China's first full-length folk dance drama staged its maiden show on Monday in east China's Shanghai Municipality.

The story of the drama is based on China's 18th century classic, A Dream of Red Mansions, one of the four greatest Chinese literature classics.

It is also the first time for China to use the artistic form of dance drama to represent the story, which has been adapted into movies, television, and Shaoxing opera, a local opera form in east China's Zhejiang Province.

Various dance forms are used in the three-act drama, which has taken artists from the Zhanyou Troupe of the Chinese People's Liberation Army three years to revise and perfect.

A Dream of Red Mansions, written by Cao Xueqin (about 1715-1764)in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), depicts the rise and decline of several big feudal families through tragic love affairs between Jia Baoyu and his two cousins, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai. The novel is famous for its idioms, folk adages, allegorical sayings and literary quotations, and considered as the greatest achievement of ancient Chinese literature.

The work has been translated into many languages and enjoys a huge readership across the world. The classic has given birth to "red-ology", a unique branch of learning in modern Chinese literature history that first appeared in the Qing Dynasty, after Cao's novel began to circulate in the form of hand-made copies.
 
(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2004)