#but when it’s time for ylwpw

[everytimewetouch-dot-mp3]

inspired by the art i just reblogged: CONSIDER. tgcf ballet au where each of the four famous tales is a ballet.

(update: …this took longer and got bigger than i expected lmaooo)

at only seventeen, xie lian the principal dancer for the national ballet. xie lian danced like water, like the wind, with once-in-a-generation fluidity and grace. he was incredible, and he inspired a generation of dancers, especially young boys, to take up the art.

things turned bad, though. injured dancers (never xie lian, though) faulty flying rigs (never xie lian’s, though). damaged equipment and safety hazards and all manner of things that xie lian notices. he tries to fix them. he’s always too late. rumors start to spread. hadn’t he gotten into an argument with this dancer last week? hadn’t that dancer taken his preferred warmup spot the week before?

when xie lian catches the saboteur, no one believes him. how could they, when he’s blaming the artistic director himself?

it comes to a head on opening night of The Ballad of Wuyong. the show that rocketed the artistic director to fame, back in his performing days. xie lian plays prince wuyong now. he is terrified.

in the second act, one of the lights malfunctions. the artistic director looks him dead in the eyes and grins.

the light falls.

xie lian isn’t injured, of course. he never is when these things happen around him. why would he be, when he’s the one behind it all. that’s what everyone says. the dancers whose careers were ended that night, the theater damaged in the fire, the audience members who feared for their lives. it was xie lian’s fault. he’s been sabotaging the show from the start.

no one believes him. he retires, fading into obscurity. three years later, he teaches ballet in a small town. he knows he will never see the stage again.

hua cheng is a young firebrand with earth-shattering skill. he dances like fire, like the roar of racing blood, like passion incarnate. he is arrogant and cold as a member of the national ballet, and then he starts his own company. still arrogant, still cold, but after two years, he’s proven that his arrogance is well deserved.

he and two friends have written (choreographed and composed??) a ballet. well. they’ve got complete concepts for three. the other one is a work in progress. each is based on an epic that everyone and their mothers had to read parts of in school (a la the odyssey/the iliad). the four famous tales, the tetrad of classical legends that have been the subject of television and film retellings, novelizations and operas. it has been performed as a ballet before. hua cheng will do it better.

he xuan has composed the first three and is working through the fourth. hua cheng has taken on the ambitious role of second lead while assisting yushi huang in her role as artistic (co-) director. the role of the primary lead is vacant. hua cheng is arrogant and stubborn and he will not budge on one point: the role was created for xie lian. if he can’t convince xie lian to return and fill the role, the show will never see the stage.

(the entire creative team is furious with him, but…he pays their bills. he xuan owns his music; if the ballet falls through, he can still take his compositions to stage or write an opera or some shit. hua cheng doesn’t care.)

so hua cheng embarks on a mission to retrieve his ballet idol, the man who inspired him to keep dancing when he was ready to quit, the man whose performances changed his life again and again.

xie lian teaches twelve-year-olds. he hasn’t performed in five years. hua cheng doesn’t care; he can help xl get back into performing shape.

xie lian isn’t familiar with the show. hua cheng laughs, tells him nobody knows the show yet.

xie lian is…xie lian. his reputation is what it is, and after burning his former company to the ground as he did (because maybe it was his fault after all; so many people couldn’t all be wrong. they all agreed, didn’t they? it was his fault), he’s terrified of doing it to someone else’s.

hua cheng doesn’t care. he knows it wasn’t xie lian’s fault. hua cheng was in that show as a fifteen-year-old boy, a part of the corps de ballet at such a young age. xie lian wanted the show to succeed. xie lian bruised and cried and bled for that role. he pricked his fingers darning his flats; he was always first in and last out to rehearsals. he read the ballad of wuyong in an effort to understand his role better. he lost sleep, skipped meals, ran himself ragged for that role. the company spit in his face, shoving all the blame on him instead of investigating properly. hua cheng will not swallow their lies. this role was created for xie lian. he will not have anyone else.

no one has ever defended xie lian like this. no one believed him. his co-stars, his closest friends, his family. but here is this man, so famously skilled that xie lian’s students babble about him in class, more beautiful than the sun and just as bright, saying that he refuses to believe what even xie lian has grown to accept. he is not an ill omen. he is not a curse to the stage.

his students’ final performance of the season is saturday evening. sunday morning, he follows hua cheng to beijing.