For the sake of preliminary arrangement for dance drama Little Mermaid by National Ballet of China (NBC), John Neumeier, ballet choreography master and art director of Hamburg Ballet visited China in May. He supervised the annual assessment performance of NBC to find the candidate for “Little Mermaid”.

In his opinion, Little Mermaid is the very ballet drama for NBC. Through his observation, he found that Chinese audiences are ready to accept a ballet drama with dramatic conflict. As far as he can see, rather than a mere fairy tale, Little Mermaid is a drama that discusses simple emotions of mankind in the circumstance of complicated spiritual world. Among his works, emotional sympathy is the spiritual essence. When his China journey came to an end, Neumeier didn’t tell the press who his candidate was. “I have no specific image. I never intend to choose one that I expect. I’m here just to look more, hoping to find one” he said.