The Guangzhou Ballet Troupe won a standing ovation Friday night from an audience of 1,000 for its performance of Ballet Fusion - East Meets West, during its first visit to Vancouver.

With Vancouver being the last leg of its three-city Canadian tour following earlier stops in Ottawa and Toronto, the troupe was the star attraction of the city's third annual China Cultural Festival, a three-day event that also features a Chinese arts and calligraphy show, a lantern festival and celebrations marking the centennial of the Xinhai Revolution.

"This is the first time for them (Guangzhou Ballet Troupe) to come to Vancouver to have a show, and the reason is that Vancouver and Guangzhou are twin cities and this is the year for Vancouver's 125th anniversary," said festival producer Ricky Li. "So this is really important for Guangzhou to come here and celebrate this one."

Created in 1994 by the Guangzhou municipal government with famous dancer Zhang Dandan giving arts instruction, the young troupe displays the brilliance of its mentor in a performance that blends traditional ballet with elements of modern dance and Western arts.

The performance for the Canadian tour included excerpts from a wide repertoire including Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Le Corsaire, mixed with Chinese pieces such as composer Fujian Wang's Natural Melody and the classic folk tale of Chinese romance, the Butterfly Lovers.

"We performed the French classic ballet La Sylphide last year in Montreal," said Zhang, who first came to Canada 25 years ago as a principal dancer with the Central Ballet of China.

"This year, we brought Chinese classic ballet to Toronto and Ottawa. According to the previous experience, we got a full house for each show when you could always find echoes from the audience who were always ready to show their appreciation," she said.

Performing with Guangzhou Ballet professional dancers in Vancouver were 26 young dancers from the Goh Ballet Academy who performed the Snow Scene from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.

Headed by Chan Hon Goh, a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, the local school has put Vancouver on the ballet map as a center for training excellent.

Last month, Goh took a group of students to China on a five-city tour that she called excellent for fostering cultural exchanges and expanding the scope of her young charges. The tour covered Zhongshan, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou and Beijing.

"It was wonderful to be in China ... We were there in early September and got to perform in some of the newer theaters. So as an experience, as a cultural exchange, it will be very memorable to the lives of all the dancers that participated," said the Beijing-born Goh.

"Along the way in each city we created opportunities to exchange with local companies. We also took them (the students) to many historical sites. So with all of that, and all that China has to offer, it will add tremendously to their views, their understanding of the Chinese people and their artistic growth in the future."

The Guangzhou Ballet Troupe closes its Canadian tour with a show in Richmond, a Vancouver suburb city, on Saturday.

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