“I, as a dancer, feel that it is worth the year’s effort to be liked by people for my character in a good piece of work,” she said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. “This honour should belong to our entire crew.”

The viral dance move, also named “blue-green waist”, was part of a performance of the Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting, or Zhiciqinglu in Chinese. Meng is the lead dancer in the troupe.

Choreographed by Zhou Liya and Han Zhen, two rising stars in China’s dance theatre world, the dance is based on one of the most famous classical Chinese paintings of all time: Wang Ximeng’s A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.

The painting was finished in 1113 when Wang was just 18 years old. It features karst-style mountains rising above villages on the water. The mountains are painted with striking blue and green highlights.

“The blue-green waist dance is called ‘Dangerous Peak,’ or xianfeng, and it represents the geometry of a steep mountain peak,” Meng said.

The dancer said Chinese people had become more interested in traditional culture, which fits nicely with her passion for promoting and passing on traditional art.

Training for the performance was gruelling, said Meng, requiring the troupe to practise from 9am to 9pm. On top of that, Meng used the rest of her time to practice the blue-green waist dance move. The goal was to make the movement appear effortless.

“It is a soft yet powerful move, requiring strong lumbar and abdominal muscles, as well as leg support, to maintain balance,” she said.

Meng’s character, named qinglu, represents the blue-green hue that the dancer said is “the soul of the painting”.

“It’s a splendid colour that has not faded even after a thousand years,” Meng said. “It represents our enduring Chinese traditional culture, which is dignified and has enormous richness.”

Despite her excitement to play qinglu, Meng said she was initially overwhelmed by the character.

“It’s quite different from previous roles I had played because it was not based on a human character, but rather the embodiment of something natural,” Meng said.

03:03

The Painting Journey: Behind the scenes of China’s Spring Festival gala poetic dance hit

The Painting Journey: Behind the scenes of China’s Spring Festival gala poetic dance hit

The more she acted, though, the more comfortable she felt in the role.

Meng and the crew had performed 51 times in 18 cities across mainland China, starting in September 2021, before the Spring Festival Gala on January 31, 2022.

“During those performances, I became closer to qinglu, and ‘we’ eventually blended,” Meng said.

Meng spent nearly a month in March last year, at the directors’ instruction, to detach from her daily life and immerse herself in the tranquillity shown in the painting before rehearsal.

Meng said that by submitting herself entirely to qinglu, the character repaid her with an inner calm that she said will nurture her forever.

“My life has slowed down, and every step I take has become more powerful,” she said.

She has performed three times at the CCTV annual Spring Festival Gala since joining the China Oriental Performing Arts Group in 2012.

In 2015, she brought to life a flying fairy who plays a pipa, a four-stringed Chinese lute, in the dance Silk Road Rainbow Garments. In 2021, she was the lead dancer in Moli, a Chinese classical dance based on a popular Chinese folk song from the Jiangnan region named “Mo Li Hua”. She portrayed the gentle and beautiful Jiangnan woman to the fullest.

Meng started dancing when she was five years old and, like many other dancers, she has considered leaving the industry on countless occasions.

Looking back now, Meng said that she was wise to stick with the profession because it helped her cultivate “a personality of gentleness and rigour”.

“The profession is now a faith to me rather than a job,” she said.

Meng is scheduled to perform 120 times as qinglu in the coming year, with the next stop being in Hainan in March.

“I still enjoy playing qinglu a lot, and we are a long way from it being enough,” she said.

Meng likes to watch other dancers perform on her days off but said she has never idolised or wished to be like anybody.

“It’s a burden to always think about what kind of person I want to be,” Meng said. “Women should be confident and courageous to live out their uniqueness.”