Director of Opera National de Paris, Brigitte Lefevre, at a press conference held at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing on May 13. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.COM]

Opera National de Paris, with over 300 year history, will bring its well-known piecePaquitato Beijing from May 16 to 18.

It's part of a ballet feast in the ongoing Olympic Performance Season at the National Center for the Performing Arts.

If ballet with white dreaming gauzy skirts is considered as Huaiyang cuisine, which tends to have a sweet side to it and, in contrast to that of Sichuan cuisine, is almost never spicy, Paquita will be considered as a hot spicy soup of ballet for its energetic Spanish characteristics.

Different from light classical ballet, Paquita has many passionate and happy steps. It also combines unique styles from Spanish folk dances. Audiences will be amazed at the atmosphere a classical ballet can create.

The bullfight dance by 12 masculine men in the first scene will present a refreshingly different world to audiences who are used to the romantic and feminine ballet.

Besides 140 excellent ballet dancers, Opera national de Paris has also selected 50 children from the middle school of the Beijing Dance Academy to join the performance. Being involved with the top international ballet dancers has excited the students who are confident they will perform well.

The director of Opera National de Paris, Brigitte Lefevre said at a press conference in Beijing she was very happy Paquita will be staged in the performing center, which is designed by French architect Paul Andreu. The performance reflects the friendship and communication between China and France.

Paquita tells a story of young Gypsy girl, Paquita who was carried off by Gypsies when she was a baby. She falls in love with a young French officer Lucien d'Hervilly. But she can't marry him for her humble status. In the end she manages to save the life of Hervilly and find out her noble birth. The two have a happy ending and get married.

Opera National de Paris is one of the oldest ballet troupes in the world and is considered the cradle of classical ballet. The basic principles and symbolic movements it designed for ballet, such as the white skirt, toe dance and air bounce are still widely used in ballet now.