By INESA PLESKACHEUSKAYA

It was at the London premier of Bravo China! that I first saw her. She was performing Soul of the Peacock and it seemed to me not an artist but a bird - a graceful peacock with a small elegant head and proud gait - that danced before me. Four years later I met Yang Liping, arguably the most famous folk dancer in China, in person. She is of the Bai ethnic minority that lives in southern Yunnan Province.

Yang Liping is a living legend. Now 46 years old, she has no formal training, but her dancing talent has been obvious since childhood. At the age of 12 she was invited to join the professional Song and Dance Ensemble.

"I come from the Bai ethnic group and we are all born to sing and dance. We dance at harvest time, we dance to celebrate weddings, and we dance at funerals. Dancing is part of our everyday life. It is entirely natural and cannot be learnt."

Yang Liping became an overnight sensation in 1986 with the dance that so impressed me, Soul of the Peacock. How many times has she performed it since then? She has lost count. But she tries to add a new touch - a slight movement or turn of the head - to every performance so making each distinct from the rest.

Where does her inspiration come from?

"Body movements can come from farm work, such as transplanting rice seedlings, or turning a millstone; they also follow anything in nature: clouds, a tree, swimming fish."

At the blink of an eye Yang Liping can change into a tree, a fish or even a nocturnal illumination. Her Moonlight dance is performed in silhouette against the moon and starts with flying birds. I could hardly believe I was watching her create a whole flock of birds in flight, a tree growing, and a fish jumping in a pond with just her hands. This slender Bai dancer also enacts her interpretation of Eternal Womanhood.

"Woman is elusive in exactly the same way as the moon; she seems to be real, but this is just illusion - she is abstract."

Yang Liping's main priority is to preserve the traditions of her own and other ethnic minorities living in Yunnan. In the drive towards modernization people and nations all too often lose their individuality. As she says, intangible heritage is often the first thing to die. This is why she has spent the last three years as art director, chief choreographer and soloist of the gala show -- Dynamic Yunnan, a showcase of Bai songs, dances and traditions.

To make the performance as authentic as possible she has invited 60 farmers to join her team of professional dancers.

"Everything happening on stage comes from real life. Virtually every movement and tune comes from daily routine tasks. Most costumes, musical instruments and ceremonial artifacts are real, even the praying stones from Tibet. That's why the artist doesn't need to act to convey their heaviness, he is really bent under the weight of those stones."

Yang Liping insists that professional dancers cannot be as genuinely dynamic as these farmers, she cites an indisputable example in the form of a 5-year-old boy, A Bu, of the Va ethnic minority. He is the youngest participant in the show and performs an impressive drum solo. His young age prohibits him from guest performances, so in Kunming, capital city of Yunnan Province, his drum solo needed to be re-cast. Says Yang Liping: "All the boys came to audition accompanied by their parents. One mother held a McDonald's drink and hamburger and waited for her son at the door. I let them beat the drum but none could play it as convincingly as A Bu. I don't think a kid who grows up with McDonald's could ever take his place. So we had to get him back - the show would be seriously lacking without him."

Farmers joined the show for various reasons. Yang Liping explains: "The younger generation living in mountain villages has already been exposed to modern culture. Nowadays they prefer jeans and Nike shoes to traditional colorful costume. But despite this they, like generations before, lead a simple and honest life. Why do they travel with the show? Some of them came for the chance to see the world outside their villages and some just joined for fun. One girl, A Xui, came to earn money to help buy cattle for her family. She needs 400 RMB, which is a pretty serious reason to join us."

Authenticity comes at a price. Yang Liping has spent three years traveling to the remotest corners of Yunnan collecting material for the performance. She has covered 200,000 km and sold her house to fund the show. "As for selling a house I don't think it's so serious. I have a few houses in Dali and Beijing and selling one of them does not mean I have no place to live. It's an investment. I invest in order to dance. That's what I love."

To finance the show the dancer has also made advertisements. Some of them - especially one for a famous brand of strong spirit - have been widely criticized. She explains: "That's how I make money for dancing. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I am a practical person and know well this is a commercial world. I negotiate with sponsors and do what I can to gain their support for the show. I am independent and try to lead a happy life. But I won't and would never perform if I were not in the mood."

In China the Dynamic Yunnan performance caused quite a stir. From a Chinese audience point of view its new songs and dances were controversial because of their implicit depictions of sensuality, although from a European point of view they are quite innocent. People of Yunnan Province are true children of nature, which comes across in the performance. In some shows the pairings of dragonflies and butterflies are imitated and audiences have been shocked by amorous pas de deux between young people of the opposite sex, after which, naturally enough, is the simulated birth of a baby. The Chinese media have strongly criticized Yang Liping for such immoderations. Her response: "This is an essential part of people's lives" silenced the critics.

Can success be attributed to her personal charm? This she answers with the revelation: "Dancing is not merely my profession. The Bai people call those like me bimo, the witch with the gift of dancing. When I was very, very young my grandmother told me that singing and dancing is our way of living and of expressing ourselves. The bimo talks with the gods and is a medium of communication between heaven and earth. My grandmother herself is an example. When my grandfather died, she sang for three days and nights about his life, about their love stories and to mourn."

Yang Liping says that dancing is in her blood. The day will eventually come when she retires from public performance but this doesn't mean she will stop dancing: "Even if one day I must stop dancing on stage, I will still dance every day wherever I am."

INESA PLESKACHEUSKAYA is the Beijing bureau chief of the Belorussian national newspaper Belarus Today and the National TV channel ONT.