the novel’s essence: the sweetness of first love, the weight of societal expectations, and the quiet sorrow of impermanence. It’s a story told through bodies in motion — glances held too long, hands that almost touch, and farewells that feel inevitable from the start.

Whether you’re a ballet devotee, a lover of Chinese culture, or simply drawn to stories that linger in the heart, A Dream of Red Mansions offers a rare theatrical experience. It’s romantic without being sentimental, grand without being heavy, and itterly moving in its restraint.

Presented in Singapore by JUST LIVE, the production marks a significant cultural moment, as it brings one of China’s most revered stories to life through one of its most prestigious ballet companies, on an international stage. This is a performance to sink into, to feel, and when you leave the theatre, be quietly changed.

Photos Courtesy of JUST LIVE

A Dream of Red Mansions plays from 12th to 15th March 2026 at the Esplanade Theatre. Tickets and more information available here