The Shanghai Ballet was founded in 1979, formerly known as the creative team of The White-Haired Girl, a large-scale ballet. As one of the major works for nationalisation of the ballet art, The White-Haired Girl paved the way for the founding of the Shanghai Ballet and helped to establish its leading position in the Chinese ballet community. The White-Haired Girl won the Classic Award in the 20^th Century Chinese Dance Classics Competition and has been staged for over 2,000 times since its premiere.

The Shanghai Ballet came into being with The White-Haired Girl over 40 years ago. So far it has staged many world classic operas including Swan Lake, Roméo et Juliette, The Sleeping Beauty, La Traviata, Coppélia, La Sylphide, Giselle, Don Quixote, etc., and presented lots of ballet commissions such as Bright Red Star, The Butterfly Lovers, A Sigh of Love, The Last Mission of Marco Polo, Jane Eyre, Everlasting Regret, Hamlet, The Nutcracker, Pagoda Hill, The Phantom of the Opera, etc., developing an elegant and exquisite “artistic style” of its own, one mixed with the strong points of different schools.

The White-Haired Girl became so brilliant that it brought to the front such ballet dancers as SHI Zhongqin, MAO Huifang and LING Guiming. Meanwhile, by inheriting The White-Haired Girl and relying on its other ballet commissions launched at the early stage, the Shanghai Ballet helped more Chinese ballet dancers stand out, including XIN Lili, WANG Qifeng and YANG Xinhua. Today, with a repertoire in which there are ballets totally different in style, the Shanghai Ballet has given birth to a new generation of outstanding ballet dancers including JI Pingping, FAN Xiaofeng, WU Husheng and QI Bingxue. Over the past four decades, young dancers from the Shanghai Ballet have won 59 awards in international ballet competitions, some of which were the first to be carried off by China, including the first medal, the first pas de deux award and the first “Olympic” gold award.

With an open mind, the Shanghai Ballet has established friendly cooperation with a lot of Chinese and foreign art groups and artists. In addition to touring every part of China, the Shanghai Ballet has given performances in nearly 100 cities in the USA, the UK, Canada, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, North Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Finland, Poland, South Korea and other countries, showing the world the unique charm of Chinese ballet, winning itself praise from Western media - The ballet from Shanghai, China is as exquisite as china.